Applying the “Gatekeeper” Theory of Human Rights Activism: The Movement for LGBT Rights.

This article explores the applicability of the “gatekeeper theory” of human rights activism with respect to organizing for the promotion of the rights of lesbians, gay men and other sexual minorities. For the purposes of the immediate inquiry, analysis is limited to U.S.-based organizations. At first glance, it appears as if this stream of human rights activism presents a paradigmatic example of gatekeeping in action. After all, as this article explains, gay and lesbian activists strategically placed themselves inside the largest and most powerful mainstream U.S.-based human rights organizations, and a strong argument can be made that only after such gatekeepers as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch put gay and lesbian concerns on their agenda did recognition of gay and lesbian rights as human rights achieve any measure of international recognition. It was these gatekeepers who paved the way for other U.S.-based international human rights groups to incorporate LGBT issues into their work. But the gatekeepers had considerably less influence on domestic LGBT advocates, as the latter continues to resist framing their concerns in human rights terms. Ultimately then, the gatekeeper model fails to capture the dynamics of LGBT activism. This article considers why this is so. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]