National Identity and Restrictions on LGBT Reproductive Rights

• In Event: Multi-Epistemological Research: An Integrative Approach

Abstract

My research explores the differential legal and lower public support for non-normative parenting (e.g. lesbians accessing IVF, gay couples adopting children) when compared to support for same-sex marriage or registered partnerships. This paper aims to illustrate the benefits of a multi-epistemological approach for certain research questions. I argue that there is a particular politics of identity and imagined (gendered, sexed) nation that motivates state restrictions on non-normative reproduction and the negative public opinion regarding them.

Firstly, my data is varied, identifying social, legal, and discursive differences in the characterization of LGBT reproductive rights: international and national polls consistently show these differences in support, laws and practices reflect a differential treatment of sexual minorities in terms of reproductive rights, and the public discourse surrounding reproductive equality is fraught with pointed opposition. Especially because reproduction is bio-social, my approach adopts a causal and interpretative epistemology, sensitive to the multidimensionality of reproduction, as a socio-legal regime structuring elements of social and sexual citizenship.

Utilizing historical process tracing and discourse analysis, I uncover the longer historical narrative; these methods are complementary and ideal for uncovering the locus of the divergence in LGBT rights support. My historical process tracing uncovers a longer “continuing debate” of normative reproduction and the normative nation, demonstrating connections between the development of the hegemonic national imagined community and a restrictive state apparatus regarding reproductive rights. I find that the narratives connect normative reproduction/kinship with normative gendered and sexed in-group identity/allegiance—and do this via nationalist symbology.

Ultimately, calling attention to the fact that reproduction is biosocial, the replication of values, ideas, and identities, repronormativity provides a better theory in explaining not only this research puzzle, but the benefits of a multi-epistemological approach.

Author

• Anna Weissman