An Advocate for whom?: Homonormativity and respectability politics in The Advocate, 1999-2000

• In Event: Collective Behavior and Social Movements Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 4: Participants, Allies, and Opponents: The Landscape of LGBTQ Movements

Abstract

Over the course of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, LGBTQ+ organizing increasingly recognized and centered intersectional and social justice-oriented goals. However, by the late 1990s, the Mainstream Gay Rights Movement (MGRM) had decentered the needs of the LGBTQ+ community’s most vulnerable members in favor of its most privileged. For the relatively high earning, white gays and lesbians centered by the MGRM, the main goal was to achieve legal parity with their heterosexual counterparts by way gaining rightful access to then-closed-off institutions – namely, access to same-sex marriage and public military service. The current study offers a content and thematic analysis of 22 issues of The Advocate, a key media outlet for the MGRM over this period of change, published between 1999-2009. The study seeks to highlight the extent to which The Advocate reflects the key aims, objectives, and politics of the MGRM over this time. Preliminary results indicate that The Advocate reflects the homonormativity and respectability politics of the MGRM by differentially frames homosexuals – particularly, gay men – as respectable and “normal” while framing other queer identity groups as promiscuous and/or confused; and centers the issues central to the MGRM (e.g., same-sex marriage) while marginalizing broader intersectional social justice issues (e.g., poverty or homelessness). Overarchingly, this study offers a nuanced view of how The Advocate both covertly and overtly disseminated the logic and political agenda of the MGRM to its readership – serving as a key mechanism to gain social and political support from the public throughout this critical period.

Author

• Hannah Jacobs, University of Florida