A Latter-Day Sodom and Babylon

This chapter examines the manner in which Nigerian bloggers and web journalists interpreted, framed and represented Obama's gay rights diplomacy in Nigeria. The chapter specifically explores the extent to which these web journalists' interpretations of the American pro-gay movement generated new religion-inspired representations of the U.S. government and Americans on the social networks. The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of over 162 online articles generated by Nigerian citizen journalists in reaction to Obama's gay rights advocacy in Nigeria and Africa. It answers the following research questions: how did Nigerian web/citizen journalists frame Obama's pro-gay move? What was their tone? How did they represent America and its people in their articles or posts? And how did religion and culture influence the latter's representations of America and Americans?

A history of lesbian politics and the psy professions

This article explores the relationship between lesbian activists and the “psy professions” (especially psychology and psychiatry) in England from the 1960s to the 1980s. We draw on UK-based LGBTQIA+ archive sources and specifically magazines produced by, and for, lesbians. We use this material to identify three key strategies used within the lesbian movement to contest psycho-pathologisation during this 30-year period: from respectable collaborationist forms of activism during the 1960s; to more liberationist oppositional politics during the early 1970s; to radical feminist separatist activism in the 1980s. Whilst these strategies broadly map onto activist strategies deployed within the wider lesbian and gay movement during this time, this article explores how these politics manifested in particular ways, specifically in relation to the psy disciplines in the UK. We describe these strategies, illustrating them with examples of activism from the archives. We then use this history to problematise a linear, overly reductionist or binary history of liberation from psycho-pathologisation. Finally, we explore some complexities in the relationship between sexuality, activism and the psy professions.

RE-STORYING BELOVED COMMUNITY: INTERSECTIONAL SOCIAL MOVEMENT STORYTELLING OF ANTIRACIST GAY LIBERATION*

This article details intersectional social movement storytelling produced by a racially mixed group of gay men in the 1980s to articulate, and insist upon, antiracist gay liberation. Based on a larger project of narrative ethnography of the organization Black and White Men Together (BWMT), I describe how BWMT drew upon the movement story of an ideal community from the civil rights movement (Beloved Community) and re-storied it to confront a narrow gay movement and reassert an anti-racist gay liberation critique. I trace how they did so via storytelling strategies using (1) “salience work” and (2) what I call “both/and work”— interpretive processes operating to shift the symbolic code of integration and the emotional code of love to be relevant in the complex political context of the 1980s. I conclude by reiterating how these strategies are bound to their times and assert the potential of social movement storytelling for intersectional scholarship.

‘Our Nameless Desires’

The chapter surveys the development of Irish lesbian and gay fiction since the early 1990s. It traces the emergence of a generation of gay-identified authors who, buoyed by the gains made by the lesbian and gay movement since the 1970s, which culminated in the decriminalization of male homosexuality in the Republic in 1993, sought to give literary expression to the diversity of lesbian and gay identities in contemporary Ireland. The analysis distinguishes between two significant compositional principles in this body of fiction—plots that are structured temporally and those that are structured spatially—and examines their treatment in novels by Mary Dorcey, Emma Donoghue, Tom Lennon, Colm Tóibín, Micheál Ó Conghaile, Keith Ridgway, Barry McCrea, and others.

Ungodly Genders: Deconstructing Ex-Gay Movement Discourses of “Transgenderism” in the US

This research investigates a neglected topic within both transgender studies and religious studies by analyzing ex-gay movement discourses of “transgenderism” from the 1970s to the present, focusing primarily on the US-American context. The oppression of transgender people in the US and globally is fed and fueled by the religious, scientific, and political discourses of the transnational “ex-gay” movement, which provides the ideological and material foundation of Christian Right politics. Using critical discourse analysis of ex-gay texts, we analyze the implications of these discourses in the individual, interactional, and institutional dimensions of society’s gender structure. This movement is one of the most insidious—and overlooked—sources of cisgenderism and transmisogyny today, constructing gender variance as sin, mental illness, and danger—with catastrophic consequences for transgender people, and those along the transfemale/feminine spectrum in particular. Finally, we discuss the public policy implications of these discourses.

A Latter-Day Sodom and Babylon

This chapter examines the manner in which Nigerian bloggers and web journalists interpreted, framed and represented Obama's gay rights diplomacy in Nigeria. The chapter specifically explores the extent to which these web journalists' interpretations of the American pro-gay movement generated new religion-inspired representations of the U.S. government and Americans on the social networks. The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of over 162 online articles generated by Nigerian citizen journalists in reaction to Obama's gay rights advocacy in Nigeria and Africa. It answers the following research questions: how did Nigerian web/citizen journalists frame Obama's pro-gay move? What was their tone? How did they represent America and its people in their articles or posts? And how did religion and culture influence the latter's representations of America and Americans?