https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6756-2919
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ABSTRACT
This article examines meaning making among actors engaged in the ‘conflict over family’ in Slovakia. The conflict between progressive supporters of gay rights and neo-conservative advocates of the ‘traditional family’ reflects the transnational backlash against the LGBTQ+ rights recognition. Utilising a combination of pragmatic and cultural sociology, I explore how civically engaged actors from both sides make sense of their civic engagement. The analysis of qualitative interviews shows that, despite striving for different goals, all participants make sense of their work as helping. Helping discourse plays a crucial role in everyday meaning making, because it enables actors to justify their engaged work with respect to the common good in concrete terms, and it also contributes to the formation of personal attachments to the work. Civically engaged actors articulate helping discourse in narrative accounts, which elicit feelings of moral duty, satisfaction, and empowerment, thus helping them persevere in their engagement.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic as part of its scheme advancing research at universities under the project ‘Sexuality: Attitudes and Behaviour across Generations’ number MUNI/A/1158/2019.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 I intentionally avoid the term ‘activists’, because some of the interviewed actors declared they did not see themselves as activists. Nevertheless, they are all actively engaged with civil society issue(s) and within civil society institutions, hence, the term ‘civically engaged’ individuals.
2 The referendum questions were: 1. Do you agree that no cohabitation of persons other than a bond between one man and one woman can be called marriage? 2. Do you agree that same-sex couples or groups shouldn’t be allowed to adopt children and subsequently raise them? 3. Do you agree that schools cannot require children to participate in education pertaining to sexual behavior or euthanasia, if their parents or the children themselves do not agree with the content of the education? 4. Do you agree that no other partnership than the partnership of a man and a woman shall benefit from the legal protection and rights and duties granted to the heterosexual family? The last question was later excluded after the Constitutional Court found it in conflict with basic human rights.
3 Only 21.41 percent of Slovaks voted in the referendum. All the referendum questions received over 90 percent support.
4 The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence.
5 I use these terms interchangeably throughout the article, as well as the terms ‘civic world’ and ‘civil sphere’.
6 ‘Pro-lifers’ believe that human life begins at conception; hence, they promote a ban on abortion and stress the procreation capacity of heterosexual partnerships. The pro-life and pro-family agendas are interconnected in the neo-conservative anti-gender movements as they build upon the Vatican’s doctrine of the complementarity of sexes (see e.g. Korolczuk, Citation2016).
7 This terminological choice is based on Mannheim’s theory (Citation1936) of progressivism as vision of continual progress in universalisation of rights and freedoms and conservativism as its reactionary counterpart aiming to control the ‘inner freedom’.
8 I am aware of the influences caused by a specific interaction situation and my position in the field. My personal inclination towards a liberal human rights position may have been assumed by the interviewees but was never made explicit.
9 This translation comes from the Slovak word ‘osveta’, used especially by ‘traditional family’ advocates. It literally means ‘to enlighten’ people, to shape people morally and intellectually.
10 In this article, I purposefully leave aside the anti-abortion agenda of the conservative civic associations and keep the focus on their engagement in the debate over gay rights initiated by the 2015 referendum.
11 Double negation is used in the Slovak language to emphasise the importance of something.
12 The relation of help and power can be seen etymologically in Slovak language, in which the word ‘pomoc’ (help) contains the word ‘moc’ (power, authority). Consequently, ‘bezmocný’ (helpless) is literally an adjective for ‘having no power’.