Light Against Darkness: Rhetoric and the Struggle over LGBTQ+ in Israel

The article examines conservative rhetoric and discourse in Israel toward the LGBTQ+ community from a sociolinguistic perspective that conceptualizes language as an arena of socio-cultural struggle over identity, power, and normativity. Drawing on queer linguistics theory and identity politics, the study explores how language constructs reality through metaphors of illness, sin, and existential threat, as well as through theological framing and appeals to family and national values. These rhetorical strategies produce a social hierarchy in which heteronormativity is positioned as a “natural truth” while queer identities are labelled as deviant or threatening. From sociological perspective, the study reveals how conservative discourse establishes social boundaries and reinforces collective identity through the exclusion of the Other, thereby reproducing power relations and hierarchies. The article calls for the development of an alternative public discourse grounded in pluralism, inclusion, and the recognition of diverse identities as a means of strengthening democracy and social justice. While existing studies have examined conservative discourse toward LGBTQ+ communities primarily in Western contexts, this study contributes to the field by centering the Israeli case as a distinctive site of analysis, where conservative voices emerge from multiple and ideologically heterogeneous traditions: national-religious, ultra-Orthodox, and Muslim-Arab. By examining how rhetorically divergent speakers converge around shared mechanisms of exclusion, the study reveals that heteronormative discourse is not the product of a single ideological source, but a cross-sectoral phenomenon embedded in the specific political and cultural tensions of Israeli society.