“Gender

Ideology”: notes
for the genealogy of a
contemporary moral panic1
Richard Miskolci
& Maximiliano Campana**

Abstract: In recent years, in various national contexts, debates have emerged about what religious and
lay groups call “gender ideology”. This article retraces the genealogy of this term to understand the
political grammar in which it is inserted. With this objective, it reviews texts that have defined the term
for some twenty years, maps where it emerged in Latin America, and when it came to be used against
advances in sexual and reproductive rights. Human rights demands have been interpreted by moral
entrepreneurs as threats to society, simultaneously engendering a moral panic and a discursive field of
action.
Keywords: gender ideology, sexual and reproductive rights, Latin American politics, religion, moral
entrepreneurs.
The evil called (…) gender (…) “perspective” is in reality an
ideology. Probably the most radical ideology in history,
given that – by imposing itself – it would destroy the human
being in its most intimate nucleus and simultaneously do
away with society (Scala 2010: : 7).

With this paragraph, Jorge Scala began his book La ideología del género. O el géne-
ro como herramienta de poder [The Ideology of Gender. Gender as a tool of power].
According to Scala, “gender ideology” is a discursive political instrument of
alienation with global dimensions that seeks to establish a totalitarian model to
“impose a new anthropology” by provoking the alteration of moral agendas and
leading to the destruction of society. The book, whose objective is to “waken
sleeping consciousness, and help them work for a better world” (Scala, 2010: 8), had
strong impact, not only in Argentina, where it was first published, but also in other
countries (it was translated into Portuguese).

The fight against the so-called “gender ideology” gained increasing space on a global
scale, particularly in Europe (Kóvatz & Poim, 2015) and in Latin America, associating
itself to various discussions related to the reproductive health of women, sexual
education or recognition of non-heterosexual identities, and other issues. If
historically,

1 Originally published in Portuguese as “Ideologia de gênero”: notas para a genealogia de um pânico moral
contemporâneo In: Sociedade e Estado Brasília: Dep. of Sociology/UnB. v.32 n.3 set./dez 2017 pp.725-747:
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0102-
69922017000300725&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=pt
* Richard Miskolci is Associate Professor in the Department and Graduate Program of Sociology at UFSCar and a CNPq
researcher. ufscar7@gmail.com
Maximiliano Campana is a member of the Clínica de Interés Público Asociación Civil y del Programa de
Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos [Clinic in the Public Interest, Civil Association and the Sexual and
Reproductive Rights Program] of the School of Law of the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba/ and has a
doctorate in law and the social sciences from this university. maxicampana@gmail.com



religious groups had been opposed to the advance of sexual and reproductive rights,
the fight against “gender ideology” is more recent and, in various European
countries, its supposed dangers began to be denounced after 2008 (Kóvatz & Poim,
2015).


In Latin America, Scala’s book had important influence, with the fight against what
he denominated as “ideology” the justification for demonstrations staged by

movements in support of the traditional family and demonstrations against policies

of leftist governments. Initiated in Argentina and Brazil, by 2016 the dissemination
of the political-moral grammar of the notion of gender ideology had reached

countries like Mexico and Colombia, contributing in Mexico to the struggle against


the approval of “matrimonio sin discriminacion” [marriage without discrimination]
and in Colombia to the rejection of a peace accord with the Revolutionary Armed

Forces of Colombia (FARC) in a plebiscite. 2

The origins of the ideas that affirm the existence of a “gender ideology” can be
found at the heart of the Catholic Church, more specifically in the texts of then
Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, who in 1997, wrote:

Women are currently considered to be oppressed; thus women’s
liberation serves as a nuclear center for any activity of liberation,
both political and anthropological with the objective of liberating
the human being from her biology. Distinction is thus made
between the biological phenomenon of sexuality from its historic
forms, which they denominate “gender”, but the intended
revolution against the historic forms of sexuality culminate in a
revolution against biological presumptions. It is no longer admitted
that “nature” has something to say, it is better that man can shape
himself to his taste, must be liberated from any presumption of his
being: the human being must make himself as he wishes, only in
this way would he be “free” and liberated. All of this, deep down,
disguises an insurrection of men against the limits that they carry
with them as biological beings. It is opposed, in the final extreme,
to the creator. The human being must be their own creator, a
modern version of that, “I will be like Gods”: they must be like God
(Ratzinger, 1997: 142).

This paragraph written by the current Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is a key element
for beginning to trace a powerful political-discursive counteroffensive against
feminism and its proposal for recognition and advance in issues of sexual and
reproductive rights.

Ratzinger’s text is an attack on the feminist ideas that had been gestating for
decades, but it could be said that it is a more direct reaction against the UN World
Conference on Women in Beijing

2
In Mexico, conservatives organized a march for the family against approval of same sex marriages, while in Colombia
conservative religious sectors distributed pamphlets warning that a vote in support of the peace agreement
in the plebiscite would place the country at risk of “falling under a communist dictatorship and imminent appropriation of
gender ideology”.



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in 1995. This fourth UN women’s conference, was characterized by
substituted the term “woman” (which had been the main subject in the first
three conferences)3 for the concept of gender, establishing that

All economic policies and institutions as well as those responsible
for resource allocation should adopt a gender perspective (Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action, 1995: Article 233).

