For family, for friends, for (true) love

Abstract

We examine promotional materials produced by two organisations in Singapore, TrueLove.Is and Pink Dot, to investigate how these two groups employ discourses of love to support their opposing views regarding the reconcilability of Christianity and same-sex desire. TrueLove.Is is a Christian ministry that encourages LGB Christian Singaporeans to “come out, come home”, while Pink Dot is Singapore’s largest and foremost LGBTQ movement. We identify similarities and differences in their persuasive discourse strategies regarding ideas of love as discussed by lesbian Christian pastors. Although they position the idea of love similarly, their agendas are completely polarised. TrueLove.Is takes the position that non-heteronormative activity is ungodly and sinful, while Pink Dot offers a reconciliation between Christianity and same-sex desire. We employ Peterson’s (2016) approach to homophobic discourse analysis based on Systemic Functional Linguistics and a comparative discourse analysis to investigate the ideologies that inform the two organisations’ materials about the treatment of LGBTQ Singaporeans.