Religious Conservatism on the Global Stage : Threats and Challenges For LGBTI Rights

M. Defago, J. Faúndes, J. Vaggione

Report on the rise of religious conservatisms and the threats such movements pose to feminist and LGBTI movements worldwide. The report explains how religious opposition to sexuality and gender equality has been transformed in the past two decades by the establishment of large, well-funded NGOs. A direct response to the U.N. Conferences in Cairo and Beijing in the mid-1990s, these NGOs are mostly but not exclusively based in the US and are founded in Evangelical Protestantism, Catholic, and Mormon faiths. Working alongside political actors such as the Russian Federation or the OIC as well as religious institutions, these NGOs have adopted collective mobilization and the secular language of human rights as winning strategies. They engage in interreligious alliances and host international conferences to build grassroots support. They claim to ?protect the family? and use the empty construct of ?gender ideology? to attack feminism and LGBTI equality.