BOF Sabbatical 2024-2025 (Frederik Swennen).

This project investigates the dystopic world where the legal and social life of queer families is under threat from backlash laws and that I coin as "Queer Dystopia". Queer families are constellations of "doing family" outside the institutional boundaries of the heteronormative nuclear family. Backlash laws are the legislative, judicial, or executive initiatives aimed at undoing or preventing queer families' legal and social visibility. The project focuses on two sites of family law: adult unions, particularly same-sex marriage, and parental rights over sex education. It proceeds in two movements, comparing developments in Europe and the USA, with illustrations from exemplary national/state laws. - The first movement is to (re)define the "family of the law" through the lens of backlash laws and the reactions to them. E.g., when marriage is described as the only dignifying union between two persons, what are the consequences for queer families? What are the implications of parents exercising "natural rights" over sex education and shielding their children from government "indoctrination"? Which queer families are embraced, to relegate others to the shadows of the law? - The second movement is to research the human rights protection bandwidth regarding queer families' legal recognition and protection. Which minimal substantive protection is guaranteed in the worst-case scenario that backlash laws would prevail, and which choice of means do states have for recognition? The output of the project is threefold: international peer-reviewed publications on "queer dystopia", identification of future avenues of basic research, and an application for research funding. The project aims at being collaborative and interdisciplinary, with a research stay at Brooklyn Law School and a writing retreat at the Department of Philosophy of Sapienza – Università di Roma.

Keywords:FAMILY LAW, HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

Disciplines:Family law, Human rights law