Civil partnership and marriage: LGBT-Q political pragmatism and the normalization imperative

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dc.contributor.authorNeary, Aoifeen
dc.date.accessioned2025-06-06T13:51:03Z
dc.date.available2025-06-06T13:51:03Z
dc.date.issued2016
dc.description.abstractThe 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.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionSubmitted versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationNeary, A. (2016) 'Civil partnership and marriage: LGBT-Q political pragmatism and the normalization imperative', Sexualities, 19(7), pp.757-779. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460715616943en
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/1363460715616943en
dc.identifier.endpage779en
dc.identifier.issn13634607en
dc.identifier.issued7
dc.identifier.journaltitleSexualitiesen
dc.identifier.startpage757en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/17627
dc.identifier.volume19
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherSAGE Publications Ltden
dc.rights© 2016, the Author(s).en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
dc.subjectCitizenship and cultural changeen
dc.subjectCivil Partnership and same-sex marriageen
dc.subjectHeteronormativity and homonormativityen
dc.subjectLGBT-Q politicsen
dc.subjectNormalization and poweren
dc.subjectSexualities equalityen
dc.subject~Education - Journal Articles~en
dc.titleCivil partnership and marriage: LGBT-Q political pragmatism and the normalization imperativeen
dc.typeArticle (peer reviewed)en
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