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E-book
Author Krutzsch, Brett, 1979- author.

Title Dying to be normal : gay martyrs and the transformation of American sexual politics / Brett Krutzsch
Published New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019]
©2019

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Description 1 online resource (xiii, 249 pages)
Contents Cover; Dying to Be Normal; Copyright; Dedication; Contents ; List of Illustrations; Acknowledgments; Introduction: Memorialization, Gay Assimilation, and American Religion; 1. "The Gay M.L.K.": Harvey Milk; 2. The "Crucifixion" of "Anyone's Gay Son": Matthew Shepard; 3. The "Epidemic of Bullying and Gay Teen Suicide": Tyler Clementi and It Gets Better; 4. "The Place Where Two Discriminations Meet": Race, Gender, and the Threat of Violence; Epilogue: The Pulse Nightclub Massacre and the Queer Potential of Memorialization; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index
Summary "On October 14, 1998, five thousand people gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to mourn the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who had been murdered in Wyoming eight days earlier. Politicians and celebrities addressed the crowd and the televised national audience to share their grief with the country. Never before had a gay citizen's murder elicited such widespread outrage or concern from straight Americans. In Dying to Be Normal, Brett Krutzsch argues that gay activists memorialized people like Shepard as part of a political strategy to present gays as similar to the country's dominant class of white, straight Christians. Through an examination of publicly mourned gay deaths, Krutzsch counters the common perception that LGBT politics and religion have been oppositional and reveals how gay activists used religion to bolster the argument that gays are essentially the same as straights, and therefore deserving of equal rights. Krutzsch's analysis turns to the memorialization of Shepard, Harvey Milk, Tyler Clementi, Brandon Teena, and F.C. Martinez, to campaigns like the It Gets Better Project, and national tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting to illustrate how activists used prominent deaths to win acceptance, influence political debates over LGBT rights, and encourage assimilation. Throughout, Krutzsch shows how, in the fight for greater social inclusion, activists relied on Christian values and rhetoric to portray gays as upstanding Americans. As Krutzsch demonstrates, gay activists regularly reinforced a white Protestant vision of acceptable American citizenship that often excluded people of color, gender-variant individuals, non-Christians, and those who did not adhere to Protestant Christianity's sexual standards. The first book to detail how martyrdom has influenced national debates over LGBT rights, Dying to Be Normal establishes how religion has shaped gay assimilation in the United States and the mainstreaming of particular gays as "normal" Americans."-- Provided by publisher
"The first book to detail how gay martyrs influenced national debates over LGBT rights, Dying to be Normal establishes how religion shaped gay assimilation in the United States and the mainstreaming of particular gays as "normal" Americans worthy of equal rights"-- Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes Online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on March 08, 2019)
Subject Gay activists -- United States
Martyrs -- United States
Sex -- United States
Homosexuality -- Christianity -- United States -- Religious aspects
RELIGION -- Sexuality & Gender Studies.
RELIGION -- Religion, Politics & State.
HISTORY -- Social History.
BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY -- Social Scientists & Psychologists.
POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Cultural Policy.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Popular Culture.
Gay activists
Homosexuality -- Religious aspects
Martyrs
Sex
United States
Genre/Form Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2018051507
ISBN 9780190685225
0190685220
0190685247
9780190685249
0190685239
9780190685232