Evangelical Protestant Women’s Views on Homosexuality and LGBT Rights in Korea: The Role of Confucianism and Nationalism in Heteronormative Ideology

ABSTRACT

Much scholarly attention has been devoted to understanding the demographic, religious, and socio-economic factors that may lead to homonegativity. However, little is known about how and why people oppose homosexuality and LGBT rights. To fill this gap, this work examines how heterosexual religious mothers perceive homosexuality and LGBT rights focusing on the role of indigenous culture. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 30 evangelical Protestant women in South Korea, my findings indicate that evangelical women’s perceptions of LGBT rights and their justification display evangelical notion of procreation, motherly moral concerns about the rapid change in heteronormative ideals, and ambivalence about an individualistic, expressive culture. I argue that heteronormative ideology forms a key construct that determines the responses of evangelical women. In addition, such an idea is not only guided by evangelical teaching but also reinforced by a complex amalgamation of Confucian tradition and nationalism, thus restricting sexual drive and emotions for the sake of families and the nation. Heterosexual family norms operate in a way that it is synchronized with a combination of Confucian-family-oriented collectivism and nationalism. This study contributes to complicating a simple, one-dimensional understanding of public attitudes on homosexuality by offering a nuanced look into the configuration of heterosexual ideologies, which are unique in the Korean context.

KEYWORDS:

• Homosexuality
• Heteronormativity
• Women
• LGBT politics
• Evangelical Protestantism
• South Korea

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The cardinal “five relationships” in Confucianism is the rule of the social interactions (Tu, 1998, p. 124), guiding social relationships between: 1) ruler and subject, 2) father and son, 3) older and younger persons, 4) husband and wife, and 5) friends and friends.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2016-LAB-2250002).