‘Gay Couple’s Break Like Fawlty Towers’: Dangerous Representations of Lesbian and Gay Oppression in an Era of ‘Progressive’ Law Reform

Abstract

This article reconsiders the politics of knowledge production surrounding the discursively constructed sexual subject in light of the politico-cultural debates that ensued over enactment of the controversial 2007 Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations. Exploring the rise, in the course of these debates, of what it terms the ‘bed and breakfast paradigm’ of lesbian and gay oppression, the article questions whether that paradigm provides a suitably representative account of housing-related discrimination experienced by lesbians and gay men. It then goes on to highlight the silence during the debates that surrounded the pervasive intra-familial discrimination experienced by young lesbians and gay men within the home; a consequence, it finally argues, of law’s power to define the parameters of explanatory discourse around antidiscrimination protections according to an implicit public/private binary.