Not surprisingly, perhaps, my book Out in the Periphery and Stephen M. Engel’s Fragmented Citizens both open with reflections on Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that found a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. That landmark decision of June 2015 was anticipated by all scholars of gay rights politics, and was deliberated as both books were in their final stages of research and writing. What is surprising, however, is that in tone as well as in substance, the discussion of Obergefell in both is remarkably similar.

In Fragmented Citizens, Engel laments that despite the progress that the United States has made on gay rights, a progress underscored by Obergefell, gay Americans remain, in many regards, second-class citizens. Indeed, Engel uses the struggle over same-sex marriage as a metaphor for what he describes as the “fragmented” nature of gay citizenship in American society. As noted (p. 19): “The Court’s ruling in Obergefell—which nationalizes marriage equality—only reinforced the instability of status of gays and lesbians since their recognized status may leave them vulnerable to discrimination grounded in their sexual identity. The fragmented status of lesbian and gay citizens continues, and the incoherence of variable recognitions is further revealed.”

Although same-sex marriage is now the law of the land in the United States, it is still legal in many states to discriminate against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in employment, housing, and even public accommodation, given the absence of federal legislation banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. As Engel points out, a federal bill intended to ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (or ENDA), has remained in limbo in the U.S. Congress since its introduction there in the mid-1990s. That proposed legislation, it should be noted, is actually quite modest. It is limited to banning antigay workplace discrimination, and it does not cover transsexuals, by excluding “gender identity” as one of its categories for protection.

More suggestive still is the onslaught of legislation intended to undermine gay rights across the United States since the marriage equality movement began to gain steam across the country. Tellingly, this backlash has intensified since Engel’s book was published. A recent analysis by the American Civil Liberties Union found that in the first half of 2016 alone, 87 bills that could limit LGBT rights have been introduced in U.S. legislatures, a steep increase from previous years. Little wonder that some of the analysis of the underlying causes of the bloody massacre in Orlando, by far the most vicious attack on the gay community in the U.S. history, points to this avalanche of antigay activism.

In Out in the Periphery, I mention how struck I am by the irony of Obergefell, an irony that reveals itself only to those with awareness of what has been happening to gay rights outside of the United States, and especially in Latin America, a region not usually associated with socially liberal policies. Obergefell underscored the fact that the United States—the country that gave birth to the contemporary gay rights movement in 1969 with the Stonewall Rebellion—had fallen behind several Latin American nations in extending marriage equality to its gay and lesbian citizens, and more generally in expanding citizenship to the gay population. Prominent among these nations is Argentina, the main focus of my book. Not only did Argentina legalize same-sex marriage in 2010 (years before the United States), but it also did so via swift action from the National Congress, in a vote that enjoyed bipartisan support, rather than through a long and protracted legal battle, as was the case in the United States.

Less known is that while in the United States the legalization of same-sex marriage has triggered a movement to abridge citizenship, in Argentina the opposite has been the case. Same-sex marriage in Argentina has served as a launching pad for extending citizenship to gays and lesbians in ways that are almost unimaginable in the United States, by ushering in some of the most progressive LGBT legislation in the world. Today, thanks to new federal legislation, it is against the law in Argentina to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; it is also illegal to engage in “ex-gay” reparative therapy intended to eradicate same-sex attraction. Argentina has also enacted what is arguably the most liberal “gender identity” law in the world. It allows anyone to change the gender assigned at birth without permission from a doctor and or a judge. Last but not least, Argentina has enacted a law that provides reproductive assistance, under the national health system, to same-sex couples wishing to have children.

One of the great virtues of Engel’s book is that it places antigay discrimination in the context of the scholarship on American political development, especially as it regards the concept of citizenship. This is a good reminder that the book aims to contribute not only to the still developing literature on gay politics but also to the mainstream of American politics. The main goal of the book, as stated on page 16, is to explain the puzzle of “how inequalities persist for lesbian and gay citizens even as formal rules banning discrimination and indicators of public support for equality have increased.” To that end, the author spends considerable time demonstrating the ways in which state structures have defined homosexuality. He also enumerates episodes that illustrate how state policies have contributed to the fragmented status of gay and lesbian Americans.

Another virtue of Fragmented Citizens is that although Engel’s analysis is not a comprehensive history of gay mobilization in the United States, the book nonetheless provides a solid picture of gay rights activism from the Progressive era (1880–1920) through the present day. It also provides valuable in-depth discussions of the activism of two major gay rights organizations—the National LGBTQ Task Force and the Human Rights Campaign. Among the usefulness of these discussions is highlighting the fact that gay rights activism is not the monolith that it is often made out to be. Gay rights organizations often pursue contradictory positions, a point underscored by the fight for marriage, an issue that historically has divided gay activists; gay organizations also represent different constituencies within the gay community.

My only real disappointment with the book is the lack of a comparative focus. No attempt is made to engage with developments outside of the United States. Such a focus would reveal that much of what Engel describes about the American gay rights experience is the exception rather than the rule. No other liberal democracy in either Latin America or Western Europe is experiencing the antigay legislative backlash currently underway in the United States. Engel’s analytical approach, however, appears promising outside of the American experience. His argument that state structures and policy have hindered citizenship for LGBT Americans finds contrasting resonance in Latin America. While same-sex relations were illegal in many part of the United States until 2003, when the Supreme Court invalided all remaining sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas, the Latin Americans decriminalized homosexual behavior in the late nineteenth century, following the example of France’s Napoleonic Penal Code of 1810. Not having to engage in a long legal struggle over the legality of homosexual behavior made it relatively easier for a country like Argentina, which decriminalized homosexuality in 1867, to legislate gay rights when that became the norm among liberal democracies.

All of this notwithstanding, the Latin American experience also suggests the limits of Engel’s approach. There is plenty in the history of state policy in Latin America with respect to homosexuality to make the case that the struggle for LGBT equality in Latin America was just as arduous, if not more so, than in the United States. In Argentina, federal ordinances intended to enhance morality enacted soon after homosexuality itself was decriminalized—the infamous edictos policiales (police edicts)—all but made homosexuality a crime all over again by, among other things, banning men from dancing together in bars, cross-dressing, and organizing for the purpose of lobbying the government. Tellingly, as recently as 1991, the Argentine Supreme Court upheld a government decision to deny legalization the Communidad Homosexual Argentina, the country’s leading gay rights group. It is also the case that democratic breakdowns (something foreign to the American political experience) have left the gay community in Latin America vulnerable to unspeakable oppression. In Argentina, the military regime in place between 1976 and 1983 targeted gays as part of a “dirty war” against political dissidents and social undesirables. All existing gay rights organizations were disbanded after 1976, and gay leaders were murdered, imprisoned, or forced into exile.

Clearly, broad cross-national research on gay rights, which so far has been sorely lacking, is needed to explain the very varied landscape of gay rights erupting across liberal democracies—not just marriage but also antigay discrimination and gender identity laws. That task, however, must be preceded by broadly argued and empirically grounded studies of individual national experiences. Engel’s book on fragmented citizenship in the United States is an important step toward that goal.