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HOMONORMATIVITY AND QUEER RESISTANCE: LGBT ACTIVISTS' MARRIAGE DISCOURSES By Shannon Michele Post Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts In Sociology Chair: Salvador Vidal-Ortiz Christina B. Hanhardt Dean of the College Date 2010 American University Washington, D.C 20016 AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY %m^ UMI Number: 1489806 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI' Dissertation Publishing UMI 1489806 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest® ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 © COPYRIGHT by Shannon Michele Post 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED HOMONORMATIVITY AND QUEER RESISTANCE: LGBT ACTIVISTS' MARRIAGE DISCOURSES BY Shannon Michele Post ABSTRACT Through interviews with LGBT and queer-identified activists in Washington, DC, this study explores the localized meanings of marriage as both a movement and personal goal in relation to activists' strategic, ideological and identity-based support or opposition. DC-based activists justified their beliefs about the movement agenda of marriage equality by engaging ideas about the local and national. Influenced by their social locations and personal identities, some activists (re)created narratives of being 'normal' and deserving the 'rights and responsibilities' of legal same-sex marriage. On the other hand, many interviewees deployed notions of privilege, oppression and the language of 'intersectionality' to resist the marriage agenda and the institution of marriage itself, yet overwhelmingly supported it as a 'practical' personal choice and ultimate movement goal. These findings contribute to the LGBT social movement literature and inform further empirical research on homonormativity and intersectionality in the activist setting. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to the wonderful people of American University's Department of Sociology and Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program for their guidance and encouragement. Special thanks to Sandy Linden and Gay Young for their support. I would also like to thank Larry Van Sickle and Ed Royce, who set me on the path to graduate work and social justice activism. I am grateful to my dear colleagues, family and friends, especially Sarah Bruce Bernal for providing thorough editing and constructive criticism and Evan Mascagni for keeping me grounded and inspired. It is with the utmost appreciation that I thank my thesis committee: Christina B. Hanhardt and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz. Christina, I am so grateful to you for working with me from afar and for providing such detailed and thought-provoking feedback. Salvador, I cannot thank you enough for mentoring me through this process. Your patience, flexibility, generosity, and high standards truly made this work possible. Thank you both for your confidence in my abilities and for making me a better scholar. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT » ACKNOWLEDGMENTS i" LISTOFTABLES v Chapter !.INTRODUCTION 1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW 7 3. METHODS 18 4. FINDINGS 22 Questionnaire Data 23 Interview Data 29 5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS 58 Discussion 58 Conclusions 66 APPENDICES 67 REFERENCES 73 IV LIST OF TABLES Table 1 : Summary of Interviewee Demographics 25 Table 2: Importance of Movement Goals to Activists 26 Table 3: Activists' Perceptions of Movement Goals (I=MoSt Important) 27 Table 4: Activists' Views of Marriage 28 ? CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Since the first National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1979, ten years after the infamous Stonewall riots, gay and lesbian activists have worked within a national spotlight to build affirmative identities and communities and to fight for social and legal change1 (Ghaziani 2005). This unprecedented effort at mass political organizing and visibility in the nation's capital signaled the emergence of what is now the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement—also sometimes called LGBTQ, referring to the additional presence of queer2 activists (Eaklor 2008). Neither the coming together of lesbians and gays nor the eventual inclusion3 of bisexual and transgender activists were the result of natural or easy alliances, but instead the national movement is perhaps better understood as a continuous process of organizing on the basis of a 1 Since the 1940' s homophile groups had been engaged in (gay) identity-based political organizing, preceding the more visible communities and activisms of the 60' s and national movement building of the 70' s. 2 Although 'queer' and 'LGBT' are often used interchangeably, as I will discuss, queer has unique political and theoretical connotations that do distinguish it from a simple identity category. 3 The inclusion of bisexuals (either invisible or viewed as an identity in transition to either straight or gay/lesbian) and transgender people (an umbrella term for those whose assigned gender identity at birth deviates from one's chosen gender or non-gender) is still a point of contention within the movement. Indeed, the word inclusion itself is problematic in political organizing in which minority groups, in this case sexual and gender 'deviants' from the dominant society, are added to an existing model of identity politics. 1 2 presumed shared marginalized status, sometimes framed as a pseudo-ethnic minority group status (Epstein 1999; Armstrong 2002). The national movement has sought legitimation through socio-legal, institutional change, producing tension with multi-issue gay liberation and sexual liberation politics, particularly in more Leftist San Francisco organizing (Armstrong 2002). This single-identity or single-issue versus liberation politics conflict is one central division among many since the beginning of the movement, including quarrels over bisexual and transgender exclusion (Davidson 2007), internal challenges posed by lesbian feminism, and sadism/masochism (S/M)4 to the movement's reinforcement of dominant male/female and homo/hetero binaries, as well as the narrow construction of identity and desire in terms of sexual object choice (Seidman 2001a). Moreover, by the mid-1980's, the movement had established an "institutionally elaborated subculture" (Seidman 2001a: 181), formalizing the normative 'gay identity' as white, male and middle class—a cultural construct that reflected the institutional stakeholders of the movement and against which intra-movement critiques had been levied since the beginning (Armstrong 2002). Such ideological and strategic divisions among activists shape the movement, which should not be misconstrued as a seamless or monolithic whole. In his research on the four lesbian and gay (and later bisexual and transgender) marches on Washington (in 1 979, 1987, 1993, and 2000), sociologist Amin Ghaziani (2008) argues that for activists negotiating a conflict of politics and culture centered on contested meanings of strategy 4 S/M is a sexual practice of dominance and submissions that forms in some areas the basis for a sexual community or subculture, which, like other 'lifestyles,' lie at the bottom of the sexual hierarchy that values heterosexual, two-partner, marital (and monogamous, by extension), procreative sex (Rubin 1993). 3 and identity such internal dissent can be productive and generative for their practical organizing. Yet a clash between political strategies and cultural processes—i.e. who are 'we' and what are Our' values?—within the movement is arguably less visible to the broader public than the so-called 'culture wars' between the LGBT movement and the Religious Right, which brought the politically divisive issue of same-sex marriage to the forefront of national, electoral politics (Eaklor 2008). The counter-movement forces from the Right have been more prominent in the public imaginary as LGBT rights debates, especially over same-sex marriage, are polarized as morality (values-based) versus identity (status-based) politics (Miceli 2005). Indeed, social conservatives have constituted a strong political opposition to the LGBT movement, often setting the 'culture war' agenda and defining the strategies of LGBT activists to counter the framing of LGBT rights as a threat to morality and 'family values' (Ibid). As a result, the LGBT movement may seem uniform to outsiders in part because US federal legislative change arguably requires strategic unification for majority electoral and policy victories in a two- party system. Yet, the fact that there are inner-movement debates over strategies and goals can easily be overlooked because of the visibility (i.e. in the media and Congress) of LGBT versus anti-LGBT exchanges. The historical achievements of the movement in opposition to a well-funded and powerful anti-gay movement cannot be understated, as LGBT activists have slowly influenced public opinion5 (Hicks and Lee 2006), changed policies and passed legislation Numerous survey results have found that public acceptance of homosexuals has increased in the last few decades, and explanations include the public visibility, the advancement of civil rights, and that less people believe homosexuality