Framing Equality: The Politics of Gay Marriage Wars With Omar Encarnación and Michael Sadowski

Although a lot has been said about the factors behind the stunning success of the marriage equality movement, not much is known about why the global struggle over gay marriage varied across countries with respect to the severity of the conservative backlash and the legacy for LGBTQ equality. Join us for a conversation with Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics Omar G. Encarnacion and Associate Dean of the College Michael Sadowski about Omar’s new book, Framing Equality: The Politics of Gay Marriage Wars (Oxford University Press, 2025). The book looks at how gay marriage activists framed their advocacy in Spain, the United States, and Brazil, and the consequences of this framing for gay marriage and LGBTQ equality.

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Omar G. Encarnación is Charles Flint Kellogg Professor of Politics at Bard College. He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, Framing Equality: The Politics of Gay Marriage Wars (Oxford University Press, 2025). His research on democratization, memory and
politics, and gay rights movements has appeared in Comparative Politics, Political Science Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and International Studies Quarterly, among other peer-reviewed journals. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Time, Foreign Policy, The Nation, and The New York Review of Books. He is the recipient of fellowships and research grants from the Council of European Studies, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Research Council, and the Ford Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University.

Michael Sadowski is Associate Dean of the College and teaches courses in youth identity development in the MAT program and LGBTQ+ issues in US education in the Human Rights Program. In addition to Bard, Michael has taught at Harvard and Stanford universities and has published extensively on the issues affecting LGBTQ+ students, immigrant students, and adolescents more broadly. His 2021 memoir, Men I’ve Never Been, was named one of the 100 Best Gay and Lesbian Books of All Time by Book Authority.

For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Charles P. Stevenson Jr. Library

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