Social Work with People Practicing Same-Sex ... - ILGA Europe

I don“t think there is a “gay
lifestyle”. I think that's
superficial crap, all that talk
about gay culture. A couple of
restaurants on Castro Street and
a couple of magazines do not
constitute culture. Michelangelo
is culture. Virginia Woolf is
culture. So let's don“t confuse
our terms.
Rita Mae Brown, an American
writer and screenwriter, born
in 1944
94
7. Advocacy:
Theory and Practice Regarding LGBT
7.1. Background Information
Svyatoslav Sheremet, Gay Forum of Ukraine
In recent years the LGBT movement activists have been coming across the term “advocacy”
on many occasions. This notion has firmly established itself among such concepts as
“protection of human rights”, “lobbying” and ”standing up for the rights”.
However, the LGBT movement still lacks consistent understanding of the essence of
advocacy; oftentimes it has no clear vision of the advocacy campaign structure, even
though in practice many LGBT organizations and individual activists implement various
advocacy measures.
The goal of this section is to provide systemic and brief description of the theory of
advocacy and related notions, reinforcing them with examples from the LGBT movement's
practice.
One of our objectives is to give the answer to the question, what is not an advocacy, and
what actions it does not include.
Definition of Advocacy
Advocacy is the process of protection of human rights and interests of a specific
social group (social groups) through positive changes of relevant government policy,
legislation, pubic administration practice and through targeted influence.
Due to such definition, advocacy will be inevitably associated with other similar
concepts, such as lobbying and protection of human rights; some people might link it
with the community mobilization. Let us consider these concepts in detain in order to
distinguish them from advocacy.
Lobbying is focused advancement of “needed” decision by public officials or government
bodies. Lobbying can be fulfilled by both legal (e.g. public education activities, official
correspondence) and illegal methods (e.g. bribery). At the same time this decision
may not necessarily concern rights and interests of a specific social group. Necessary
decision may imply promotion of specific business interests (e.g., to reduce excise rate
for a specific group of products), or concern interests of an individual (e.g. to lobby
appointment of a certain person to a certain position).
At the same time any advocacy campaign includes the process of lobbying. So,
the concept of lobbying is broader than advocacy, however these notions are not
interchangeable.
The concept of protection of human rights speaks for itself. Protection of rights means
defending of violated right (or rights) of an individual or group of people, primarily on
single occasion. In contrast to protection of rights, advocacy always implies protection
of rights of the group of people, which is usually united by specific special characteristic
or need, in situations external to single cases of rights violation. For example, advocacy