Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Communication, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-77).

Collective memories of gay rights in the late 1970s offer a conflicted portrait of Anita Bryant, an infamous anti-gay personality who inspired, organized, or funded four anti-gay referendums between 1976 and 1978. I employ J. Jack Halberstam's concept of "metronormativity" in an analysis of campaigns that failed to preserve local gay rights laws in Miami and Eugene, the first and last of Bryant's four "target cities." I use L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz as a metaphor to compare the beginning of Bryant's role as a leader in Miami to her subsequent role as a specter of national controversy in Eugene. Gay rights leaders in Miami failed in terms of what this paper identifies as "queer localization," the ability to localize their ideas, claims, and needs to the voting majority. This failure, I argue, led to an inversion of metronormativity in which the outcome of the Eugene referendum affected gay politics in the larger city of Portland. I conclude with a comparison of Anita Bryant and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk that suggests both figures created a metronormative myth that can be understood critically in terms of leaving the Yellow Brick Road.

Since the current policy known as "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was adopted in the early 1990s, several changes have taken place which call into question the policy's validity. Firstly, the argument proponents of the ban use to justify it, namely that cohesion would suffer if admitted homosexuals were allowed to serve, has been undercut by social science analyses on the correlation between cohesion and performance. Their argument has also been undercut by empirical evidence from several nations that have lifted all restrictions on homosexual service, yet have suffered no decrease in cohesion or performance, despite the reticence of their respective militaries to lift the bans. At the same time, the US public has moved toward a greater acceptance of the notion of admitted homosexuals serving in the military, with 79% approving in a December 2003 Gallup Poll, including 91% of all Americans age 18 - 29. Evidence also indicates the current policy costs at least $40 million per year just to replace those who have been discharged due to their sexual orientation. Other costs include wasted human resources at a time of critical shortfalls in many specialties essential to the ongoing Global War on Terror, and the immeasurable cost of sanctioned unjustifiable discrimination by the US Government. The time to lift all restrictions on homosexual service in the US Armed Forces has come. / Major, United States Air Force

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (M.A.)--Concordia University, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-104).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 255-269).

A Family Values discourse emerged at the beginning of the 20t h century when social welfare groups began to see "the family" as a solution to social problems. As the century ' wore on, the concept of the family came to take on a specific meaning of a heterosexual reproductive unit. During the 1950s a growing Christian Right movement began to lobby for the protection and promotion of the family. These Christian Right groups saw the family as a means of saving the country from the evils of communism and sexual perversions. A few issues came to be seen as of particular importance to the welfare of the traditional family. These issues, abortion, education, pornography and gay rights, among others became centerpieces of the 1990s Pro-Family Movement (PFM) platform within the New Christian Right. The purpose of this study is to examine the use of a Family Values discourse in the negotiation of educational policy around queer issues. In order to study the PFM's use of a Family Values discourse, a documentary analysis of documents surrounding the Surrey Book Banning in British Columbia was conducted. The Book Banning began when a number of teachers and members of Gay and Lesbian Educators (GALE) petitioned the provincial teachers union to include fighting heterosexism and homophobia among its committees for social justice. Following this approval of this resolution, the Surrey School Board, known for its P FM connections) banned GALE materials and three Kindergarten-Grade One books that presented same-sex couples. This banning resulted in an extensive legal battle. For this study, media reports and court documents were assembled to present a comprehensive history of the Book Banning case and its relationship to current gay rights activism and P FM organizations. An argument analysis of the affidavits from the case was also conducted to illustrate the specific Family Values arguments that the Surrey School Board employed. For this analysis, affidavits were divided by author and analyzed for argument content using a standardized argument format. Premise statements within affidavits were pulled out and coded according to common themes. The five argument themes that were explicated were Sexuality in the Home, Age Inappropriate, Favoring Homosexuals, Homosexuality is Immoral, and Unnecessary Resource.

In this thesis I explore the implications of the extension of 'spousal' status to samesex couples from the perspective of queer people who experience intersectional or complex oppression. This study is grounded in a rejection of the necessity or efficacy of attempting to understanding the oppressions facing queer people from only one perspective. I reject the notion that such a simplistic approach to understanding oppression is conceptually honest. Put simply, I argue that what is often characterised as a purely 'gay and lesbian' approach to reform—namely, the consideration of only oppression related to 'sexual orientation' or 'heterosexism'—is in reality the prioritisation of the limited perspective of those who only experience systemic disadvantage related to their race. These people are a small minority of queer people. Unlike many other academics and activists, I do not conclude with a 'yes' or 'no' response to the question of whether same-sex spousal status should be sought. The analysis presented in this thesis does not permit such a final conclusion for three reasons. First, I argue that the implications of the extension of spousal status vary depending on the institutional context; in other words, the extension of spousal status is very different in the context of social assistance law as compared to the provision of employment-related benefits. Secondly, I argue that the extension of spousal status also varies among queer people; for example, the implications of the extension of spousal status to poor queers are vastly different from those who are wealthy. Thirdly, I argue that the decision to support the extension of spousal status to same-sex couples is inherently political; this decision cannot be immunised from political challenge on the basis that it is derived from some allegedly objective legal or socio-scientific calculus. Although I have endeavoured adopt a inter-disciplinary approach, this thesis does focus on legal rights discourse. To my mind, this focus is appropriate given the emphasis on 'rights talk' and the assumed benefits of formal equality within the community of academics and activists working on queer issues. In various parts of this thesis, I focus on the approaches of activists, academics, judges and legislators to the issue of the rights of queer people and the nature of equality. Ultimately, I conclude that until we begin to appreciate the complexity of the oppressions facing queer people, and avoid the false prioritisation of a 'purely gay and lesbian oppression' perspective, we will be unable to work in coalition or to effect progressive social change.

The idea that Canada was transformed into a "constitutional democracy" in 1982 is widely believed by the public, yet rarely examined in academic literature. This article identifies what it calls a "theory of Constitutional democracy" and then applies it to a test case, the Supreme Court of Canada's decisions on the equality claims of lesbians and gay men. It concludes that if the public expected such a transition, it has yet to be made.