Too Liberal to Be True: How Sexual Democracy Has Redefined Liberalism in Europe

Over the past two decades European institutions’ decisions in matters of sexuality have redefined the articulation between democracy and liberalism. On the one hand, European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) jurisprudence has taken liberalism to its extreme by upholding the rights of children over the rights of their parents, i.e. that the freedom of each individual should not be curtailed even by those who act on his/her behalf as legal guardians (ECtHR, 2011; 2017); while, on the other hand, European Parliament and European Commission resolutions have established that the very definition of democracy includes unrestricted respect for sexual minorities and for the sexual freedom of each individual. Moreover, ECtHR has defined democracy as a fundamental feature and the only political model of the European public order (ECtHR, 2010, p.16), whilst European Parliament have declared the European Union an ‘LGBTIQ Freedom Zone’ (European Parliament, 2021/2557(RSP)). While contemporary trends indicate that the sexual rights of LGBTIQ populations are increasingly recognised by liberal democracies (Sabsay, 2016), not all democracies follow this trend. Within both Europe's coexisting legal orders, that of the European Union (27 states) and that of the Council of Europe (46 states), transnational institutions have intervened to define how liberal democracy is to be interpreted. So that in court cases against Russia, for example, two visions of democracy have been set against each other: Russia defends an illiberal democracy that regulates and imposes the dominant values of a majority, adopting a conservative democratic model (ECtHR, 2010). Whereas European institutions, on the other hand, defend a liberal democratic model in which each individual, in his or her specificity as a gendered and sexual being, can develop his/her life even against collective norms, promoting a model that guarantees individual freedoms. Based on a detailed documental and empirical examination of various sources, this presentation examines the fields of justice (ECtHR case law), legislative (European Parliament archives), and public policy (European Commission archives) regarding democracy and liberalism. I will present the most recent results of my postdoctoral research on European institutions (Marie Curie Fellowship) articulating a comparative law approach and a governmentality perspective on gender and sexual politics. One of this presentation contributions lies in the study of European institutions interventions on sexual democracy issues through different kind of regulations revealing symptoms of major transformations in European societies. References: ECtHR, 2010, Case of Alekseyev v. Russia, (Applications nos. 4916/07, 25924/08 and 14599/09), Strasbourg. ECtHR, 2011, Case of Dojan and Others v. Germany, (Application no. 319/08), Strasbourg. ECtHR, 2017, Case of Bayev and Others v. Russia, (Applications nos. 67667/09 and 2 others), Strasbourg. European Parliament, Resolution of 11 March 2021 on the declaration of the EU as an LGBTIQ Freedom Zone (2021/2557(RSP)). Sabsay, Leticia. The Political Imaginary of Sexual Freedom: Subjectivity and Power in the New Sexual Democratic Turn. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.