Queer Families, Queer Politics: Challenging Culture and the State

by Mary Bernstein, Renate Reimann

Overview

This is the first book about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families that connects issues of gender, sexuality, and the family with the broader issues of social movements, politics, and law.

Chapters address the themes of visibility, transgression, and resistance, as well as the intersection between the personal and political in the contexts of relationships, parenthood, and political activism. Giving special attention to families of color, immigrant, and poor families, the authors examine the risks entailed in coming out and the significance of class, race, and sexual and gender identity in this process. Parenting also creates dilemmas of visibility as queer families negotiate malls and schools as well as the medical, legal, and political institutions that regulate their families.

This book explores how heteronormative and class assumptions influence state polices on parenthood, adoption, and relationships between adults, to question whether the law can meet the needs of queer families. Also discussed is how queer family politics are com-plicated by bisexuality, nonmonagamy, and gender nonconformity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231116909
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	05/15/2001
Series:	Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	1.19(w) x 9.00(h) x 6.00(d)
Lexile:	1400L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Mary Bernstein is assistant professor in the School of Justice Studies at Arizona State University.

Renate Reimann is a research scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Table of Contents

1. Queer Families and the Politics of Visibility, by Mary Bernstein and Renate Reimann
Part 1. Relationships
2. A Member of the Funeral, by Nancy Anne Naples
3. Weddings Without Marriage: Making Sense of Lesbian and Gay Commitment Rituals, by Ellen Lewin
4. We Can See Them, But We Can't Hear Them: LGBT Members of African American Families, by Michael Bennett and Juan Battle
5. Talking Freaks: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families on Daytime Talk TV, by Joshua Gamson
6. One Man's Story of Being Gay and Diné (Navajo): A Study in Resiliency, by Margaret A. Waller and Ronald McAllen-Walker
7. Family Secrets, or How to Become a Bisexual Alien Without Really Trying, by Elizabeth Randolph
8. A Place Called Home: A Queer Political Economy of Mexican Immigrant Men's Family Experiences, by Lionel Cantú
9. Constituting Nonmonogamies, by R. Jeffrey Ringer
10. Communication in Asian American Families with Queer Members: A Relational Dialectics Perspective, by Gus A. Yep, Karen E. Lovaas, and Phillip C. Ho
Part 2. Parenthood
11. Affording our Families: Class Issues in Family Formation, by Terry Boggis
12. Should Lesbians Count as Infertile Couples?: Antilesbian Discrimination in Assisted Reproduction, by Julien S. Murphy
13. Protecting our Parent-Child Relationships: Understanding the Strengths and Weaknesses of Second-Parent Adoption, by Susan Dalton
14. My Daddy Loves Your Daddy: A Gay Father Encounters a Social Movement, by John Miller
15. Alma Mater: Family 'Outings' and the Making of the Modern Other Mother (MOM), by Maureen Sullivan
16. Lesbian Mothers at Work, by Renate Reimann
17. "Aside from one little tiny detail, we are so incredibly normal": Perspectives of Children in Lesbian Stepfamilies, by Janet M. Wright
Part 3. Political Activism
18. Building Common Ground: Strategies for Grassroots Organizing on Same-Sex Marriage, by Irene Javors with Renate Reimann
19. "What if?": The Legal Consequences of Marriage and the Legal Needs of Lesbian and Gay Male Couples, by David Chambers
20. Take My Domestic Partner, Please: Gays and Marriage in the Era of the Visible, by Suzanna Walters
21. Defense, Morality, Civil Rights, and Family: The Evolution of Lesbian and Gay Issues in the U.S. Congress, by Donald P. Haider-Markel
22. Political Organizing and the Limits of Civil Rights: Gay Marriage and Queer Families, by Randall Halle
23. Transgenderism and Sexual Orientation: More than a Marriage of Convenience?, by Mary Coombs
24. Gender, Queer Family Policies, and the Limits of Law, by Mary Bernstein

Editorial Reviews

of particular value in this readable book are chapters on Asian American, Mexican immigrant, African American, and Native American Families

Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education

Linking the microdynamics of family, gender, and sexuality to the macrodynamics of politics and the law, 24 contributions address such topics as the creation of intimate relationships among queer adults and with families of origin; queer parents' disparate access to institutions that support families and the ways in which children force the issue of being visible; and the connection between the visibility and aspirations of queer families, and political and legal change. The articles argue that queer families not only challenge culture and the state but also, because of their diversity, complicate lesbian and gay politics. Edited by Bernstein (justice studies, Arizona State U.) and Reimann, who is currently conducting a cross-cultural study of dance and club cultures and the popular music industry. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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