LGBTQ Politics

First a few words about the letter Q, which will be familiar to people within the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community but may possibly be unfamiliar to some of those outside it. The Q in ‘LGBTQ Politics’, edited by Marla Brettschneider, Susan Burgess and Christine Keating and published by the New York University Press, stands for ‘queer’.

‘Queer’ was a colloquial, frequently derogatory, term for homosexuals, especially male homosexuals, from at least the late Victorian period (derived from ‘queer’ in the sense of odd or peculiar) but since the late 1980s has been re-claimed by some in the LGBT community and used as a badge of honour (just as Tory and Whig were originally terms of abuse).

‘Queer’ might thus appear redundant, merely duplicating ‘gay’, which is why in the UK most are content simply to use ‘LGBT’. In the United States, however, the rehabilitation of ‘queer’ went one step further, denoting or relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, so that queer theory, in academic circles, relates to social and cultural studies challenging traditional ideas of sexuality and gender, notably acceptance of heterosexuality as normative and the perception of a rigid dichotomy of male and female features.

‘LGBTQ Politics’ was “conceived as the United States Supreme Court recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015” and on both sides of the Atlantic there has been an enormous advance for the LGBTQ community in recent years on three fronts: attaining a greater and more positive visibility in the media; achieving a higher profile academically, notably in the field of political science; and having LGBTQ rights enshrined in law.

In England and Wales legislative changes since the dawning of the new millennium have included the equalisation of the age consent (at 16 in 2000); the creation of civil partnerships (under the 2004 Civil Partnership Act); the legalisation of adoption for same-sex couples (under the 2002 Adoption and Children Act, which came into force in 2005); the creation of a public sector ‘equality duty’ by the Equality Act in 2010; and the passage of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act in 2013, allowing the first same-sex weddings to take place in 2014. This is not to say that the LGBT agenda has triumphed in all respects. For example, the law currently prevents Church of England ministers from conducting same-sex marriages in church; same-sex couples are not legally entitled to inherit each other's final salary pension money if it was accrued before 2005; and Stonewall is calling for UK passports to allow holders to define themselves as neither male nor female.

The situation in the United States appears even less rosy as even before Trump’s election as forty-fifth president of the United States, as ‘LGBTQ Politics’ was going to press, there was a significant backlash against the LGBTQ community, with Republican Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant signing HB 1523, allowing businesses or individuals to decline to provide goods or services for same-sex marriages based on religious objections (April 2016); 12 states, by May 2016, challenging Department of Education policy on bathroom use by transgender students; and the June 2016 Orlando gay nightclub massacre in which 49 were killed and 53 wounded.

‘LGBTQ Politics’ is thus both a celebration of what has been achieved thus far but also a timely reminder of how much ground still remains to be travelled with 29 states, at the time of writing, lacking anti-discrimination laws that include sexual orientation or gender identity, and no federal law protecting access to employment, housing and public accommodation, like hotels or restaurants, for LGBT people.

Nevertheless, the situation in the USA and the UK represents a vast improvement on the condition of LGBT people in most parts of the world, and it is one of the strengths of ‘LGBTQ Politics’ that four of its twenty-nine essays (if you exclude the introduction) deal with LGBTQ politics in the global context. The other sections cover building LGBTQ movements (7 essays); LGBTQ politics within the discipline of political science in the US (5 essays); LGBTQ politics and public opinion in the US (5 essays); marriage equality politics (4 essays); and imagining future developments (4 essays).

This means that although the book does not claim to be exhaustive it nevertheless covers a great deal of ground, and this is done in a very informative manner, with all contributors striving, and most successfully, to produce cutting-edge essays.

A critic might dispute the overall balance of the book. When the American Political Science Association receives much more coverage than the entire Arab world it’s difficult not to feel that there’s been a little too much navel-gazing. One is also bound to wonder whether we really need Mandi Bates Bailey and Steven P. Nawara to tell us that gay and lesbian candidates are disadvantaged by campaign advertising that activates gender and sexuality stereotypes. This reader would also have welcomed an examination of how Betty Friedan overcame her fear of the ‘lavender menace’ as the women’s movement gradually embraced lesbianism in Jeremiah J. Garretson piece on ‘The How, Why, and Who of LGBTQ Victory’.

But with all these caveats ‘LGBTQ Politics’ remains a very scholarly collection of pieces which is likely to become a standard text on the subject in the States for the foreseeable future.