Citizenship for Whom? Rightful Citizenship Claims and LGBT Advocacy

• In Event: Exploring the Limits of Inclusion: Race and LGBTQ Politics in the US

Abstract

It is widely taken to be self-evident that a central goal of interest groups and social movements representing marginalized groups is to achieve long-denied citizenship rights. Since the 1980s, LGBT interest groups have been successful on this front, gaining the recognition of same-sex marriages and open service in the military for gay men and lesbians. And yet, critics from both within and without these organizations charge that the focus on citizenship neglects attention on those members of the LGBT group who might not be considered full citizens and yet require the most urgent political action: transgender people of color, LGBT people who are undocumented, the disproportionate number of LGBT-identified people who are incarcerated, and LGBT people living in poverty or homelessness. This paper takes these claims seriously, examining how and to what extent a focus on citizenship, broadly construed, narrow who is advocated for and what issues get prioritized. To explore these questions, I draw on scholarship in citizenship studies and queer theory – and conduct an inductive case study of recent LGBT interest group advocacy – to show how the discursive and strategic uses of “rightful citizenship claims” by political organizations representing LGBT people requires silencing members who, by virtue of being a person of color, incarcerated, or a migrant, challenge the dominant group’s claims that they would be included in institutions of citizenship, such as marriage and the military, were it not for their sexuality or gender identities.

Author

• Zein Murib, Fordham University-Lincoln Center