Brokering Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity: Chilean Lawyers and Public Interest Litigation Strategies

Rights gains for members of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations in Chile have been highly contentious since democratisation, indicative of the stigmatisation directed towards non-normative gender and sexual identities. This article addresses the role of activist lawyers pursuing LGBTI rights cases through the courts, and draws on McAdam and colleagues’ (2001) concept of a ‘broker’ to examine the lawyers’ roles in linking previously unconnected sites within the judiciary and further a eld. The analysis draws these processes together through interactionist perspectives of meaning-making and how they relate to stigma, deviancy and identity.