The Progay and antigay issue culture: Interpretation, influence and dissent

This essay delineates several specific effects of oppositional interaction in the issue culture of variant sexuality. Issue cultures consist of unstable interpretive packages. Progay and antigay packages define collective identity, the nature of conflict, relationships among antagonists, and appropriate symbolic strategies. Antigay discourse encourages an essentialist, non‐erotic gay self‐definition. Progay appeals invite antigays to project a secularized image of civility. Opposition strengthens a political understanding of variant sexuality and causes antagonistic advocates to conceive struggle in similar terms. Division occurs among allies in both progay and antigay camps over which version of their own interpretive package best responds to opponents. Such analysis of issue cultures is theoretically significant because it allows critics to synthesize diverse approaches and to understand disputes on a broad range of public issues.