The Religion of Illiberals and the Anti-Gender Backlash
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Nausica Palazzo
Abstract
In illiberal contexts, religion can be mobilized to support conservative legal reforms in the areas of gender, sexuality, and reproduction. However, the role of religion in illiberal agendas that roll back the rights of women and LGBTQ populations is unclear and the subject of scholarly debate. This article seeks to add a greater level of granularity to these discussions. It takes the role of “Christianity” in illiberal contexts in Europe as a case study and triangulates three theoretical perspectives. A first perspective stresses the contribution of Christianity to anti-gender backlash (doctrinal, institutional, and material); a second one highlights the distinct contribution of illiberal politicians; a third one tackles the problem by collapsing binary oppositions under a queer theory framework (such as that between gender and religion, and illiberal politicians and their followers). Ultimately, adding granularity to these discussions can help make sense of the current moment.
Acknowledgments
The research was conducted in part at the Department of Law at the European University Institute, where I was a Visiting Fellow. While errors are my own, I would like to thank those who commented on earlier versions of this paper, especially Pasquale Annicchino, Jorge Botelho Moniz, Alberta Giorgi, Gabor Halmai, Yossi Harpaz, Surbhi Karwa, Jeffrey A. Redding, Orlando Scarcello, Gila Stopler, and Ofra Bloch. I also benefitted from substantial feedback at the international workshop on “Rethinking the Public-Private Divide: Law and Religion in the Modern State,” held at the College of Law and Business, Israel, and during the New Research in Illiberalism series hosted by the Illiberalism Studies Program at George Washington University. I am finally grateful to André Moradas for assistance in technical editing and FCT-Foundation for Science and Technology for its support of this research (Foundation for Science and Technology within the scope of CEDIS – UID/00714/2020).
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