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Editorial Board
The SAGE Encyclopedia of SJ~
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Editor
Abbie E. Goldberg
LGBTQ Studies
Clark University
VJ-th
Editorial Board
Katherine R. Allen
Virginia Tech
Meg John Barker
The Open University
Jose A. Bauermeister
University of Michigan
Lisa Diamond
University of Utah
Nancy J. Knauer
Temple University
Ramona Faith Oswald
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Edited by
Abbie E. Goldberg
Clark University

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542 Homonormativity
Glueck, C. L., & Reschly, A. L. (2014) . Examining
congruence within school-family partnerships:
Definition, importance, and current measurement
approaches. Psychology in the Schools, 51, 296-315.
doi:10.1002/pits.21745
Kosciw, J. G., & Diaz, E. M. (2008). Involved, invisible,
ignored: The experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender parents and their children in our nation's
K-12 schools. New York, NY: Gay, Lesbian & Straight
Education Network.
Olivos, E. M., Gallagher, R. J., & Aguilar, J. (2010).
Fostering collaboration with culturally and
linguistically diverse families of children with
moderate to severe disabilities. Journal of Educational
and Psychological Consultation, 20, 28-40.
doi:10.1080/104 74410903535372
HOMONORMATIVITY
Scholars and activists use the term homonormativ-
ity in many ways. Transgender scholars and activ-
ists used it to highlight the normalization of gays
and lesbians during the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender (LGBT) rights movement in the 1990s.
A more prevalent use of the term is associated with
heteronormativity and queer theory. Homonorma-
tivity has a distinctive relationship with heteronor-
mativity. Queer scholars and activists have
examined sites of homonormativity in queer poli-
tics and culture, including representations of queer
bodies in the media. Critiquing homonormativity
is an important component of queer theory in
LGBTQ studies and activism.
Variants of Homonormativity
Theorist and filmmaker Susan Stryker is often
credited with coining the term homonormativity.
Stryker's use of the term is concerned with the way
that gays and lesbians became the primary identi-
ties represented in the LGBT rights movements of
the 1980s and 1990s. The "T" in LGBT was too
often an afterthought. In Stryker's variation, homo-
normativity drew attention to the ways that queer
activism focused almost exclusively on homosexu-
ality. With this focus, transgender was juxtaposed
against norms of homosexuality, which were not
the norms that transgender activists needed to be
fighting against. For example, organizations like
Queer Nation and ACT UP focused on programs
and politics that generally benefited gay men.
Lisa Duggan, a social and cultural analyst, ini-
tially articulated the contemporary idea of homo-
normativity. Duggan argued that homonormativity
is a politic of queer assimilation. Homonormativ-
ity is antiqueer in the ways that it reifies heteronor-
mativity, and it is further understood as providing
cultural norms for the right way to be gay and
lesbian. In this capacity, homonormativity perpetu-
ates gender, sexuality, and racial stereotypes for
gays and lesbians. Homonormativity is best under-
stood in relation to heteronormativity, where
queer politics and activism arise.
Heteronormativity, Homonormativity,
Queer Politics, and Activism
Heteronormativity is the culturally constructed
assumption that everyone is heterosexual, or
straight. Because everyone is presumed straight,
the world is designed for straight people. All of our
cultural institutions and social structures privilege
heterosexual relational configurations. Queer, in
the subversive sense, threatens heteronormativity
through doing gender, sexuality, and relationships
in ways that disrupt what is understood and taken
for granted. Although queer is often used as an
umbrella term for non-normative genders and
sexualities, it is important to note that not all gays
and lesbians are queer in the subversive sense of
queer theory.
As the HIV/AIDS pandemic became clear in the
1980s, queer activism of difference-"We're here,
we're queer, get used to it"-gave way to a
reformed gay movement predicated on normaliz-
ing gays and lesbians: "We are your sons and
daughters, your brothers and sisters. We are no
different from you." By the 1990s, gay and lesbian
activism had fixed on equality in access to mar-
riage and military service. Homonormativity can
be understood as gays and lesbians embracing and
embodying the norms of heteronormativity. When
gays and lesbians mimic straight couples and
perform the culturally expected gender for their
biological bodies, they may avoid punishment and,
at times, be socially rewarded.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), a promi-
nent LGBT civil rights organization, has been criti-
cized as steadfastly homonormative in its activism
pursuits. Openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual indi-
viduals have been allowed to serve in the military
since 2011, and in 2015 the Pentagon announced
that it will allow transgender members to serve as
of 2016. In June 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court
held that states must allow same-sex couples to
marry and that they must recognize same-sex mar-
riages from other states. Queer critiques of the
HRC have denounced setting normative social
goals, such as marriage equality and military inclu-
sion, which do not represent the concerns of all
LGBTQ people. Queer activists emphasize the
LGBTQ people whose best interests are not served
by activism founded in homonormativity such as
transgender discrimination; homelessness among
LGBTQ youth; job and housing discrimination
based on sexuality and gender; bisexual erasure;
and inequalities at the intersections of race, gender,
sexuality, socioeconomics, and nationalism. Cen-
tralizing activism efforts on homonormative politi-
cal pursuits constructs normative stereotypes of
who LGBTQ people are, what they want, and how
they behave. These stereotypes are often examined
in the context of media representations.
