Latin America's Gay Rights Revolution

This essay explains the gay-rights revolution in Latin America marked by the legalization of same-sex marriage in Argentina. Among the factors examined are the use of human-rights rhetoric to end anti-gay discrimination, the employment of the Internet to mainstream gay culture, the creation of a gay market to leverage clout for the gay community, and critical alliances with the political establishment. These explanations suggest that the Latin American gay-rights revolution is rooted in political strategizing rather than in social change, which explains the paradoxical trend of rising anti-gay violence in the midst of a gay-rights boom.