Lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers’ negotiations of civil partnership and schools: ambivalent attachments to religion and secularism
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Date
2018
Authors
Neary, Aoife
Gray, Breda
O’Sullivan, Mary
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Routledge
Published Version
Abstract
As legal structures for same-sex relationships are introduced in many contexts, the politics of sexuality are negotiated along religious/secular lines. Religious and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBT-Q) rights are pitted against one another such that LGBT-Q lives often assumed to be secular. Schools are crucibles of intermingling religious, secular and equality discourses and this complexity is carefully negotiated by LGBT-Q teachers in their everyday lives. Drawing on a study with LGB teachers as they entered into a Civil Partnership in Ireland (a legal structure in place for five years prior to enactment of Marriage Equality in 2015), this paper captures a ‘structure of feeling’–new cultural work done as sexuality norms were in a state of flux. The teachers’ accounts unravel the religious/secular binary and provide insight of universal interest into the ambivalent, messy ways in which the politics of sexuality are (re)negotiated across the overlapping social fields of religion and education.
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Keywords
Civil partnership/same-sex marriage , Cultural legitimacy , Lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender/queer , Religion , Secularism , Structure of feeling , Teachers
Citation
Neary, A., Gray, B. and O’Sullivan, M. (2018) 'Lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers’ negotiations of civil partnership and schools: Ambivalent attachments to religion and secularism', Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 39(3), pp.434-447. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2016.1276432