The conference recognized that the inequality of women is a structural problem and
can only be addressed from an integral perspective of gender. These declaration,
which had a global reach, placed the category of “gender”4 at the center of the
debates about the role of women, provoking an important reaction from various
conservative religious sectors, and in particular the Catholic Church. Thus, because
of this conference, Pope John Paul II, in his “Letter to Women” referred to the need
to defend the female identity from an essentialist perspective, and a few years later,
in his Letter to Bishops, of 31, May 2004, manifest opposition to feminist discourse,
reiterating that maternity was a key element of female identity (point 13).

Since then, the Catholic counteroffensive (and later that from all religious
conservatives) would be the fight against this “gender perspective”. They thus
launched an attack, affirming that in reality it was nothing more than an ideological
tool of domination. They sought to disarticulate, distort and condemn feminist ideas
and messages. These sectors began to define “gender ideology” as “a closed system
of thinking” that affirms that the differences between men and women do not
correspond to a fixed nature, but to cultural and conventional constructions and
conventions, made according to roles and stereotypes that each society designates
to the sexes (Scala, 2010). And as an ideology, it sees them as equivalent to the
various totalitarianisms, including Nazism and communism.

The notion of “gender ideology” even appears in the discussions of the Latin
American Catholic Church and in the V General Conference of Latin American
Bishops (Celam) of 2007, known as the “Aparecida Conference”. In the section
related to the reality that permeates the region, there is a clear concern for the
demands of citizenship for homosexuals, when it affirms:

40. Among the presumptions that weaken and depreciate family
life, we find gender ideology, according to which each person
chooses her sexual orientation, without consideration for the
differences given by human nature. This has provoked

3

The first Women’s Conference was held in Mexico City, in 1975, and called for the need to develop a guide for action to do away
with discrimination against women and support their social advances. The second was held in Copenhagen (1980) and the third in
Nairobi (1985).
4
Gender is a scientific concept – originally developed to distinguish biological sex and self-identification – and incorporated to the
social and human sciences in the 1970s, in particular by feminist and or queer researchers. There is a vast literature available about
the concept of gender, among which we recommend Scott (1989) and Butler (2003). About the influence of feminism in social
theory see Adelman (2009).



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legal modifications that seriously harm the dignity of matrimony,

respect for the right to life and the identity of the family (Celam,
2007: 30).

In this document, the Latin American Catholic Church affirmed that the defense of
the traditional concept of family must be a priority focus of the struggle, given that it
is threatened by

secularism and ethical relativism, by the various domestic and
external migratory flows, by poverty, by social instability and by
civil laws contrary to matrimony that, by favoring birth control and
abortion, threaten the future of peoples (Celam, 2007: 279).

The Aparecida Document establishes a common agenda against what it
denominates “gender ideology”, something that was first presented by Cardinal
Ratzinger and soon revived in other official Church documents, as did the Pontifical
Council for the Family (“Family, Marriage and “De Facto” Unions, 21 November,
2000) and later, in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith’s “Letter to the
Bishops of the Catholic Church on the collaboration of men and women in the
Church and in the World” (May 2004). In sum, with the Aparecida Document, the
battle against “gender ideology” was declared throughout Latin America.


The struggle against “gender ideology” is a form of resistance against the recent
advances in Latin America in sexual and reproductive rights. Jorge Scala (2010: 30)
affirms that these rights are nothing more than the result of the manipulation of
language, in which the “gender ideologues” convince their interlocutors by affirming
that they involve human rights. They thus “submit” without resistance, given that
“everything that is presented to the people as the result of a democratic consensus
is immediately considered as something good, even if it is a criminal act”,
considering that no one can be opposed to the defense of human rights.

This battle has special importance in Latin America given that in recent years
advances have been made in some countries in sexual and reproductive rights (such
as the decriminalization of abortion, the recognition of same-sex couples or the
inclusion of sexual education in schools) at the same time that various studies show
a gradual distancing of Catholic men and women in relation to norms of sexual
morals imposed by the Vatican.5 It is also for this reason that for authors such as
Vaggione (2013) the election of Bergoglio as Pope could be seen as a gesture
towards Latin America, because:

5
Based on an international survey from 2000, Frances Hagopian affirms: Catholic lay opinion overwhelmingly rejects the notion that an
abortion can ever be justified, but a significant minority believes that transgressing the Church proscriptions on homosexuality and
euthanasia sometimes can be justified, and only roughly a third of Latin Americans oppose divorce in all circumstances (2006:3).



If João Paulo II faced the ghost of communism, [and] Bento XVI

secularism, Francisco must face this “undisciplined flock” which is
not only broad and diverse about the sexual, but that even
politicizes its religious identification in favor of sexual and
reproductive rights. Moral relativism has been an obsession for the
Vatican for years and the theme is that this relativism is no longer
only fruit of various ideologies (such as liberalism, communism or
secularism), but that it rises from the very source of Catholic
tradition as a religion of liberation (Vaggione, 2013).

If, as Vaggione mentions, moral relativism has been an obsession of the Catholic
Church, it is not surprising that the struggle against “gender ideology” has become a
priority focus of political action. This action is not limited to church documents or
declarations, but also to various non-governmental organizations denominated “pro-
life” and that are characterized by having an accentuated conservative religious
profile. Based on various political actions (such as legislative lobbying or
denunciations against public employees); legal actions (the filing of lawsuits that use
legal and “scientific” arguments about the dangers of “gender ideology” for society)
and media campaigns (including public demonstrations, radio and television
programs or “academic” congresses), they insert into public discussion the “social
dangers” that this “ideology” represents. These organizations present themselves as
secular and democratic, genuine representatives of civil society and therefore,
legitimate interlocutors at the time of negotiating with the powers of state.
Nevertheless, according to Morán Faúndes:

It can be asked if it is valid to effectively accept the secular
character of these civil groups, in circumstances in which their
demands and strategies share central issues with the thinking and
position of the religious hierarchies. To respond to this, the notion
of strategic secularism can be useful, this is the idea that the
adoption of a secular position responds to a strategy of religious
groups to obtain greater influence in the political debate linked to
the rejection of the agenda of sexual and reproductive rights
(Morán Faúndes, 2011: 105).

