Queer Domination or Dominating the Queer? Enforcing LGBT Equality in times of Dissensus

Critics contest the European Commission’s enforcement of LGBT equality on the grounds that it is a dominating exercise of supranational overreach, while pro-LGBT actors call on the Commission to do more to alleviate the domination of sexual and gender minorities at the hands of domestic ruling elites. Thus, the Commission is put under pressure for simultaneously doing ‘too much, too soon’ and ‘too little, too late’ in safeguarding LGBT equality in the EU. This calls for an analysis of how the Commission participates in shaping anti-LGBT counterreactions and its particular conception of what LGBT equality involves and how it should be pursued. This paper therefore analyses how the Commission legitimizes the EU’s supranational LGBT-friendly stance and its actions taken in response to LGBT equality dismantling in member states. The paper analyzes EU Commissioner’s statements and responses in the European Parliament during the 9th legislature where the issue of LGBT equality in Poland and Hungary was debated. The findings of the analysis are discussed using a normative framework called Global Queer Agonism, which combines queer and agonistic political theory to capture how the Commission contributes to shaping anti-LGBT resentment, while relying on partial conceptions of LGBT equality. The paper argues that empirical and normative research on the EU’s responses to LGBT equality dismantling need to take into account EU institutions’ own role in shaping anti-LGBT counterreactions as well as the contested nature of the EU’s conception of LGBT equality that potentially disavows internal disputes within and among queer and feminist movements.