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Lesbian, gay and bisexual teachers negotiations of civil partnership and schools: ambivalent attachments to religion and secularism

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posted on 2023-03-02, 15:28 authored by Aoife NearyAoife Neary, BREDA GRAY, MARY O'SULLIVANMARY O'SULLIVAN
As legal structures for same-sex relationships are introduced in many contexts, the politics of sexuality are negotiated along religious/secular lines. Religious and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBT-Q) rights are pitted against one another such that LGBT-Q lives often assumed to be secular. Schools are crucibles of intermingling religious, secular and equality discourses and this complexity is carefully negotiated by LGBT-Q teachers in their everyday lives. Drawing on a study with LGB teachers as they entered into a Civil Partnership in Ireland (a legal structure in place for five years prior to enactment of Marriage Equality in 2015), this paper captures a ‘structure of feeling’ – new cultural work done as sexuality norms were in a state of flux. The teachers’ accounts unravel the religious/secular binary and provide insight of universal interest into the ambivalent, messy ways in which the politics of sexuality are (re)negotiated across the overlapping social fields of religion and education.

History

Publication

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 39 (3), pp. 434-447

Publisher

Taylor and Francis

Note

peer-reviewed

Rights

This is an Author's Original Manuscript of an article whose final and definitive form, the Version of Record, has been published in Discourse: Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education 2017 copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2016.1276432

Language

English

Department or School

  • Sociology
  • School of Education
  • Physical Education and Sports Science

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