Homonormativity and the Media
Early film portrayals of non-normative sexualities
were often villainous (e.g., Cruising). There was
scarce representation of LGBT identities in popu-
lar media until the 1990s, and then it was often as
comic relief (e.g., My Best Friend's Wedding), fod-
der for tragedy (e.g., Philadelphia), or an oddity
(e.g., The Crying Game). In the late 1990s, Will
and Grace became a popular, award-winning com-
edy that featured gay male characters balanced
with (straight) female counterparts. Will Truman,
the titular character, was unlucky in love and easily
desexualized. Will and Grace was quickly criti-
cized for its heteronormativity-a gay television
show for straight people to watch.
Homonormativity 543
In 2000, Showtime's Queer as Folk presented a
group of five friends who were all gay, male,
White, sexual beings. The portrayal of gay sexual-
ity was both praised and criticized. In accomplish-
ing what Will and Grace could not, gay sexuality
in Queer as Folk could be conceived of as normal
and unremarkable-a form of homonormativity.
The comedy series Modern Family premiered in
2009 with a gay couple, Cameron and Mitchell,
who eventually adopt a child and get married.
Their relationship arguably illustrates a second
variant of homonormativity in the media: gay
people who model their lives after straight people.
Beyond the heteronormativity reified through the
homonormative gay characters, Cameron and
Mitchell present a model of gays for consump-
tion-male, White, successful, and relationally
gendered as complementary. This perpetuates het-
eronormativity through modeling homonormativ-
ity. Pervasive homonormativity in popular media
proliferates stereotypes of what it means to be gay,
how to be gay correctly, and that-in the end-it
is quite normal. This disadvantages LGBTQ peo-
ple who do not-because they are unable or do not
want to--conform to homonormative stereotypes.
Homonormativity and LGBTQ Studies
Homonormativity offers a useful critical perspec-
tive for deconstructing embodied heteronormativ-
ity. Variations of what homonormativity means
may initially seem disparate. However, each render-
ing of homonormativity provides a more nuanced
space from which to interrogate the heteronorma-
tive world in which we live. Scholars have long
critiqued queer theory and its ancillaries as too
complex and limited. However, the critical theoreti-
cal values of the discourse that queer theory has
offered, such as heteronormativity and homonor-
mativity, remain beneficial tools for thinking about
social constructions of culture and society in
LGBTQ studies activism and scholarship.
Derek M. Bolen
See also Closet, The; Coming out, Disclosure, and
Passing; Gender Binaries; Heteronormativity; Queer
Politics; Queer Theory; Sexual Norms and Practices;
Stealth (Transgender Passing)
544 Homophobia
Further Readings
Duggan, L. (2002) . The new homonormativity: The
sexual politics of neoliberalism. In R. Castronovo &
D. D. Nelson (Eds.), Materializing democracy: Toward
a revitalized cultural politics (pp. 175-194). Durham,
NC: Duke University Press.
Duggan, L. (2003 ). The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism,
cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Boston,
MA: Beacon Press.
Puar, J. K. (2006) . Mapping U.S. homonormativities.
Gender, Place & Culture, 13(1), 67-88 .
Stryker, S. (2008). Transgender history, homonormativity,
and disciplinarity. Radical History Review, 100(2008),
145-157. doi:10.1215/01636545-2007-026
HOMOPHOBIA
Homophobia is a contemporary social scientific
term coined in the field of psychology to describe
negative attitudes toward nonheterosexuals and
nonheterosexuality. It has been characterized in a
multitude of ways including aversion, disgust, fear,
or hatred of homosexuals (gay men and lesbians)
and homosexuality, which may be accompanied by
anti-homosexual hostility. The term homophobia
provided language for a phenomenon that reversed
the dominant approach to homosexuality as psy-
chopathological. Research turned from treating
homosexual people in therapy to interrogating
homophobia as a construct. Homophobia is under-
stood to operate at multiple levels in society, from
individuals to institutions. Although the social and
cultural significance of the construct of homopho-
bia is important, recent scholarship has called for
a reexamination of the term and construct.
The Pathology of Homosexuality and
Naming of Homophobia
From the first edition of the American Psychiatric
Association's (APA's) Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1952,
homosexuality was listed as a diagnosable form of
psychopathology (i.e., mental illness). The result,
clinically, was that no matter the nature of a
homosexual patient's issue or problem, homosexu-
ality as psychopathological was the focus of treat-
ment. Issues or problems that homosexual patients
brought to the psychoanalytic couches of the
1950s and 1960s were subjugated to homosexual-
ity itself; that is, any issue or problem was regarded
as stemming from the person's being homosexual.
Instead of exploring issues or problems that
patients perceived to be primary, psychologists
were trained to focus on homosexuality as the pri-
mary concern and pursued treatment as such.
