Legal Threats and the Emergence of Legal Mobilization: Conservative Mobilization in Colombia

Though the Colombian Constitutional Court has had a lead role in granting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) rights since 1998, conservatives mobilizing against LGBT rights between 1991 and 2007 were active in Congress and the streets rather than in court. After 2007, however, conservatives have maintained consistent opposition to rights claims made by LGBT people in the Constitutional Court. This article draws from fieldwork examining the significance of the Constitutional Court’s transition from granting rights to LGBT people as individuals to granting rights to LGBT people as couples and potential families to theorize conservative legal mobilization, particularly moral conservatism. To account for the rise of conservative legal mobilization against LGBT rights in Colombia in 2007, this article expands on the legal opportunity structure model. It theorizes that legal threats––that is, changes in legal rules that are perceived to increase the costs of mobilization or the expected costs of not taking action––are among the factors that lead movements to engage in legal mobilization, even if legal opportunities are not expanding.