In any case, the Catholic Church and the pro-life organizations are not the only
institutions who unite around the religious precepts that lead this crusade.
Evangelical organizations joined the “cause” and in various countries of the region
had an enormous impact in impeding the advance of sexual and reproductive rights.
Added to these groups are others that support the battle for not only religious
reasons, which is the case of the the Nonpartisan School Program [Escola sem
Partido], in Brazil, which was created in 2004 as a reaction to educational practices
that its supporters define


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as “political and ideological indoctrination in the classroom” and a “usurpation of
the right of parents to the moral and religious education of their children”.6

.
In the realm of the conflicts around “gender ideology”, more than identifying actors
and differentiating them, we propose to analyze how they associate and articulate
with each other, beginning with what Sonia E. Alvarez (2014) denominates discursive
fields of action, in which political-cultural concerns are shared even if the actors in
these fields have divergent diagnoses. Thus, instead of characterizing these groups
as a type of social movement, and thus, supposedly located in civil society, we
understand those who fight against what they call “gender ideology” (and similar
terms such as the notion of a supposedly partisan school) to be moral entrepreneurs
who act within a discursive field of action.7

These moral entrepreneurs are religious leaders from within the Catholic Church or Neo-
Pentecostal religious lines, or lay followers of these religions, people who engage in the
struggle for a wide variety of simply ethical, moral and or political reasons and who are
not necessarily from civil society, but may act within institutions and even government.
To identify them requires reconstituting in sociological terms the political grammar that
links these diverse actors in a crusade against what they came to call “gender ideology”.
We argue that this grammar is inserted in the historic ambivalence of Catholicism
between an affinity with the left in economic issues and a greater proximity with the
right in terms of morality.

We begin with a preliminary mapping of the tensions between some leftist Latin
American governments and religious actors concerning the initiatives involving legal
and or educational reforms that can be interpreted as seeking advances in sexual
and reproductive rights. We then verify if the fight of the moral entrepreneurs
against gender equality and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transvestite and
transsexual) rights can be associated to the ascendance of leftist women to the
presidency of Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica and Brazil. Finally, we conclude with a
partial review of the political grammar shaped by the creation and dissemination of
the notion of “gender ideology”, shaping a transnational and conservative discursive
field of action that seeks to impede advances in human rights regarding the
demands involving sexual and reproductive rights.

6
See the official website of the Escola sem Partido: <www. escolasempartido. org>.
7

The classic sociological analysis about moral entrepreneurs was developed by Howard Becker (2008) in his now classic

Outsiders, and by the line of theory of moral panics, which both arose in the 1960s.



Mapping tensions and conflicts between the Catholic

Church and leftist governments in Latin America

In the previous section, we conducted a genealogy of the notion of “gender
ideology” based on its emergence in texts and documents of the Catholic Church
after the UN Conference in Beijing (1995). We now present a partial mapping of the
tensions and conflicts that in the decade of 2010 led this notion to be wielded in
various Latin American countries. Our intention is not to address all of the national
cases, or to propose a thorough analysis, but only to contribute to the construction
of an international perspective about a conflict that has arisen in various contexts
and is frequently addressed in an isolated manner.

Before beginning the mapping, it is important to emphasize that the recent debate
about gender and sexuality in Latin America took place in a region in which the so-
called Sexual Revolution had specific characteristics. While in countries like the
United States, the United Kingdom and France, since the late 1960s there was a
deep cultural, political and even legal transformation involving the role of women in
society, in Latin American countries, the initial impact of this revolution was
quenched by military dictatorships marked by a family-oriented nationalist morality.
The Latin American sexual revolution had greater influence on the experience of the
middle and upper classes and did not attain the same sexual and reproductive rights
of the central countries mentioned.


The first Latin American feminist and homosexual movements were organized in the
1970s and were associated to the struggle against the dictatorship and to a

predominantly leftist political perspective. Nevertheless, researchers show that the

relationship between these movements with the left was never without tensions
and limitations. In her history of the Brazilian feminist movement, Céli Pinto (2003:

45) affirmed that feminism was seen by many participants of the struggle against

the military dictatorship (1964-1985) as a “petit-bourgeois deviation”. Sonia E.
Alvarez (2014: 22), in turn, shows that the Latin American revolutionary left
“relegated the ‘women’s question’ to the status of a ‘secondary contradiction’”.

Similar, yet even greater, tension was found in relation to the nascent homosexual
movements whose cause was not only given secondary emphasis, but, often, ridiculed
and rejected by the hegemonic left.8 Therefore, the agenda of these movements was
not recognized or incorporated in the alliance then established in some national
contexts between the Catholic Church, pro-democracy movements and leftist
movements concerned with issues such as social justice and greater economic
equality.

8

In Argentina, during the first years of the 1970’s, the Peronist Youth movement, which was hegemonic in the left at that
time, kept a distance from the Homosexual Liberation Front which wanted to be active among the Peronists while being open

about their homosexual identity (Bazán, 2010: 355).



