Civil partnership and marriage: LGBT-Q political pragmatism and the normalization imperative
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Date
2016
Authors
Neary, Aoife
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Publisher
SAGE Publications Ltd
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Abstract
The last decade has seen significant change in LGBT-Q politics in many (neo)liberal democracies. In Ireland, Civil Partnership (CP) was signed into law in 2010. While LGBT-Q advocacy groups had been divided over the terms of CP, they presented a united front in favour of marriage and in May 2015, Ireland became the first country in the world to vote in favour of same-sex marriage in a constitutional referendum. This article begins from a personal moment as I sat in a television audience where a polarized debate – mainstream ‘progressive’ Left in favour of marriage equality versus ‘conservative’ religious Right against – ensued. It draws on interviews with five advocates in LGBT-Q politics and an analysis of print media related to CP and marriage from January 2010 until January 2014. This article inquires into the discourses and decision-making as CP and marriage emerged. It is anchored by the work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler and others, focusing on the concepts of discourse, truth, normalization and equality. I demonstrate how the advocates adopted a politics of pragmatism and employed integrative, assimilationist strategies in line with consensus politics. I show how these approaches played their part in foreclosing radical sexual politics or broader kinship discussions. The article asserts that the advocates were motivated by how CP/marriage had the potential to achieve ‘real life’, large-scale cultural change through normalization. However, I demonstrate how mobilizing a politics of change based on normalization and sameness simultaneously (re)produces an ‘acceptable’ sexual citizen and reassigns ‘others’ as peripheral.
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Keywords
Citizenship and cultural change , Civil Partnership and same-sex marriage , Heteronormativity and homonormativity , LGBT-Q politics , Normalization and power , Sexualities equality
Citation
Neary, A. (2016) 'Civil partnership and marriage: LGBT-Q political pragmatism and the normalization imperative', Sexualities, 19(7), pp.757-779. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460715616943