Coalitional Fronting and Shared Ethos Cultivation in the Case of the Council on Religion and the Homosexual

Abstract

This essay investigates a critical moment of advocacy in San Francisco’s queer history: when police raided the Council on Religion and the Homosexual (CRH) New Year’s Day fundraiser. In response, CRH engaged in what I term coalitional fronting. The coalition’s privileged members acted as its public face, placing clergy, lawyers, and straight couples at center stage in its contestation with the police. Doing so allowed the group to cultivate privileged forms of ethos to rebuke police actions that would not have been possible if queer organizations acted alone. CRH’s coalitional fronting provided cover to queer members and enabled the cultivation of queer community and political power via other anonymous means. By unpacking the group’s advocacy efforts, this manuscript enriches rhetorical scholarship’s understanding of the connections among inventional resources, privilege, allyship, and coalitional politics.

Keywords:

• Allyship
• persona
• privilege
• publics
• queer rhetoric

Acknowledgments

This article started as a chapter of the author’s dissertation, which he completed at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee under the direction of Kathryn Olson. The author would like to thank Kathryn Olson, Leslie Harris, Erin Parcell, Demetrius Williams, Lindsay Timmerman, Tom Salek, Hilary Rasmussen, Jim Vining, Marcia Gallo, and his colleagues at Texas State University for their help and support. He would also like to thank editor Claire Sisco King, Katherine M. Schaller, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful guidance, comments, and suggestions.