This thesis examines the hegemonic function of symbolic structures of relevance as they are related to phenomenological commitments to social change held by voluntary associations of homosexuals. The data base of this investigation consists of the literature of 21 homophile organizations. Organizations literature is used to facilitate a theoretical adaptation of Alfred Schutz’ discussion of relevance structures which addresses he hegemonic organization of voluntary associations. The concept of relevance structure was implemented to relate predominant orientations within the sociology of deviance to a phenomenological interpretation of group commitment serves as a heuristic device for scrutinizing the instrumental as well as expressive functions fulfilled by relevance structures. These hegemonic components sustain in a “phantasied praxis” within a particularistic world-view. This conception of social praxis was drawn from Antonio Gramsci’s interpretation of a Marxian sociology of knowledge. Subsequently, the relevance structures of each association are juxtaposed to its level of phenomenological commitment as well as its Marxian nature. This operation culminated in the construction of a referent typology which outlines “families” of relevance structure in relation to orientations to phantasied praxis.

While capitalism is thought by many to enable male homosexual identity to emerge, this same economic system creates a class hierarchy that promotes a heteronormative worldview, which marks homosexual men as the outcasts of society. In England during the years leading up to the First World War, a man’s character and persona were determined by his social class position. As a result homosexual men of the upper class, who held power, respectability, and masculine virtues in society, used class to mask their sexuality. In this sense the upper-class position enabled men to portray a public identity that abided by the constraints of heteronormativity despite their homosexual desire, which remained suppressed for fear of losing their power within society. Even when homosexual men displayed effeminate traits that opposed masculine ideals, the upper-class position worked to reinforce their heteronormativity, showing the power of capitalism’s class system to infiltrate and influence a man’s identity. E. M. Forster’s Maurice and A. T. Fitzroy’s Despised and Rejected provide two examples of how the upper-class position worked to mask the recognition of male homosexuality by society in early twentieth–century England. Written in 1913, but not published until after Forster’s death in 1971, Maurice has become a canonical text in the gay literary tradition. Through depictions of male intraclass and cross-class relationships, this novel suggests that class position worked to maintain a public heteronormative identity where stepping outside of strict class boundaries could disrupt the very thing which enabled one to keep one’s power. While the posthumous publication of Maurice complicates its place as a representation of homosexual identity and British society at the time, A. T. Fitzroy’s Despised and Rejected gives a clearer picture of both through its focus on homosexuality and pacifism. Through this investigation of homosexuality and pacifism, Fitzroy acknowledges a connection between male sexual identity and a refusal to go to war. While this failure to participate in militarism indicates a man’s opposition to heteronormativity, particularly normative masculinity, the upper-class position redirects this difference away from homosexual identity and onto effeminacy. This effeminacy does not indicate homosexual identity, but rather a failure to embody masculine ideals of the time. Ultimately, both novels portray the power of the upper-class position to define identity by supporting heteronormativity and masking homosexuality.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

This thesis is looking at the issue of registered partnerships from the perspective of ethics and law. The main objective of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive perspective on registered partnership problematic and on other current issues related to this topic. The work is divided into two parts. The theoretical part deals with the history of homosexuality from ancient Greece to modern times, furthermore it focuses on the actual registered partnership and the regularization process of the necessary law in the Czech Republic. It covers a topic of religion perspective on homosexuality, the issue of child adoptions by homosexual couples and not least the blood donation problematic. The practical part deals with the social investigational survey, its processing and reporting the results. The aim of the social survey was to obtain a view on the homosexual minority from the society and get their opinions about the questions analyzed in the theoretical part. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This thesis analyzes Czech legislation regulating relationships of same-sex couples and their options regarding family founding provided by Czech legal regulation. The aim of the thesis is to analyze and evaluate current Czech legislation and put it into international context. To attain this aim, this thesis uses three different approaches. Firstly it provides conclusions of conterporary social sciences in the field of parenthood of same-sex couples and impacts of homosexual parenting onto various areas of psychological and social adjustment od children. Secondly, the comparative study of czech legislation and legislations of Norway, United Kingdom, Germany and Slovakia is included. Thirdly, relevant cases decided by European Court of Human Rights are analyzed. Upon the findings provided by these analysis, the thesis evaluate suitability of czech legal regulation and propose possible future development in this area.