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Since the Vatican Council II (1962-1965), there had been an increase in political
concerns and social justice in Latin American Catholicism. Christian intellectuals
emerged such as Paulo Freire, author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, the liberation
theologian Leonardo Boff and the feminist theologian Ivone Gerbara. In other terms,
an alliance was created between sectors of Catholicism and the opposition to some
of the military dictatorships and their pro-capitalist profile. In this sense, the role of
the church for those who struggled for democracy and to support initiatives for
economic solidarity should be emphasized. Moreover, the approximation between
the Catholic Church and the pro-democracy political groups were limited to that of
the Christian left critical of economic policies with negative consequences for the
most poor.

In many Latin American countries, the Catholic Church supported dictatorships or
did not get involved in the pro-democracy struggle and maintained political relations
always closer to right wing movements due to their affinities in defense of a
conservative morality.9 In those countries, as in Brazil, in which the church
supported the struggle for democracy, with the end of the military dictatorships the
alliance of Catholicism with the left decreased, due to a policy of the Vatican that,
beginning with John Paul II, only consecrated bishops with a more conservative
education and understanding of the action of the institution in contemporary society
(see Prandi & Souza, 1996). This shaped a transnational process that would deepen
with Bento XVI (see Teixeira & Menezes, 2009).

In this context, beginning in the 1990s, Liberation Theology lost strength,10 a process
analyzed by sociologists Reginaldo Prandi and André Ricardo de Souza by looking at
the decline of Ecclesiastical Base Communities (CEB)s and the growing popularity of
the Charismatic Catholic Church (RCC). According to Prandi and de Souza:

Focused on the intimacy and subjectivity of life, the charismatics, like the Pentecostals, have a
special predilection for the field of moral orientation of behavior, reconstructing a style of
Catholicism that appeared to be definitively buried (Prandi & Souza, 1996: 89-90).

Thus, the alliance of Catholicism with the left lost strength, giving ground to what we can
understand as a moral agenda that approximated Catholics and Neo-Pentecostals.11

Historically, therefore, even if Catholicism may have demonstrated – in some national contexts
such as the Brazilian – affinities with an economically more leftist agenda and had been one of
the protagonists in the development of a culture of human rights in Brazil (Montero, 2012),
which also approximated it to pro-democracy movements, the same affinity cannot be found

9
This was the Argentine case. See Verbitsky (2007).
10
Boff and Gerbara were punished by Ratzinger, proof of the consolidation of a more conservative political perspective
during the papacy of John Paul II.
11 Prandi and Souza (1996) indicated some dates that allow recognizing the consolidation of this charismatic “depolitization” of the Catholic Church, in
particular, the departure from the clergy of Leonardo Boff in 1992 and the election of the conservative Dom
Lucas Moreira Neves to the presidency of the National Bishops Conference of Brazil (CNBB), in 1994.

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with the emerging feminist and LGBT social movements. The demands of these
social movements, which gained more social visibility in the Latin American

countries since the turn of the century, entered in contradiction with the traditional
visions of Catholicism concerning sexual behavior and the role of women in
society.12

In the recent consolidation of democracies in the Latin American continent, Frances
Hagopian recognizes that

Alliances forged in the crucible of dictatorship with women’s movements, human
rights groups, and democratic politicians have cracked. Indigenous movements from
Guatemala to Chile that the Church protected from military-nationalist projects now
lie outside the Church’s reach, both organizationally and theologically (Hagopian,
2006: 4).

In other words, social movements gained relative independence under democracy
and became closer to the governments, especially those that came to power at the
turn of the century, led by leftist parties, to which - historically – they had been
more favorable in terms of political interlocution and common interests.

By relating the formation of a religious sexual policy to the historic movement
described above, it is possible to recognize:

The current position of the Catholic Church about sexuality is the
result of complex dynamics. Even if on one hand it reflects a
millenary tradition of interpretations of sacred texts, that are not
always coherent with each other, it is also shaped by specific
[historic] conjunctures. One example of these circumstances is the
growing legitimacy of the feminist movements and those for sexual
diversity that led the Catholic Church to adapt and reinforce, often
in a reactive manner, the defense of a patriarchal and
heteronormative order (Morán Faúndes & Vaggione 2012: 162).

The position of the feminists and LGBT movements could be understood by religious
groups as an incentive to an individualism that clashes with the communitarian
concept of religious sexuality based on an hierarchy between men and women, and
on the centrality of reproduction. In this sense, as Morán Faúndes & Vaggione add:

The objective of the Catholic Church is not only to defend a sexual
morality but also to avoid sanctioning rights that

12

Alvarez (2014: characterizes what has happened to the feminist movements since then as their expansion beyond
civil society “to embrace various organizational forums at the table, they often extended themselves ‘vertically’, in a
manner of speaking, in direction towards political society, the state and other dominant national and transnational
publics”.

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grant a certain legitimacy to non-heterosexual conduct. To do so, it
articulates a sexual policy that involves both the hierarchy as well
as the faithful, particularly in official documents. It also has a
proposal to defend a heteronormative legal and ethical order by
means of the so-called call to action to the Catholic community and
the public positioning of the religious institution (Morán Faúndes &
Vaggione 2012: 164-165).

This proposal is also in keeping with Neo-Pentecostal political interests, given that its
religious mission involves occupying posts of power, preparing the world for God.
According to David Smilde:

The Neo-Pentecostalists are guided by the so-called “dominion
theology” the idea that God will return to re-establish his kingdom
here on Earth, and it is the task of Christians to prepare the path by
placing themselves in positions of power (Smilde, 2012: 20).

