Scapegoats, Apologia, and Marriage: LGBTQ Persons, Morality, and Election Year Politics

Session Submission Type: Panel Discussion

Abstract

This panel examines the intersection of election-year politics and sexual identity, with a particular focus on the negotiated frontiers between public behavior and private behavior. For two of the papers, the private behavior is the selection of a long-term partner, an unexpectedly political act that becomes part of the public domain when the partners are of the same sex and the issue is framed as an “assault” on traditional marriage in some discourses and as “assimilationist” in others. For the other two papers, the private sexual behavior of public figures becomes public and its trangressive implications challenge the figure’s conservative public persona and pretenses to moral superiority. Both cases underscore the extent to which presumptive heteronormativity may be used as a political tool to marginalize other sexualities and further broader reactionary agendas.

Sub Unit

• Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgendered Communication Studies Division

Chair

• Bruce E. Drushel, Miami University

Respondent

• Jimmie Manning, Northern Kentucky University

Session Organizer

• Bruce E. Drushel, Miami University