Summary
Contents
Subject index
Issues such as lesbians and gay men serving openly in the military, same-sex marriage and the inclusion of sexual orientation in anti-discrimination and hate crime laws have evolved along with the rival progay and anitgay communities. As a result of public policy debates, the U. S. progay movement has moved toward an essentialist, non-sexual identity while traditionalists have shifted toward a secular public self-representation. This book analyzes the internal disagreements within the two movements.
Appeals in Progay and Traditionalist Discourses
Appeals in Progay and Traditionalist Discourses
This chapter describes the interpretive packages which are dominant in the increasing number of debates over public policy toward variant sexuality. Present through the specificity and pattern of these appeals is the discourse to which publics are exposed when they are drawn into the variant sexuality issue culture. These packages consist of appeals expressed in symbolic acts which are, in the broadest sense, arguments. As sociologist Stephen Ellingson (1997) points out, discursive struggles occur at the level of arguments which function as the building blocks of partisan discourses (p. 271). He notes that such arguments are “both the means by which speakers create and justify their diagnoses and solutions and the carriers of economic, ...
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