Suffering As the Path to Acceptance: Parents of Gay and Lesbian Young People Negotiating Catholicism in Italy

Bertone, Chiara; Franchi, Marina

doi:10.1080/1550428x.2014.857496

Cited by 41 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Thanks to the recognition that "the principles of Catholicism are part of the historical heritage of the Italian people" (Gazzetta Ufficiale, 1985), the Vatican has been authorized to intervene on moral and critical issues that come to the fore in the political debate, and to reaffirm the unquestionable natural order of gender and sexuality in response to the challenges of modernity, such as the recognition of same-sex unions and parenting (Bertone & Franchi, 2014;Fassin, 2010). 6 The crucial and vital influence of the Vatican on the Italian political system has been played since the aftermath of World War II, mainly through the endorsement of its views by the Democrazia Cristiana (DC), the major Christian democratic political party, which had a leading part in the Italian Parliament until the early 1990s.…”

Section: These Views Of the Catholic Church Have Had Considerable Infmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Fundamentalism and Heteronormativity in the Political Discussion About Lesbian and Gay Parenthood

et al. 2018

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in reifying the uniqueness of heterosexual relationships and parenthood.Lesbian and gay parenthood was the preeminent bone of contention over the three-yearslong debate because of Section number 5 of the draft bill, which would recognize the right of one partner to adopt the biological children of the other partner, thus supposedly introducing a view of the family independent of the two genders (Garbagnoli, 2014). As a result, the section of the bill on adoption rights was so controversial that it had to be deleted in order for the law to pass, thus continuing to alienate lesbians and gays from kinship (Weston, 1991) and reasserting the control of heteronormativity over Italian politics despite the fact that the country has partially filled the legislative gap on this matter. This article investigates the parliamentary debate on the recognition of same-sex couples and their children that took place in Italy during the period from Specifically, through a Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 2001(Fairclough , 2003 of the speeches of Parliamentarians who opposed the section of the bill concerning lesbian and gay parenthood, the study addresses the following research questions: What are the discursive strategies currently used by the hegemonic heteronormative power to maintain the exclusive heterosexual access to reproduction and kinship? Did the hegemonic model of gender intelligibility inform legislative processes relating to family life and, if so, how?By framing the analysis within a poststructuralist feminist framework, the paper sheds light on the practices of power-knowledge (Foucault, 1978) that have been deployed to reallocate reproduction and kinship within the heterosexual matrix (Butler, 1990) once the parliamentary debate in Italy issued a challenge to the hegemonic heteronormative power. Moreover, this research offers a contribution to the understanding of how the conservative resistance to non-heterosexual families supports the institutionalization of sexualities and reproduction within the patriarchal order, which creates normative standards on the practices of motherhood (Hays, 1996;Rich, 1977) and, at

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Section: These Views Of the Catholic Church Have Had Considerable Infmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gender Fundamentalism and Heteronormativity in the Political Discussion About Lesbian and Gay Parenthood

et al. 2018

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“…The Vatican's reliance on a natural order of gender and sexuality, established since the foundation of Catholic theology, has been reaffirmed during the twentieth century in response to the challenges of modernity, such as the recognition of same-sex unions and parenting (Bertone & Franchi, 2014;Fassin, 2010).…”

Section: Hegemonic Heteronormativity In Italymentioning

confidence: 99%

Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Homonormative Discourses of LGBTQ Activists About Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Lasio

Serri

Ibba

et al. 2018

Journal of Homosexuality

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LGBTQ activists have a crucial role in fighting sexuality-based discrimination. However, homonormativity can lead activists to adhere to hegemonic heteronormativity, thus threatening their efforts to widen the concept of family. Drawing on the Gramscian notion of hegemony, this article analyzes the notion of heteronormativity and its homonormative facet as a form of hegemony that impacts activists, sustaining the premises of heteronormativity and seeking inclusion within such norms. This research investigates the hegemonic heteronormative assumptions that endure in the discourses of Italian LGBTQ activists when they talk about lesbian and gay parenting. Findings highlight the presence of heteronormative traces in their discourses, namely in terms of access to reproduction, the parents' place within the regime of gender, and the right standards for child rearing. Hegemonic heteronormativity appears in multiform ways, and as largely consensual even to those it more directly oppresses, making it difficult to detect and therefore to deconstruct.

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“…On one hand, the ambivalent attitude towards the party of (part of) my Italian family of origin, reflecting perhaps a cultural trait or the Italian way to deal with sexual diversity which is still deeply affected by a Catholic background, even for those families who are not religious at all. In this respect, Bertone and Franchi (2014) argue that "a narrative of suffering plays an important role, providing a bridge between Christian notions of mercy and therapeutic narratives of authentic love, while preserving parents' privileged position as heterosexuals" (Bertone and Franchi, 2014, p. 9). Whichever the case, my Italian parents, while very happy about our relationship, were not particularly keen to be involved in a sort of public and collective celebration of it.…”

Section: Reflexive Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unconventional relationships, positive marginalities and citizenship

Pratesi

2018

Dig.

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Long distance relationships and caring at a distance may be connected with emotional and psychological exhaustion but also gratification, reward and empowerment; above all, they possess important implications in terms of social justice, equality and citizenship. The expression ‘world families’ (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2014) includes a heterogeneous and tension-filled set of social actors who have in common the potential to bridge traditional distinctions between public and private, centre and periphery, national and international, able-bodied and physically/cognitively impaired, heterosexual and homosexual, bypassing dichotomous ideas of inclusion/exclusion which typically characterise the concept of citizenship. These families represent a group of very different social actors, including couples of mixed cultures and ethnicities, low-paid migrant workers, skilled migrant workers, asylum seekers, refugees, distant families, etc. who challenge our culturally homogenous understanding of family and society and are defined therefore as ‘pioneers of cosmopolitanism’ and cultural diversity. Drawing on recent work on families, relationships, intimacies and caring for distant others and contextualising it within the specific and still unexplored context of Living Apart Together (LAT) same-sex couples, this article examines the moral, sociological and institutional geographies of these less visible chains of care and affection and their unequally entitled rights and visibility. The literature review is combined with auto-ethnographic work analysing and discussing the case of a married, same-sex, transnational, Living Apart Together (LAT) couple. This article suggests that by looking at what happens at the level of emotion-based, micro-situated interactions we can get some crucial insights into the changing nature of families, intimacies and relationships and their multiple implications in terms of social inclusion, entitlement to rights/citizenship and social change. It is a form of relational, emotion-based and micro-situated social inclusion and entitlement to rights/citizenship which is occurring, on a daily basis, in the interstices of people’s interactions even when such change still meets several obstacles at the structural, political and institutional level.

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Suffering As the Path to Acceptance: Parents of Gay and Lesbian Young People Negotiating Catholicism in Italy

Cited by 41 publications

References 26 publications

Gender Fundamentalism and Heteronormativity in the Political Discussion About Lesbian and Gay Parenthood

Gender Fundamentalism and Heteronormativity in the Political Discussion About Lesbian and Gay Parenthood

Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Homonormative Discourses of LGBTQ Activists About Lesbian and Gay Parenting

Unconventional relationships, positive marginalities and citizenship

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