Fighting for love rights: Claims and strategies of the LGBT movement in Spain

Abstract

In this article we center the attention on LGBT organizations in Spain. We discuss the emergence, evolution and claims of this social movement. The political associations and groups that advocate lesbian, gay and transsexual rights are presented as the voice of sexual communities and peoples. Accordingly, they are treated as a key social and political actor that links the desires and needs of grass-root non heterosexual peoples with the higher spheres of institutions, politics and the law. The article builds on qualitative data on protesting, claims-making and mobilization to account for the transformation of a major section of the Spanish LGBT movement into a defender of human rights and equality. This is presented as the consequence of internal balances of power, and also as a cause of the de-sexualisation of the claims brought before the State by sexual communities in Spain.