Sexual politics and religious actors in Argentina

PECHENY, MARIO; JONES, DANIEL; ARIZA, LUCÍA

Washington DC

Workshop; Religion and democratic contestation in Latin America: Rights and justice claims around the environment and gender/sexuality; 2014

Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, American University

This paper describes and analyzes sexual politics in Argentina, in relation to the tensions between political and religious actors. It does so by focusing on the conflicts around sexual politics, since these have become one of the crucial fields of struggles about the role of religion and of religious actors (particularly, Catholic) in our liberal-democratic regime.          Sexual politics refers to the status of women, reproduction (contraception, assisted fertilization), conjugality and LGBT rights, abortion, sex work and trafficking, topics that have successively occupied the agenda of social movements and political institutions in Argentina. We are argue that while the most conservative religious actors have been loosing ground since the democratic transition (and especially in the last decade) due to the cultural liberalization and passing of progressive legislation on sexual politics (including divorce, access to contraception, same-sex marriage, transgender identity rights, access to assisted reproduction, etc.), abortion remains the one and only issue that has not seen any progress in its state response. The recent regained closeness between the Kirchnerisst government and the Argentine Pope anticipates no change in this scenario.