Book Launch: The End of the Gay Rights Revolution

The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: Book Launch

Abstract

This event celebrates the launch of Ronan McCrea's The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom (Polity, 2025).

About the Book

The gay rights movement in the West has succeeded beyond its wildest dreams – but this success seems suddenly fragile.

Ronan McCrea’s important book argues that this is no blip. Forces favourable to gay rights – such as the wider cultural shift towards greater sexual freedom – are weakening, while political developments, cultural changes and migration patterns mean that sources of opposition, both old and new, are gaining strength. The gay rights movement is ill-equipped to meet this challenge. Convinced that history is on its side, the movement has expanded its aims and made new enemies while refusing to consider whether elements of the sexual freedoms it fought for have had unforeseen downsides, including for gay people themselves.

For the gay rights revolution to endure, a fundamental reconsideration of its goals, its history and its limits is required. Anyone wanting to understand the challenges faced by gay rights and the wider liberal project needs to read this timely warning.

About the Author

Ronan McCrea is Professor of Constitutional and European Law at UCL Laws and member of the UCL Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism. He has graduate degrees in law and political science and joined UCL in 2011. He was previously a lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Reading and a référendaire (judicial clerk) in the chambers of Advocate General Poiares Maduro at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. He was also a visiting professor at the Central European University in Budapest between 2010 and 2018and a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence from 2014-15. He is an Associate Academic Fellow of the Inner Temple.

He writes on the future of the European Union, the future of liberalism and the relationship between law and religion. His most recent book 'The End of the Gay Rights Revolution' was published in 2025 and assesses the threats to and limits of the freedoms won by the sexual revolution.

He is a member of the Bar of England and Wales where he was Prince of Wales Scholar of Gray’s Inn and the Bar of the Republic of Ireland. Before undertaking his doctorate, he completed pupillage at Matrix Chambers in London and worked as Legal Officer of the Refugee Legal Centre. He is a former associate counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, has advised several non-governmental organizations including Liberty, Oxfam and the National Secular Society and litigates cases in areas related to his expertise before the European Court of Human Rights. He is a regular columnist for The Irish Times newspaper on legal and EU matters.

About the GCDC

The Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism, based at the UCL Faculty of Laws, seeks to advance scholarly knowledge of democratic governance, the rule of law, and constitutionalism. As a research community with a global perspective, our key focus is understanding how to achieve constitutional resilience in electorally competitive political systems. We are currently supported by the Leverhulme Trust. 

How to Attend

The event will hold at Waterstones, 82 Gower Street, WC1E 6EQ on Thursday, 30 October 2025 at 6pm. All are welcome to attend. No pre-booking is required.