Anti-LGBT Organising and Conceptions of Democracy: The Case of Croatia

Recently, there has been a growing opposition to LGBT rights taking place in a range of European countries, including those which have adopted a wide scope of LGBT rights, such as France and Austria. These ‘anti-gender’ (Graff, 2014; Kováts and Põim, 2015) or ‘anti-LGBT’ initiatives have gradually grew into organised social activism with some noticeable connections between these seemingly distinct cases. This Paper will address the ways in which contemporary anti-LGBT movements draw on the discourses and practices of democracy that have usually been associated with the progressive social movements, such as public protests and initiating the referendums, in pursuing their anti-emancipatory political agenda. It will do so by focusing on Croatian civil initiative ‘In the name of the Family’ which initiated the referendum that resulted in the constitutional definition of marriage, defining the marriage as a union of a man and a woman. The Paper will analyse the ways in which the rhetoric of democracy has played a crucial role in political mobilising against the LGBT rights and how the existing democratic tools have been utilised for the purpose of preventing the adoption of gay marriage. At the same time, conceptual analysis will be applied in order to examine how democracy has been conceptualised in this context with the special focus on the ways in which the notions of equality, diversity, tolerance, discrimination, and majority/minority figure in these conceptions. Such analysis will allow us to gain better understanding of the ways in which the existing conceptions of democracy have been used and redefined in the context of activism that has been directed against the improvement of socio-legal position of marginalised and/or disadvantaged groups, such as sexual minorities in this case.