For this reason, Neo-Pentecostalists do not refer to the pastor but to the
bishop/apostle because they think of their “nation” sharing the objective of a
moralization of political life. Thus, religious sexual politics, in Latin American
countries with greater presence of this Protestant line, tends to approximate
Catholics and Neo-Pentecostals in a type of circumstantial alliance for morals and
good customs.

On this basis, we have elements to begin our partial mapping of the debates
involving questions of gender and sexuality in Latin America. We find three elements
common to the different national realities in which these debates gain importance:

1. they all took place since the turn of the millennium;
2. they emerged in countries that came to have leftist governments; and
3. they emerged in response to educational and legal reforms.

Since 1999, leftist politicians reached the presidency of the republic in countries
such as Venezuela (from 1999 to the present), Brazil (2003-2016), Argentina (2003-
2015), Bolivia (2006 to the present), Chile (2006-2010 and 2014 to the present) and
Ecuador (2007 to the present). Historically, as commented, leftist parties had greater
proximity to social movements with economic social justice agendas than with
movements linked to human rights such as feminists and LGBT. In any case, probably
due to the international demands that led organized civil society to participate in the
discussion of public policies, in some South American nations, the relation between
social movements and

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leftist governments came to stimulate proposals for educational and legal initiatives
that sought recognition of gender equality, the confrontation of homophobia, and
approval of egalitarian marriage.

The first register of tension between the Catholic Church and a leftist South
American government took place in Venezuela under the Chavez government.
According to David Smilde (2012), the Chavez government (1999-2013) included
freedom of worship in the constitution and expanded participation of non-Catholic
groups in schools, allowing Evangelicals to also teach in the optional religion classes.
Moreover, a Bolivariano Inter-Religious Parliament was created between 2000-2001,
which the Catholic Church saw as a loss of financial support for its educational
practices. It also created a conflict with Evangelicals because they did not accept
working with other religious lines popular among the lower and working classes,
Mormons, or Jehovah Witnesses, which they considered to be heretics. Catholics,
meanwhile, understood their conflict with Chavez to involve recognizing their
historic tie to the elites, influence in education and the fact that Venezuelan bishops
tended to be more traditional and conservative than their Latin American
colleagues.

Turning to Argentina, between 2004 and 2005 the Peronist Minister of Health
promoted a project to implement sexual education in private and public schools,
and to distribute contraceptives to young people, causing the first conflict between
an Argentine government and the Catholic Church in decades (Hagopian, 2006: 5).
Bishop Antonio Baseotto suggested that the minister should be thrown in the ocean
with a stone tied to his neck: a biblical reference that for many Argentinians evoked
dark memories of the state violence during the last military dictatorship. In
retaliation, President Kirchner cut the salary of the Army chaplain and did not
participate in the traditional mass of the Revolution at the Cathedral at the Plaza de
Mayo. In turn, the Bishops Conference strongly condemned the role of the
government in increasing inequality.

A second confrontation took place in 2010, during debate over a law that would
permit same-sex marriage. At that time, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was
president of the country and Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, now Pope Francisco, was then
archbishop of Buenos Aires. He wrote a letter referring to this proposed law as “a
gesture of a false father whose intention is to confuse and trick the children of God”,
adding that “this war is not his, but of God” and asked Catholics “accompany this
war”. The former president, then Senator Néstor Kirchner

accused Bergoglio of pressuring the Senate and said that his position
was obscurant. The pressure increased on both sides.

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Various government-allied senators were not sure if they would

support the measure […], if they voted against the law they would
be traitors. The debate was now different (Bimbi, 2010: 496).

Together with the legislative debate, there was an important mobilization by the
sectors that opposed the legal modification of civil marriage. These demonstrations
began in the city of Córdoba and spread to various parts of the country. The most
important was in Buenos Aires, one day before the definitive vote on the law, when
different pro-life organizations and social sectors convoked a national march in the
square in front of the National Congress, to demand the senators vote “in defense of
marriage and family”. The march was called by the Department of Lay People of the
Bishops Conference of Argentina (Deplai), the Christian Alliance of Evangelical
Churches of Argentina (Aciera) and the Federation of Pentecostal Evangelical
Fraternity (Fecep). The convocation was promoted through the association of a
variety of actors from civil organizations to religious leaders. These religious sectors
were joined by civil organizations gathered under the denomination “Self-convoked
Argentine Families”. It is worth mentioning another group with very similar ideas,
the commission created under the name “Argentines for children” (AxC) (Souza,
Sgró Ruata & Campana, 2013). Although the law was finally approved, and the
approval was considered a political defeat for the Catholic Church in Argentina,
according to authors such as Jones and Carbonelli (2015), during these mobilizations
Evangelical sectors gained important media attention, legitimizing them as political
actors in Argentina.

Two years later, after the approval of national laws for gender identity and the rights
of patients, the Catholic Church once again confronted the government through the
Argentine Episcopal Conference, which charged that these laws would promote
euthanasia and the manipulation of the sexual identity of children against the will of
their parents. The election of Jorge Bergoglio as Pope Francisco and Mauricio Macri
as President of Argentina decreased the tensions between the Church and the
government, but conservative sectors, led by the already mentioned Jorge Scala,
saw the new president as a “gender ideologue”, for having supported norms
referring to non-punishable abortions and same-sex marriage when he was head of
government of the city of Buenos Aires (see Boast, 2011).

In Bolivia there were also confrontations between the church and the government of Evo
Morales, who affirmed in 2010 that “the Catholic Church is a symbol of European
colonialism and should disappear from Bolivia” (see Risatti & Gualdoni, 2012). One
of the ways to combat this colonialism would be through an education plan,
terminating religious (Catholic) education in Bolivian public and private schools.


