Book Review: Why Europe Is Lesbian and Gay Friendly (and Why America Never Will Be)
| Author | Ann Stewart |
| DOI | 10.1177/0964663914546586 |
| Published date | 01 December 2014 |
| Date | 01 December 2014 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Social & Legal Studies
2014, Vol. 23(4) 607–624
Book Reviews
ª The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0964663914546586
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ANGELIA R WILSON, Why Europe Is Lesbian and Gay Friendly (and Why America Never Will Be).
State University of New York, Albany, 2013, pp. 206, ISBN 9781438447278, $75 (hbk).
As Wilson points out in the introduction to Chapter 5, there have been two dominant
narratives relating to the evolution of sexual citizenship: the political that focuses on
demands for civil and human rights and the economic associated with the exercise
of consumer power. Wilson argues that there is a third, overlooked, account based
on caring: ‘lesbians and gay men have earned citizenship through care activities, par-
ticularly at times when care has not been provided by the state, family, or faith-based
sector’ (p. 94). Human rights discourse therefore is not seen as the ‘holy grail’ of political
activism (p. 39).
Wilson argues more generally that a broad political economy of care perspective
enables us to understand why European countries are, or have the potential to be, more
lesbian and gay friendly than the United States. Because her main concern is to account
for the development of a range of policies in relation to gay and lesbian citizens in Europe,
she uses the term ‘friendly’ to resonate with policy literature (women friendly or family
friendly), to denote an increase in inclusivity and recognition of needs of lesbian and gay
citizens, and because it is ‘sufficiently fluid as to allow for comparisons and substantive
differences’ (p. 7). She makes it clear that there is no utopia in Europe and such friendli-
ness can and does coexist with homophobia.
She combines a care perspective, rooted in the work of Joan Tronto (who argues that
care is a central concern of human life and that an ethic of care provides a better concep-
tual foundation for political ideology than an ethic of justice) (p. 11), with literature on
feminism, religion, secularization, demographics, policy particulars and welfare states,
the family and sexualities studies (p. 8). Wilson handles what could seem like a bewil-
dering range of sources with confidence, drawing out their key insights to develop a
nuanced understanding of the political economy of care within European contexts and,
more briefly in the last chapter, in the United States. Her cross-disciplinary, multi-
institutional, multilevel, and multicausal framework for analysis is convincing. This
extension of ‘applied’ ethics of care scholarship to an assessment of gay and lesbian citi-
zenship...
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