Post-homophobia comes out: The rise of Mormon polygamy in US popular culture

Abstract

Abstract The past decade has witnessed significant gains for gay men and lesbians in the United States, a development lauded as liberal progress and decried as an infringement on religious rights. Meanwhile, a Mormon polygamy cottage industry that addresses cultural anxieties about sexuality and religion has appeared in US media. Although these two trends may seem only slightly related, we argue that they herald the dawn of ‘post-homophobia’ as a discursive framework for incorporating the legacy of LGBTQ+ social movements. This article analyses how both Sister Wives and news coverage of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) police who can become an intelligible US citizen and on what sexual and religious grounds. Although post-homophobia makes space for alternative familial arrangements, it recentres white, middle-class, Christian heterosexuality as the rightful heirs to sexual minority politics. Under the guise of familial pluralism and religious freedom, such portrayals ultimately shore up mono/heteronormativity and the neo-Orientalism that undergirds the US War on Terrorism.