Legislative and Judicial Politics of LGBT Rights in the European Union

Since the 1980s, the law of the European Union (EU) has become a substantial transnational source of political empowerment for LGBT actors in Europe. The Rome Treaty (1957), which established the European Economic Community, contained a gender equality clause. In the 1990s, this provision was used to protect employment rights of intersex individuals via litigation schemes based on EU law. Yet the subsequent attempts to push forward a similar legal protection for gay and lesbian equality at the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), based on the EU sex-equality clause, failed. Since then, the position of the LGBT community in EU legislative politics has evolved significantly through two dimensions. First, the Amsterdam Treaty (1997) extended the number of grounds protected against discrimination in EU law, adding sexual orientation, among others, to this palette. The Amsterdam Treaty permitted the EU Council to adopt the Framework Equality Directive 2000/78/EC, an instrument of secondary Union law that has safeguarded minimum standards of protection against homophobia in relation to matters of employment in all member states. This framework EU legislation has been used by LGBT litigants in their fight for equal working opportunities and pension rights at the CJEU. Second, the introduction of EU citizenship by virtue of the Maastricht Treaty (1992) and the respective secondary law (the EU Citizenship Directive 2004/38/EC) have paved the way for status recognition of same-sex spouses in the member states that have not previously recognized same-sex partnership or marriage. The future of LGBT legislative politics and the LGBT community in Europe will largely depend on whether EU law is able to extend protection beyond the current confines of the employment area, broaden its scope to cover social dimensions such as health and education, and fully recognize same-sex marriages and partnerships throughout the EU.

自20世纪80年代以来，欧盟法律已成为欧洲LGBT（同性恋、双性恋、跨性别者）群体政治赋权的重要跨国来源。本研究探讨了欧盟法律如何通过性别平等条款和反歧视立法（如《阿姆斯特丹条约》和《框架平等指令》）推动LGBT群体在就业和婚姻权利方面的平等保护，并分析了未来欧盟法律是否能够将保护范围从就业领域扩展到健康、教育等社会维度，以及是否能在全欧盟范围内全面承认同性婚姻和伴侣关系。

这项混合方法研究招募了18岁及以上的性少数群体（包括女同性恋、双性恋、酷儿、同性吸引者、非异性恋者）以及跨性别或非二元性别者，通过在线平台和Qualtrics面板收集数据，总样本量为969人。研究包括定量和定性分析：定性分析对418名参与者的开放式回答进行归纳主题分析，识别出与同性婚姻合法化影响相关的主题和子主题；定量分析则通过逻辑回归探讨不同人口特征（如关系状态、性身份、性别身份、种族/族裔）对主题描述的差异。研究还记录了参与者的人口学信息，并分析了这些变量对结果的影响。

研究发现，许多参与者对婚姻合法化在LGBTQ社区中可能削弱宝贵友谊网络的方式表示担忧，尤其是那些未合法结婚的个体，包括多角恋关系或未婚伴侣关系的人。然而，社会支持和友谊网络是否会因婚姻合法化而受到影响尚不明确。参与者普遍将婚姻合法化的个人意义置于更广泛的政治和社会背景中，表达了对未解决的权利或法律保护以及安全问题的担忧，例如就业和住房歧视、针对有色人种和跨性别/非二元性别者的暴力问题等。尽管婚姻合法化被视为公民权利的胜利和社会包容的标志，但研究强调仍需解决其他重要问题，如缺乏反歧视保护、家庭和社会网络中的持续污名化等。此外，参与者对婚姻合法化后可能引发的反弹表示担忧，尽管研究表明婚姻合法化可能改善公众对性少数群体的态度，但对原本不支持性少数群体的人影响有限。研究还指出，未来需要进一步探讨婚姻合法化对不同关系状态的性少数群体的健康影响，以及政策对性少数亚群体的不同感知和影响。