The Gay Agenda

Gerald Walton (PhD, Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario) focuses on intersectionality studies, power, privilege, and educational policy in his research and teaching of undergraduate and graduate students. He is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

The «gay agenda» is a rhetorical strategy deployed by the religious right and other social conservatives to magnify fear and hostility of queers. Queers are accused, among other things, of strategizing to recruit children into sexually deviant lifestyles; dismantling family and marriage as cornerstones of civilization; and forcing the entertainment industry and court systems to do their bidding. Queers certainly do have an agenda but it is not the one that the religious right claims it is. It is to assert their presence in the public space; claim and name their identities; and strategize for social justice in law, schools, and workplaces. The Gay Agenda: Claiming Space, Identity, and Justice claims and reclaims the language of «agenda» and turns the rhetoric of the religious right on its ear. The contributors provide insightful and sharp commentary on gay agendas for human rights, marriage and family, cultural influences, schooling and education, and politics and law.

The Gay Agenda: Claiming Space, Identity, and Justice claims and reclaims the language of «agenda» and turns the rhetoric of the religious right on its ear. The contributors provide insightful and sharp commentary on gay agendas for human rights, marriage and family, cultural influences, schooling and education, and politics and law.

Contents: Susan W. Woolley: LGBTQ Student Agendas: Voice, Dialogue, and Visibility - Ramón Robles-Fernández: Becoming an LGBTQ Activist: The Story of a Young Queer Activist - Blair Niblett/Casey Oraa: The Gay Agenda in Ontario Catholic Schools: Gay-Straight Alliances as Activist Education - Avory Faucette: Fucking the Binary for Social Change: Our Radically Queer Agenda - Lisa Weems: The Quare Agenda of RuPaul's Drag U - Ryan Conrad: Damn Right We're Here to Destroy Marriage! - Michelle Walks: Raising Queerlings: Parenting With a Queer Art of Failure - Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour: Building Queer Cultural Dominance - Billy Hébert: «Not Gay as in Happy but Queer as in Fuck You»: Examining Queer Activist Spaces of Montreal and Toronto - Gloria Filax: Queer Activism and the Severely Normal Agenda in Alberta,1900-Present: A Continuing Saga - Joshua C. Collins/Tiffany McElmurry: «Right» and Wrong: LGBTQ and Ally Experiences at a Large, Southern U.S. University - Wayne J. Martino: «Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin»: The Clash of Religious and Sexual Minority Rights in Ontario Catholic Schools - Tonya D. Callaghan: My Real «Gay Agenda»: Exposing the Holy Homophobia of Catholic Schools - Brian Burtch/Rebecca Haskell: Learning Gender, Sexuality, and the «Gay Agenda» in Schools - Renée DePalma: Dismantling Folk Theories and Claiming Space Within a Social Justice Agenda - Jenna McWilliams: Queering Educational Research and the Politics of «Conservatively Queer»: Sexmuteness in American Public Schools - Warren J. Blumenfeld: My «Gay Agenda»: A Response to Focus on the Family - Catherine Taylor: Our Right to Choose: Religious Conservatives Versus LGBTQ Inclusive Schools - Donn Short: Queering Schools, Gay-Straight Alliances, and the Law.