Abstract This is a study of law and language; in particular an investigation into the language of judgments. The focus is on judgments as texts authored by judges. The main thinkers chosen as the theoretical basis are not experts in law – Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Norman Fairclough and Hayden White, for example. The reason for this choice is to consider the language of law from insights outside of law. Topics such as rhetoric, narrative, critical discourse analysis, intertextuality, interpretive communities, the monologic voice, oppositional reading, and power relations are seldom found in mainstream legal literature. The position taken is that judgments are texts which are no more privileged (simply because they are legal texts) than any others that a society creates. However, judgments are viewed by some as being special societal texts, coated with a patina of mystique because they are dealing with inviolate legal principles. The patina is removed enough to suggest that judges use various linguistic processes to shape their judgments in ways no different from other authors, notwithstanding that they are writing about ‘the law’. Judges are rhetoricians who use rhetoric to shape the facts, choose the most expedient legal principle, and incorporate views of society expedient to their opinion. The thrust of this study is to locate rhetoric at work within a specific sphere. The corpus consists of forty-four cases over a seventy-five year period dealing with sexual orientation. This area of law was chosen for a number of reasons. It is self-contained and lends itself to detailed examination. The topic is emotive which means more rhetorical techniques are at play than in a fairly technical area of law. There have been significant changes in the way sexual orientation has been treated in law over the years. It is interesting to trace how rhetoric facilitated that change. Lastly, we see how a judicial hegemony deals with an apolitical, splintered minority. Any categorical conclusions are impossible in an exploration of this kind. The findings, however, indicate that judges are not as restricted as is generally considered and that their judgments are shaped by employing linguistic techniques available to writers of both fact and fiction. The intention is to provide a fresh way of reading judgments, where observations gleaned in one area can be applied to other areas of law.

In the first two months of 2014, LGBTI rights were dealt heavy blows in two African countries. On 7 January, Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan signed into law a bill that criminalises same-sex unions, with prison sentences of up to fourteen years. This same law sentences any person or organisation that funds in any way the registration and operation of gay organisations, clubs, or societies to a prison sentence of ten years. A month later, the president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, officially assented to a more draconian bill which imposes penalties as high as life imprisonment for people engaging in consensual same-sex sexual activity. There has been a stark increase in the passing of repressive gender laws on the continent in the last decade. This is a qualitative inductive study that sets out to research the factors causing the increase of gender repressive law making in African states between 2009 and 2014. The study sets out to dissect the 2014 Anti-homosexuality bills of 2014 in Uganda and Nigeria as case studies. Using a multi-layered analysis approach the study tests out the influences leading to the increase of LGBTI intolerant laws categorised into national, regional and international impacts. I argue that strategic national interests are central in explaining the frequency, urgency and intensity of anti-homosexuality vitriol in some African states.

Esta pesquisa elege o materialismo histórico-dialético como método de análise de ques-tões contemporâneas da homossexualidade e sua relação com o Judiciário brasileiro. Articula paradigmas marxianos, marxistas e feministas, por meio da interdisciplinaridade do direito, da sociologia, da antropologia, da filosofia e das ciências da linguagem, para compreender o fenômeno LGBT (lésbicas, gays, bissexuais, transexuais e transgêneros) que mobiliza indivíduos na reivindicação por promoção, efetivação e proteção de direitos humanos. Recorre aos conceitos de fetichismo da mercadoria, fetichismo jurídi-co, forma jurídica, contrato e gênero, na perspectiva da História, para compreender e promover a desnaturalização de processos sociais e situá-los na base econômica da so-ciedade em face da luta de classes. Posiciona o direito na superestrutura, onde localiza também o direito civil, o direito de família e os direitos humanos, para desnudar seus processos discursivos ideológicos e, logo, práticos. Empreende uma crítica marxista dos direitos humanos ao tomar como objeto decisões do Supremo Tribunal Federal (STF) e do Superior Tribunal de Justiça (STJ), respectivamente, sobre o reconhecimento da união estável entre pessoas do mesmo sexo e a autorização de conversão em casamento de união estável entre duas lésbicas. / This research chooses historic-dialectic materialism as a method of analyzing contem-porary issues concerning homosexuality and its relation to the Brazilian Judiciary System. It formulates Marxian, Marxist and feminist paradigms, through the interdisciplinarity of law, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and language sciences, to comprehend the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and transgender) phenomenon that mobilizes individuals in the claim for promotion, effectuation and protection of human rights. It resorts to the concepts of commodity fetishism, legal fetishism, judicial form, contract and gender, in the historical perspective, to comprehend and promote the de-naturalization of social processes and place them in the economical base of society in light of class struggle. It positions the law in the superstructure, where it also finds civil law, family law and human rights, to unveil its discursive ideological and, therefore, practical processes. It undertakes a Marxist critique of human rights by taking as object Brazils Federal Supreme Court (STF) and Superior Court of Justice (STJ) decisions, respectively, regarding the recognition of same-sex unions and the authorization of civil union conversion into marriage between two lesbians