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In December 2010, the Legislative Assembly approved a new education law, ending
the Catholic monopoly in religious education and introducing classes about a broad
inventory of religions and spiritualties, including the Andean cosmo-vision. This
change would be included in the new Bolivian constitution, which would remove the
official character of the Catholic religion, declaring Bolivia a secular state. This law
sparked a reaction from the church, religious educational institutions and the
opposition, who considered that the measure “sought the ideological indoctrination
of students and because, according to them, it only reflected the reality of the
indigenous” (Vaca, 2010).

According to Hagopian (2006), in Chile, where the Catholic Church bravely opposed
acts of the Pinochet dictatorship, since redemocratization, its leaders became
distant from politics, discouraging Chileans from bringing charges against those
responsible for human rights violations and supporting “national reconciliation”. It
also came out against approval of divorce in 2000, the regulation of religious
schools, the introduction of sexual education, the distribution of condoms to
prevent HIV contamination and any expansion of laws in relation to abortion.

In Ecuador, when Rafael Correa first encouraged constitutional reform, the Catholic
Church entered in conflict, but they soon reached an agreement. Correa came to
take a position in favor of abstinence to control adolescent pregnancy and against
abortion, affirming that, if approved, he would resign as president. Currently, the
policies for sexual and reproductive rights are based on the struggle against “gender
ideology” through the “Ecuador Family” plan.


In Brazil, educational initiatives involving problematics of differences advanced
during the government of Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010), with the most

successful being ethnic-racial relations. The teaching of African history and of ethnic-

racial relations became law and has been progressively adopted in elementary and
high school education, as well as in higher education.13 In relation to gender and
sexuality issues, Keila Deslandes (2016) affirmed that the creation of the Secretariat
of Continuing Education, Literacy and Diversity (Secad), in 2004, by then minister of
education Tarso Genro, established the basis for the implementation of educational
policies to promote gender equality and combat homophobia.

The conflict between legislative initiatives against homophobia and the religious
position was triggered mainly by federal deputy Iara Bernardi (of the Workers Party)
proposed law 122/2006 (Campos et alii, 2015: 168). Government programs such as
“Brazil without homophobia”, as well as those aimed at the discussion of human
rights,

13
The continuity of this policy in the Temer government is uncertain, given the recent reform imposed on high school
education, as well as the possible revision of the Basic Education Guidelines.

06/11/2017 13:01:53


Revista Sociedade e Estado – Volume 32, Número 3, Setembro/Dezembro 2017

735
gender and sexuality in school raised the debate over educational policies.
According to Maria das Dores Campos Machado it was the launching of the III
National Human Rights Plan, in late 2009, during the Lula Government, that “was
like a spark in the minefield of the combative moral communities” (Machado, 2017:
374), contributing to the moralization of the debate about citizenship in the national
congress, given that

in the case of the Pentecostals, the legislature is one space, and
only one moment of resistance to the movements of sexual
minorities and the expansion of the political spaces of the group,
which sees itself as a minority or as “second class” citizens in
relation to Catholics (Machado, 2017: 357).

The hegemony of the notion of “gender ideology” became established in Brazil in
2011, when the Federal Supreme Court (STF) determined that same-sex marriage
had the same status as heterosexual marriage. In the same month as this decision,
the polemic about the didactic material in the program “Schools without
homophobia” gained national notoriety. It focused on educational material labeled
by conservatives as the “gay kit”, which would be distributed in six thousand public
schools, but that, after forceful opposition, was vetoed by President Dilma Rousseff.
Christina Vital and Paulo Victor Leite Lopes (2013) analyzed in detail the action of
Evangelical parliamentarians in this case, since late 2010, showing how the
Evangelical Parliamentary Front dedicated itself strongly against the issue six days
after the approval by the Supreme Court of same-sex marriage (Vital & Lopes, 2013:
123).

In this context of growing conservative religious challenges to the National Plan for
Promotion of Citizenship and Human Rights of LGBT, in 2013 the congressional
Human Rights Commission of the chamber of deputies came to be controlled by a
Neo-Pentecostal politician. n 2014, during the struggle for the approval of the
National Education Plan, the notion of “gender ideology” gained popularity. The
Evangelical block did not significantly increase its strength in the legislative elections
that year, but found a correlation of favorable forces and was able to win the
presidency of the chamber, in 2015 (see Machado, 2017: 355). Moreover, the
Evangelicals gained strength in the veritable battles in state and municipal
legislatures to define their respective plans (cf. Deslandes, 2016; Rosado-Nunes,
2015).

Historically, in different degrees in each country, Catholics had a strong presence in
the educational field and sought to maintain their space by reacting to initiatives
that sought to either expand religious plurality in schools (as in Venezuela) or to
threaten its concepts of hierarchy and morality (as in Argentina and Brazil). The
moral entrepreneurs opposed to what they called the “gender ideology” appeared

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06/11/2017 13:01:53


to share with their enemies who defended human rights, a belief in education as a
means of political formation.

We seek to identify the emergence of a discursive field of action around the notion
“gender ideology”, first by historicizing the notion, and later, mapping its role in
recent conflicts or tensions in South America, involving proposals for legal changes
and educational initiatives that sought advances in sexual and reproductive rights,
that is, promoting gender equality, combatting homophobia and recognizing
diversity. We identify the emergence of the notion of “gender ideology” as a
Catholic counteroffensive to the UN Conference in Beijing, that came to be more
widely disseminated among the clergy after the Aparecida Document (2007) until
becoming a notion that organized various moral entrepreneurs against legal and
political government reforms in the decade of 2010.

