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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.
List of contents
- Dedication
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Memorialization, Gay Assimilation, and American Religion
- Chapter One: The "Gay M.L.K.": Harvey Milk
- Chapter Two: The "Crucifixion" of "Anyone's Gay Son": Matthew Shepard
- Chapter Three: The "Epidemic of Bullying and Gay Teen Suicides": Tyler Clementi and It Gets Better
- Chapter Four: "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
About the author
Brett Krutzsch is Coordinator of the Center for Religion and Media and Instructor in the Department of Religious Studies at New York University. His scholarship examines intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, race, and politics in the United States.
Summary
The first book to detail how gay martyrs have 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 worthy of equal rights.
Additional text
Brett Krutzsch's Dying to Be Normal is a brilliant study of martyrdom and memorialization as central to gay activism in the United States. Although religiosity and sexuality are often thought to be opposing forces, the book shows that religion and sex are powerfully entwined. Christian nationalism and Protestant secularism may form the current parameters of political possibility, but Krutzsch provides an expansive, alternative analysis that opens toward a diverse sexual democracy.
