Neoliberal Homophobic Discourse: Heteronormative Human Capital and the Exclusion of Queer Citizens

Abstract

In this article, I examine the relationship between homophobic language use and its broader social context, focusing on how a U.S.-based, conservative Christian organization's institutionalized homophobic text-making practices seek to derive legitimacy from the broader political economic discourses associated with the neoliberal moment. Using the Family Research Council's statement on marriage and the family as the basis for analysis, I demonstrate how the organization seeks to represent lesbian and gay subjects and their kinship formations as a threat to human capital development because they are based on affectional relationships that neither reflect nor respond to the kinds of self-governance and marketization that neoliberalism requires of all citizen–subjects and their families. Linguistic strategies for creating such representations include lexical choices that avoid overtly identifying lesbian and gay subjects as the object of discussion, the creation of a taxonomy for what constitutes “proper” families—based on neoliberal principles—that implicitly excludes lesbian and gay kinship formations, and the use of neoliberal discourses of self-governance and marketization as the basis for that exclusion.

Keywords:

• hate speech
• homophobic discourse
• homophobic language
• neoliberalism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editors of this special issue as well as Liz Morrish for their helpful comments on this article.

Notes

1. See, for example, Adam (2005), Becker (2006), Duggan (2003), Leap (2011a), and Sender (2006).

2. Called “family policy councils” (FRC, 2008), these NGOs operate in 39 out of 50 states, many of them under affiliation with Focus on the Family (also founded by Dobson).

3. As of January 2010, the FRC Web site included numerous means for users to disseminate information from its Web site through a popup ShareThis.com window.

4. FRC writers are careful to avoid aligning themselves explicitly with any particular political party or agenda or with any particular religious ideology or group. However, FRC writers often call attention to the political agendas of others while maintaining their claim to “objectivity.” See Peterson (2011) for further discussion.

5. Written in the context of British conservative politics but applicable to U.S. conservative politics, see Willetts (1991) for a good example of how neoliberal conservatives define the family.

6. This line of argument in conservative Christian thinking dates back at least to Anita Bryant's campaign to overturn the Dade County, FL, antidiscrimination law in 1977, as well as to the fight over California's Proposition 6 in 1979. See Bryant (1977). For examples of FRC texts that link “homosexual indoctrination” to public education, see Fagan (2010) and Sprigg (2006).

7. The extent to which this is so might be demonstrated by the recent (December 2–3, 2010) hearings held in the U.S. Senate on the repeal of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy that prevents gay and lesbian military personnel from disclosing their sexual orientation. In nearly seven hours of testimony, no senator hostile to the repeal of the law relied on “[v]isceral antihomophobic rhetoric,” objecting instead by critiquing the Department of Defense's study as being statistically insignificant, of having failed to ask service personnel the right questions, or by insisting that change in a time of war would be too “disruptive” a “transition.” While I have not yet engaged in in-depth analysis of the hearing's transcripts, I would suggest that the discourse used by senators, civilians, and military personnel reflects certain neoliberal themes. That is, the question of allowing queer military personnel to serve openly has been transformed from the morality of sexual orientation into concern for the “proper” management of policy change.