Mudanças ocorreram na composição familiar, surgindo as famílias homoparentais, ou seja, casais de pessoas de mesmo sexo que criam filhos. Diante dessa nova realidade cada vez mais visível, tornam-se necessárias a revisão e reconsideração dos conceitos de maternidade e paternidade. Dessa forma, o presente trabalho visa o estudo da homoparentalidade, examinando de que forma os papéis e funções parentais vêm sendo partilhados e regulados pelos membros do casal de pessoas de mesmo sexo que criam filhos. Para tal, foi utilizado o referencial teórico da Psicanálise em Freud e Lacan. Além disso, buscou-se aporte em estudos socioantropológicos da sexualidade, a partir da articulação teórica dos conceitos de homossexualidade, família tradicional e homoparental, função materna e paterna do ponto de vista psicanalítico e sua diferença em relação aos papéis (sociais) parentais. Papel e função parental foram as categorias eleitas para análise de fragmentos de discursos de homossexuais com filhos, colhidos em um estudo socioantropológico / Changes have occurred in household composition, the emerging same-sex families, or same-sex couples raising children. Given this new reality increasingly visible, become necessary to review and reconsideration of concepts of motherhood and fatherhood. Thus, this research aims at studying the homoparenthood, examining how parental roles and functions are being shared and regulated by the members of the pair of same-sex couples raising children. To this end, we used the theoretical framework of psychoanalysis in Freud and Lacan. In addition, we sought input from socioanthropological studies on sexuality, from the theoretical articulation of the concepts of homosexuality, traditional and homoparental family, maternal and paternal functions of the psychoanalytic point of view and its difference in relation to the roles (social) parents. Parental role and function categories were chosen for analysis of fragments of speeches by homosexual persons with children, gathered in a socio-anthropological study

The aim of this study is to from a qualitative perspective develop a deeper understanding of how religiously conservative homosexuals with deeply held religious views, experience and tackle the conflict between their religiousity and sexuality. I am also interested in how this conflict might contribute to psychological distress, if at all. To settle these curiosities the essay will address the following questions: how does two homosexual orthodox jews and one homosexual muslim experience and handle the conflict between their sexuality and their religious convictions? And: Does this conflict contribute to psychological distress? If so, how does it manifest? As indicated by the first question, the study will only include a small sample size of three persons. The aforementioned people are portrayed in the documentaries ”A Jihad for love” or ”Trembling before G-d”, and their stories constitute the material that will be used to answer the research questions. To analyse this material I have chosen an inductive approach, and Festingers theory regarding cognitive dissonance is later implemented. This theory suggests that human beings constantly strive towards a sense of consistensy, and when incoherencies appear the person is automatically motivated to solve or relieve them. The result of the study found that the sample size prioritized their religiousity over their sexuality and they all described the experience of the conflict between the two identity aspects in negative terms. To handle this discrepancy two of the research subjects had tried to change their sexual attractions, or is still trying to. The third person balanced their sexual and religious identity and sought solace in LGBT events whilst staying married to her husband and engaging in orthodox jewish life. The study also manages to establish a link between the aforementioned conflict and psychological distress.