After this preliminary mapping of some South American cases of tension or conflict
between religious actors and leftist governments in debates over educational or
legal reforms involving human, sexual and reproductive rights, we are now ready to
question if it is possible to associate the current conflict of the moral entrepreneurs
against what they call “gender ideology” not only to moral differences between
religious agents and leftist governments, but particularly to leftist governments led
by women. After all, in South and Central America, not only did the left come to
power in the past two decades, but did so by ceding the presidency to the first
women politicians: Michele Bachelet in Chile, then Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in
Argentina, Laura Chinchilla in Costa Rica and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil.

Leftist women in the presidency
And the emergence of debates about “gender ideology”


Does the hegemony of a political grammar involving the notion of “gender ideology”
coincide with or was it caused by the arrival of women politicians to the presidency
of these countries? Angela M. Carneiro and Jussara Prá warn that “the presence of
women as leaders of a nation does not always mean that their demands are
considered” (Carneiro & Prá, 2014: 9), but we understand that in the discursive field
of action in focus, effectiveness counts less than the fear among certain moral
entrepreneurs about possible changes in power relations involving men and women,
heterosexuals and homosexuals and others. Therefore, we consider that the political
grammar that involves the notion of “gender ideology” operates in the logic of the
phenomenon that sociology denominates as moral panics, which are

Revista Sociedade e Estado – Volume 32, Número 3, Setembro/Dezembro 2017
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recognizable when a rhetoric of a society under threat emerges (see Miskolci, 2007).
According to Stanley Cohen:

A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a
threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical
fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors,
bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce
their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or … resorted to (...) (Cohen, 1972:
9).

The near absence of sources about the religious and or moral reaction to the arrival
of Michele Bachelet as Chile’s first woman president appears to indicate that, at
least in that national context and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the
fear did not emerge that a leftist government would support legal reforms or
implant politics that threatened hegemonic concepts involving sexual and
reproductive rights. The sole incident was the announcement of the free distribution
of the “day-after-pill” to the public health network for any woman older than 14,
which was violently challenged by both opposition political parties and by the
Catholic Church, which considered it an attack on marriage and the family.

Meanwhile, the ascendance of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to the presidency of
Argentina took place at a time of clear tension between the Catholic Church and the
previous president (her husband) Néstor Kirchner. She had declared that she was
not a feminist (see Página 12, 2007) and to be against the decriminalization of
abortion (cf. Wornat, 2007), which helped prevent conservative religious sectors
from resisting her candidacy. Nevertheless, once elected, during her mandate she
sought to recompose the relationship with the Church, which led to conflicts. In
early 2008, the Vatican refused her designated ambassador to the Holy See, Alberto
Iribarne, because he was divorced, and challenged political decisions of the new
president. In 2009, when Jorge Bergoglio declared that human rights are also
violated by “extreme poverty”, the president reacted by affirming that “there are
two classes of people. Those who make declarations about poverty and those who
are dedicated to executing actions every day to fight it” (see La Nación, 2009).
Perhaps the most delicate moment was during the previously mentioned support of
Kirchnerism for the proposed law to legalize same-sex marriage.

In Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, when she was still vice president in the government
of Oscar Arias, participated in the “March for Life and Family”, in November 2009,
an event against the legalization of abortion and the recognition of same-sex
marriages

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She took a position against the separation of church and state and against the day-
after-pill and ascended to the presidency in May 2010, without conflicts with
religious sectors.



Unlike the national cases analyzed above, in Brazil, in the electoral campaign of
2010, in which for the first time a woman ran for the presidency of the republic with

a real chance of victory, debates over sexual and reproductive rights gained
prominence. Opposition candidate José Serra (PSDB) questioned Dilma Rousseff’s
position on abortion. In the second round of voting, Rousseff, the Workers’ Party

candidate, approximated Catholic and Neo-Pentecostal religious forces by
committing to not change abortion laws or take initiatives concerning homosexual
marriage, or the fight against homophobia.14


The 2010 elections expanded the Neo-Pentecostal block in the Brazilian national
congress, and not by chance, some of its representatives took control of
commissions, such as that for human rights, and were able to block advances in
projects of interest to women, indigenous peoples, blacks, homosexuals and others.
Initiatives to fight homophobia in schools were abandoned and there was a marked
reduction of space for dialog between the federal government and representatives
of LGBT movements, which was basically relegated to the National Council to
Combat Discrimination and Promote the Right of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals,
Transvestites and Transsexuals, associated to the National Secretariat for Human
Rights.

According to Leandro Colling:

The National LGBT Council was created only to give a supposed
democratic varnish to the measures and policies, which were
actually created from the top down. In addition, the government
did not implement what the council discussed, and in some
situations, used the council to respond to international demands
that requested that the human rights policies be created in dialog
with civil society (Colling, 2013: 425).

In this context, there was no alliance between the leftist government and the
demands of feminist and LGBT movements. To the contrary, the Dilma’s
government took a distance from social movements in general and, in particular,
those related to sexual rights. Thus, the sources consulted converge in the
perception that the Dilma government did not represent a significant threat to the
moral agenda of the conservatives.

