Heteronormative discourses of LGBTIQ Italian activists about parenting

Over the past decades research on homosexual parenting has consistently shown that concerns about difficulties among children of lesbian and gay parents are unwarranted. However, heteronormativity still leads heterosexuality to interpret itself as society (Warner, 1991) and the heterosexual married couple is constructed as the only normal, natural, taken-for-granted context for parenting. Heterosexual kinship is the current episteme of intelligibility (Butler, 2002) and homosexual parents and their children are subject to stigmatization and to institutionalized forms of discrimination, as in the case of Italy where no recognition or protection are settled for children of same-sex parents. General politics and “regimes of truth”, established by scientific discourses and institutions, are at the origins of the dynamics of power between the heterosexual majority and sexual minority groups (Foucault, 1978). The relations of dominance are often consensual because they are continuously reproduced as natural (Gramsci, 1975a). As Gramsci (1975a; 1975b) highlighted, cultural hegemony is a process of moral and intellectual leadership through which subordinated classes give their “spontaneous” consent to the worldview of the ruling classes, thus agreeing to their domination, with no need of forcing or coercion for accepting their inferior positions. Starting from these premises, this paper analysis whether and how Italian LGBTIQ activists support or challenge the heteronormative ideology of parenting when they talk about homosexual parenting. After examining the historical conditions that led the heteronormative view of parenting to become hegemonic in Italy, the paper presents a Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2001) of the discourses of three groups of LGBTIQ Italian activists about parenting. The contribution of this study consists on showing how hegemonic ideologies on sexualities and parenting permeate the discourses of subaltern groups, even in the case of groups that have committed themselves politically to defending the rights of LGBTIQ persons. The role of the research on contributing to social emancipation is discussed.