Naslov
Discursive Strategy of the Religious-Conservative Mobilisation Against the Same-Sex Marriage in Croatia

Autori
Vučković Juroš, Tanja ; Dobrotić, Ivana ; Flego, Sunčica

Vrsta, podvrsta i kategorija rada
Sažeci sa skupova, sažetak, znanstveni

Skup
Fringe Politics in Southeastern Europe II - Conservative Social Movements and the Mainstreaming of Extremism in Southeast Europe

Mjesto i datum
Graz, Austrija, 19.03.2015. - 20.03.2015

Vrsta sudjelovanja
Predavanje

Vrsta recenzije
Međunarodna recenzija

Ključne riječi
konzervativno-religijski pokret; istospolni brak; diskurs; framing
(conservative-religious movement; same-sex marriage; discourse; framing)

Sažetak
In December 2013, the EU's newest member state Croatia joined the growing list of the SEE countries with a successful constitutional referendum demanding the ban on the same-sex marriage. The referendum was the end-result of a six-month intensive campaigning initiated by a conservative-religious initiative U ime obitelji (In the Name of the Family). In this paper we examine the discursive strategy of this campaign as presented by the main Croatian newspapers. Based on the results of this analysis, we claim that the success of this religious-conservative mobilisation was based on adopting the democratic framing of the purpose and goals of the referendum campaign. The initiative U ime obitelji particularly emphasized the perceived democratic threat posed by the LGBTIQ community, while simultaneously presenting themselves as the protectors of the democratic principle. This strategy manifested in two main forms. The first form required publicly minimizing the traditional morality argument underpinning earlier claims of the anti-LGBTIQ movements, while simultaneously propagating the corollary of that argument - that various societal institutions and vulnerable groups need to be protected from the LGBTIQ demands. Further, in lieu of explicit references to the morality argument ("sinfulness" or taken-for-granted "unnaturalness" of homosexuality or homosexual union), the representatives of the U ime obitelji preferred to use a scientific frame to legitimize their claims, often by misrepresenting the consensus of the scientific community or by attributing such consensus to the LGBTIQ agenda. The second form stripped the democratic principle solely to the principle of the majoritarian rule and inverted the democratic argument about the protection of minorities into the argument about the violence and coercion of the minorities over the majority. Both the familiarity of these arguments from the anti-LGBTIQ debate in other countries and their polished public presentation by the U ime obitelji representatives (and particularly the sustained focus on the reinterpretation of the democratic principle, as well as the pseudo-scientific discourse) suggest the growing professionalization of the anti-LGBTIQ religious-conservative movements which, nevertheless, base their legitimacy on the perception of their grassroots origins.

Izvorni jezik
Engleski

Znanstvena područja
Sociologija

POVEZANOST RADA