The interplay between gender issues and religious narratives: plural normativities and new political-legal insights

The increasing tension between calls for a yet-to-be-achieved full integration of LGBTQ+ into the public space, and claims for a broader religious freedom is a touch-and-go in the US and European public discourse. It emphasizes the need for a balance between religious exercise, in its individual and collective dimension, the rule of law and third-party burdens. A crucial issue concerns the impact of religiously-based conscientious claims on the implementation of non-discrimination narrative. In many legal contexts the reconciliation of a right to equal dignity of members of the LGBTQ+ community and the fundamental right to religious exercise is grounded on a fragmentary legal framework. Thus, the judiciary has been often entrusted with the task to reach a difficult balance between competing interests. The implementation of public policies aimed at preserving pluralism and democracy requires not only a careful negotiation between the protagonists but also a strong commitment of public and religious actors. As far as they are concerned, the new challenge for religious organizations is to keep up with their religious identity while including stakeholders with different sets of values. Ethical and moral issue are the object of a process of rebranding in many religious traditions, with a view to adopting increasing solicitude toward the most socially vulnerable groups of people, for instance LGBTQ+ people. Recent theological-juridical arguments have re-interpreted sacred texts, in the pursuit of the restoration of their genuine message of equality, favoring the development of more progressive trends within religious traditions toward gender identity and sexual orientation issues. The aim of the paper is to investigate 1) the development of new narratives and public policies that can be implemented nationally and supranationally to reconcile religious freedom and LGBTQ+ rights 2) the increasing pressure on religious conservative organizations to make their sets of values flexible enough to accommodate LGBTQ+ claims 3) the limits religious groups (even religious minorities) face in dealing with the new gender challenges and the strategies they lay out to overcome them.