14
About the gender representations on the free media time for electoral propaganda and in interviews on the
most popular television news shows in Brazil at the time, see Mota and Biroli (2014). About the theme of abortion
and religious activism during this election see Machado (2014). The two articles corroborate the fact that the two
themes that dominated the second round of voting in the elections were abortion and religiosity.
06/11/2017 13:01:54


As well noted by Carneiro and Prá (2014: 191), the arrival to the Presidency of
women did not express equality in other instances of power.15 The Latin American

cases explored in this section also do not prove any direct or necessary relationship

between governments of women of the left and a conservative reaction. The

political grammar that marked Bachelet’s election was not paralleled in the other

countries and the alignment of Chinchilla with moral conservatism in Costa Rica

proved that women politicians – even those affiliated to leftist parties – may not give

priority to causes involving sexual or reproductive rights and may even be against

them.



The Argentine case, and especially that of Brazil, tend to corroborate the hypothesis

that the crystallization of the notion of gender ideology as articulator of what we call

the discursive field of action took place since 2010 and may have involved - both

effective changes in legislation and those in public policies - expectations about the

possible enactment of these changes. In other terms, moral panics fed by political

actors – religious or not – may have been amplified by the presence of women in the

presidency, which only more detailed study could determine and analyze.



Some conclusions

There are common characteristics in these Latin American conflicts around sexual
and reproductive rights that are currently understood by the discursive field of action
identified and analyzed here as “gender ideology”. At least during the period from the turn
of the century until the drafting of this article in 2016, this field emerged and has been

creating, based on this exterior context: the ideas and ideals on which defenders of human

rights defend their arguments, particularly those concerning sexual and reproductive

rights.


The moral entrepreneurs do not form a cohesive group and their alliance is

circumstantial. It is in a dependent relation to what they call “gender ideology” that

they construct a political-moral space that is more or less shared by Catholics, Neo-

Pentecostals or other groups and individuals who identify with it. The discursive field

of action against the feared “gender ideology” tends to be recognized as politically

on the right, but also attracts and aggregates a public that – amid the recent

economic crisis and corruption scandals in various Latin American countries – come

to affirm that they are non-partisan and or dissatisfied with institutional politics.

In this article we analyzed historic evidence that the struggle against what they call

“gender ideology” emerged as a Catholic reaction to dissemination of a feminist

agenda for equality since the UN Women’s Conference in Beijing (1995), but gained

strength










15
Prá (2014), also affirms that the Chilean and Brazilian cases prove this due to the low female presence in parliament,
while in Argentina and Costa Rica they find high rates of women in parliament and other forms of representative power.

06/11/2017 13:01:54


740 Revista Sociedade e Estado – Volume 32, Número 3, Setembro/Dezembro 2017

in the Latin American context, particularly in South America, at the beginning of this
millennium, when leftist parties attained the presidency and since 2006, when some
women became president.

If Ratzinger began to mention the dangers of the “gender perspective” in 1997, it is
possible to recognize in the Aparecida Document (2007) the dissemination of the
notion among Latin American Catholic bishops, until it became a theme of lay texts
such as the book cited by Argentine Catholic activist Jorge Scala (2010). According to
the sources consulted, everything indicates that the approvals of same sex marriage
in countries like Argentina in 2010, and Brazil in 2011, were the point of inflection
for the notion of “gender ideology” to come to progressively mark a political
grammar in the battle of moral entrepreneurs against the advance of sexual and
reproductive rights.

The old fight against communism appears to have been converted, in the past
decade, into a struggle against the Latin American left, at times identified as Chavez-
Castroism in a reference to Cuba and Venezuela as examples to be avoided. If John
Paul II reached the papacy in the context of a struggle against communism in
Europe, the renunciation of Benedict XVI and the election of Francisco suggest that
the Catholic Church considers that the focus of confrontation has shifted to Latin
America. Its current enemy would be “gender ideology” and even if the great
majority of Latin American leftist governments, including those led by women, did
not legalize abortion or were able to eliminate the inequality between men and
women, it was during their administrations – even if not because of them – that
same-sex marriage was legalized.

In this context, what lies behind this battle, given that moral panics usually call
attention to a supposed threat, only as a means to obtain something quite palpable?
In other words, cui bono? Who benefits from the dissemination of this phantom
over supposed negative consequences that would arise from gender equality and
complete citizenship for homosexuals?

Based on the reflections presented here, everything indicates that the moral
entrepreneurs against “gender ideology” are conservative interest groups that seek
to distance the feminist and LGBT movements - and even their sympathizers - from
defining public policies and taking control over them. Above all, within the recent
discursive field of action reconstituted in this article, they seek to mark the state as a
male and heterosexual space, therefore resistant to demands for female
emancipation and an expansion of rights and citizenship for those who they believe
threaten their traditional concept of society.

Revista Sociedade e Estado – Volume 32, Número 3, Setembro/Dezembro 2017

741

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“Gender ideology”:
notes for a genealogy of a contemporary moral panic

Abstract: During the last years, in different national contexts, emerged debates about what reli-
gious and non-religious groups call “gender ideology”. This paper tries to retrace this term’s gene-
alogy to comprehend the political grammar in which it works. With this objective, the paper inves-
tigates texts that defined “gender ideology” around twenty years ago, maps where it emerges in
Latin America and when it starts to be used against sexual and reproductive rights. Human rights’
demands have been understood by moral enterpreneurs as threats to status quo creating, at the
same time, a moral panic and a discoursive field of action.
Keywords: gender ideology, sexual and reproductive rights, Latin American politics, religion, moral
enterpreneurs.

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742 Revista Sociedade e Estado – Volume 32, Número 3, Setembro/Dezembro 2017

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Estado – Volume 32, Número 3, Setembro/Dezembro 2017

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