Several years prior to the APA's historic removal
of homosexuality from the DSM in 1974, George
Weinberg-a psychotherapist who was trained,
practicing, and doing research in the era of homo-
sexuality as pathology-coined the term homopho-
bia. Weinberg, a heterosexual man, conceived of
his homophobia construct after reflecting on the
way that many other psychotherapists would dis-
play intense and personally negative responses to
coming into contact with homosexuals outside of
their work. He recognized their responses as fear,
as a phobia, and began calling them homophobes.
The word homophobia is the blending and com-
pounding of "homo," from homosexual (the term
homosexual has its own distinctive morphology),
with "phobia," from the Greek word for fear. In
simplified terms, Weinberg's homophobia of the
late 1960s characterized a fear of homosexuals-
likely born of religion-that was predicated on
social fears that homosexuality would spread and
destroy the procreative nuclear family, the bedrock
of society, thereby destroying society. In the fields
of psychology and sociology, the conception of
homophobia helped turn scrutiny away from
homosexuals (as mentally ill, abnormal, deviant)
and toward homophobia as a social issue, as well
as toward those who exhibited homophobic atti-
tudes or behaviors and the effect that homophobia
had on the lives of homosexual individuals.
Researchers, in turn, began to direct their attention
to studying homophobia. As Weinberg continued
to articulate and advance his conception of
homophobia in the late 1960s and early 1970s at
speaking events and in periodicals produced by
and for homosexual people, the construct of
homophobia offered new ways for gay men and
lesbians to conceive of their social locations in
society and provided new language that expanded
the discourse for activists of the gay rights
movement.
Weinberg's 1972 book, Society and the Healthy
Homosexual, was written to be an accessible
resource that interrogated homophobia and psy-
chotherapy. Departing from the position of homo-
sexuality as psychopathology, Weinberg endeavored
to reframe homosexuality as normal and homopho-
bia and psychotherapy as problematic. Two years
later, in 1974, the APA removed homosexuality
from the DSM. Many scholars credit this change,
in part, to the conceptualization of homophobia.
Removing homosexuality from the DSM initiated
a change of perspective that affected the health
fields (e.g., psychotherapy, medicine) and the social
sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology).
Institutionalized Homophobia
Institutionalized homophobia refers to instances
where homophobic or anti-homosexual ideologies
are engrained in the social and cultural institutions
of a society. For example, when homosexuality was
listed as a pathology in the DSM, homosexuality
was positioned as a sickness, abnormal, and bad. It
would not have been advantageous to be seen as
homosexual or socially supportive of homosexual-
ity. The mental health system, like society in gen-
eral, viewed homosexual individuals and
homosexuality as undesirable and in need of treat-
ment to overcome sickness and abnormality. It fol-
lows that when homophobia is institutionalized,
large systems that comprise society are encoded
with ideologies that subjugate, oppress, and often
punish homosexuals and, at times, their allies and
advocates. Again, the removal of homosexuality
from the DSM is often noted as the deinstitution-
alization of homophobia from the field of mental
health. That does not mean that the institution of
mental health is free of homophobia. Instead, it
means that an explicit and radical effort was
undertaken that reconfigured the way that the
institution of mental health privileged one group of
people (heterosexual) while discriminating against
another group of people (nonheterosexual).
Homophobia 545
Other examples of social and cultural institu-
tions that are regularly critiqued for forwarding
homophobic ideologies include religion, govern-
ment, and education. Because many of our con-
temporary laws, ethics, and morals are shaped by
religious teachings, religion is regularly criticized
for institutionalized homophobia. For example,
most gay men and lesbians who live in a culture
dominated by Christianity are familiar with Leviti-
cus 18:22, "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as
with womankind: it is abomination." The wording
is a bit different depending on which version of the
Old Testament it comes from, but the prominent
interpretation of this line remains the same in
mainstream Christianity and Judaism alike-
homosexuality is bad. Thus, a rule from a power-
ful sociocultural institution can influence not just
individual attitudes and beliefs, but whole systems
of laws and governance. This is not to say that all
religions are homophobic or that all religious
people are homophobes. This biblical passage rep-
resents an example of homophobic ideology insti-
tutionalized in a way that makes it difficult to
enact change. It also works to illustrate the way
that institutionalized homophobia reaches from
one institution to others. Both legal and educa-
tional policies have been affected by this instance
of what many characterize as institutionalized
homophobia. Indeed, homosexuality is often sym-
bolically erased (i.e., not mentioned at all, omitting
it from reality) from textbooks in primary and
secondary education, and laws may limit the rights
of homosexuals so that they are rendered unequal
to heterosexuals-both actions serve as examples
of institutionalized homophobia. Those who cri-
tique religion as a site of institutionalized homopho-
bia may point out that it privileges some relational
configurations (heterosexual) at the cost of dis-
criminating against others (homosexual). For
instance, religion has slowed the process of realiz-
ing marriage equality in the United States.
Social Homophobia
While institutionalized homophobia is anti-homo-
sexual ideologies encoded into the social and cul-
tural institutions of society, social homophobia can