This project creates an original dataset of 1,008 randomly sampled news items that discussed LGBT political issues posted online between 2011 and 2017 by Huffington Post Queer Voices, NPR, and Fox News. I use quantitative methods and content analysis to locate the 14 most popular LGBT political issues in media coverage and to confirm there are three competing media frames of political discussion in coverage of LGBT political issues. There are three results chapters. Chapter 5 describes the 14 LGBT political issues that appear most often in political science research and to what extent media coverage of these 14 issues differs across the political left, right and center. I find that academia addresses more LGBT issues, more often, than does media coverage. Also, media coverage and academic literature contain four competing narratives about LGBT people and issues: a Family Narrative, an Identity Narrative, a Tragedy Narrative, and a Political Activity Narrative. Moreover, politically left media coverage is more like academic discussions about LGBT politics than politically right or centrist media coverage. Chapter 6 describes three competing frames in media coverage. A legal frame contains language that discusses constitutions, trial and appellate courts, litigation tactics, and appellate procedure. A religious frame contains language that discusses the Bible, Jesus, religious-based curative therapy, evangelicals as political participants, and quotes from clergy. An institutional frame contains language that involves elections, political parties, direct democracy, constitutional amendments, local state and federal legislatures, and the President. I find that legal framing of LGBT issues has increased since the 2000s, while religious framing has declined, and political framing is slowly rising – peaking in federal election years then decreasing in non-election years. Chapter 7 describes how the media’s focus on same-sex marriage eclipses coverage of less-covered, but still important, LGBT political issues. Further, since same-sex marriage was legalized nation-wide in 2015, the media has been increasingly focused on transgender issues rather than 13 other LGBT political issues. So, the issues, narratives, and frames one encounters in news coverage about the LGBT is noticeably different than in the 2000s, and differs on the political left, right, and center.

[pt] Esta dissertação pleiteia que os efeitos da agenda LGBT normativa favorecem alguns grupos sociais, mas reforçam a marginalização e a expropriação de pessoas e povos queer não-brancos, seja em contextos domésticos, ou na política internacional. Para explicar essa lógica, o trabalho apresenta uma montagem teórica experimental: a perspectiva foucaultiana sobre poder disciplinar e dispositivo de sexualidade (FOUCAULT, 2002; FOUCAULT, 1998) acoplada a uma crítica queer of color (FERGUSON, 2004), que atenta para o disciplinar das formações racializadas não-heteronormativas que surgiram para suprir o mercado de trabalho capitalista nos centros urbanos onde o a burguesia primeiro ascendeu. Com esse primeiro movimento, será mostrada a imbricação entre capital, poder disciplinar e sexualidade, para indicar que tal poder disciplinar atua em favor de uma hegemonia político-sexual branca e burguesa. Posteriormente, para indicar as tendências do período neoliberal recente, o esforço consistirá em refletir sobre as ausências estratégicas do Estado neoliberal e as formas pelas quais a heteronormatividade é reforçada em comunidades racionalizadas, ao passo que a homonormatividade se torna mais acessível a grupos que correspondem a recortes de classe e raça identificados com a branquitude e o alto poder de consumo. Tal montagem teórica permitirá entender, também, como a normatividade sexual, presente na política LGBT e embutida nas noções de atraso e desenvolvimento, reforça as desigualdades internacionais. Por fim, o trabalho indicará como as perspectivas queer contém pontos-chave que permitem a transformação do tecido político, econômico e social nacional, e a desestabilização das hierarquias internacionais de poder. / [en] This Masters thesis claims that the effects of the normative LGBT agenda favor some social groups but reinforce the marginalization and expropriation of nonwhite queer persons and peoples, whether in domestic contexts or in international politics. Following this logic, the work has an experimental set-up: a Foucautian perspective on disciplinary power and the sexuality device (FOUCAULT, 2002; FOUCAULT, 1998) coupled with a queer of color critique (FERGUSON, 2004), which draws attention to the disciplining of the non-heteronormative racial formations that emerged to supply the capitalist labor market in the urban centers where the bourgeoisie first rose. With this first movement, this work will attemp to demonstrate the imbrication between capital, disciplinary power and sexuality, indicating that such disciplinary power acts in favor of white and bourgeois political hegemony. Later on, to indicate the trends of the recent neoliberal period, the argument points to the strategic absencers of the neoliberal State and the ways in which heteronormativity is reinforced in racialized communities, while homonormativity is accessible to groups that correspond to class and racial positions identified with whiteness and high consumption patterns. Such a theoretical set-up willl also allow readers to understand how the sexual normativity present in LGBT politics, and embedded in the notions of backwardness and development, reinforces international inequalities. Finally, the paper will indicate how queer perspectives contain key points that could enable the transfomation of the political, economic and social fabric locally, as well as the destabilization of international hierarchies of power.