Seeing Sexuality: State Development and the Fragmented Status of LGBTQ Citizenship

Authors

• Stephen M. Engel, Bates CollegeFollow

Publication Title

The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development

Document Type

Book Chapter

Department or Program

Politics

Publication Date

7-1-2014

Keywords

citizenship, gay, lesbian, LGBTQ, regulation, litigation, employment, marriage, exclusion

Abstract

This chapter lays out the parameters of one developmental approach to sexuality politics in the United States. Whereas much scholarship in LGBTQ politics has focused on public opinion, interest groups, and social movement behavior, this chapter focuses on citizenship as the primary unit of analysis since citizenship, as it connotes a relationship between the individual and the state in which the latter acknowledges the former to fall within its responsibility to regulate and protect, brings the connection between state development and sexual identity to the fore. State institutions have recognized the LGBTQ citizen in distinct ways, often simultaneously, creating frictions among multiple regulatory orders and laws and creating additional opportunity and motivation for social change. The chapter details five such modalities of state recognition and regulation suggesting that the nature of sexual citizenship is contingent on the particular order of authority with which the LGBTQ individual engages.

Comments

Original version is available from the publisher at: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199697915.013.007

Recommended Citation

Engel, Stephen M. "Seeing Sexuality: State Development and the Fragmented Status of LGBTQ Citizenship," The Oxford Handbook of American Political Development, Richard Valelly, Suzanne Mettler, and Robert Lieberman, eds. Oxford University Press, 2014.