Heteronormative Family Politics and the Transnationalization of Christian Right Organizations

Heteronormative family politics have been on the rise in Europe leading to new polarizations around issues of reproductive rights, gender and sexual diversity and marriage for all. These mobilizations have led to discussions on anti-gender movement and more recently cultural Marxism. However, centering the discourses around heteronormative family politics does not account for the dynamic processes that conservative, religious and far-right actors engage in to build alliances. Turning to the study of Christian Right Organizations, the paper analyzes the increasing transnationalization of these groups around issues of heteronormative family politics through resource mobilization structures and political opportunity structures to close this gap. Starting from the first local attempts by conservative Catholics of establishing anti-abortion groups in Latin-America to the more recent transnational coalition building among populist far-right leaders, the study is situated in a theoretical approach that discusses the relations among conservative, religious and far-right organizations. Examining the literature on transnational social movements in opposition to reproductive rights, marriage for all and gender and sexual diversity, the research traces the efforts of international collaboration. The paper concludes with a four-wave model of transnationalization that accounts for a dynamic process of increasing alliance building starting from the establishment of anti-abortion organizations in Latin American and Central and Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s over the involvement in intergovernmental institutions like the UN and European Union in the 2000s to the foundation of transnational organization in the 2010s. Thereby the study contributes to the fields of transnational social movements, global sexual politics and the Christian Right.