Outstanding challenges in a post-equality era: The same-sex marriage and gender identity laws in Spain

The regulation of sexuality has evolved rapidly in recent years, with the creation of not only new sexual identities and social movements around sexual practices, but also new civil rights.

According to Laraña and Gusfield (1994), we have been witnessing the way that complex social networks have arisen in developed capitalist societies, and seen how groups were organised around sexuality along with the incipient women’s movements, and then went on to claim a collective identity of their own and also took to the streets. Lately, sexual minorities have been normalised through several public policies in Spain: from the decriminalisation of homosexuality with the new Civil Code (1995) to the consecutive adoption of civil partnership laws in twelve autonomous communities, and the changes in the Civil Code which allow marriage between same-sex couples (Law 13/2005) and the Law of Registration of Rectification of Sex – the latter unfortunately known as the Gender Identity Law (3/2007) (see Platero 2007a). These changes have taken place at the same time as public services for gays and transgenders... (Continúa leyendo en el pdf adjunto)