Angelia R. Wilson

?Where Liberty Reigns and God is Supreme?: The Christian Right and the Tea Party Movement

In this article we argue that the tea party movement is the most conspicuous contemporary vehicle for reconciliation between Christian and economic conservatives. The analysis draws upon participant observation of two recent Christian right events at which the tea party was a central preoccupation. Offering evidence of the dynamics of a shifting framing process, it is argued that the Christian right elites are willing to accommodate strategically the precedence of economic issues but only if these are accompanied by a commitment to familiar Christian right positions on social issues.

With friends like these: The liberalization of queer family policy

The last ten years have seen a historic shift in policies regulating the lives of lesbian and gay citizens, including most recently civil partnerships. In addition, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (1990) made it possible for lesbians and gay men to access fertility treatments in private clinics. The 2003 review prompted Mary Warnock to argue that such access should be extended to treatment on the National Health Service. In these changing times, Anthony Giddens maintains that lesbian and gay relationships may reflect ideally the ‘pure relationship’. Mary Warnock is not so sure and thinks the state should play a more active role in regulating the lives of those wishing to become parents. This article considers the philosophical justifications for policies affecting lesbian and gay couples and their children, deconstructing the assumptions made by Giddens and Warnock about choices and family and questioning the ‘friendly’ foundation of ‘queer family policy’.

Surveying sexual orientation: Asking difficult questions and providing useful answers

Social survey data is essential to measuring equality, to assessing change over time and to the evaluation of the impact of new policies. In this article, we identified and evaluated the survey evidence for assessing equality in relation to sexual orientation in the UK. We reviewed the available survey data in relation to key policy areas such as criminal justice, employment and health. Our analysis suggests that there is only limited survey evidence on the circumstances of gays, lesbians and bisexuals in the UK. This poses major barriers for driving forward an agenda of social justice in relation to gay, lesbian and bisexual citizens. Robust research methodologies need to be developed and resourced in order to gain a representative picture of the socioeconomic circumstances of gay, lesbian and bisexual populations in the UK and to assess how they maybe changing over time.

The ‘neat concept’ of sexual citizenship: a cautionary tale for human rights discourse

The growing interest in human rights discourse is a welcome development for strategic lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activism and the appropriation of such a global signifier continues to move LGBT political claims into the mainstream. However, such language appropriation or strategic deployment opens debate as to its meaning and the limits of its descriptive power. For example, the popularity of citizenship discourse in the early 1990s led to an array of commentary from social and political theorists sketching the contours of epistemological meaning and potential policy outcomes. In the wake of this, queer social theorists pontificated on the meaning of ‘sexual citizenship’. Citizenship was the new black and everyone was wearing it. Citizenship was interesting because it had, and still has, purchasing power within a liberal democratic tradition. Human rights discourse is interesting for similar reasons. This articles cautionary tale addresses the twofold concern: ‘what is at stake in focusing on “human rights”?’ and how can such a strategic linguistic shift be ‘explained by political and sociological theories’? In raising these concerns, the article encourages those articulating human rights to be mindful of the potential variety of frames – readings and strategic or competing activists and academic agendas – within which this discourse might be used or, potentially, abused.

Tea Time? The Rise of the Tea Party

Was the Tea Party a spontaneous uprising of US citizens against the economic bailout? Was it a protest against President Obama? Has the Tea Party replaced the Christian Right as the powerhouse of the Republican Party? Angelia Wilson investigates. Was the Tea Party a spontaneous uprising of US citizens against the economic bailout? Was it a protest against President Obama? Has the Tea Party replaced the Christian Right as the powerhouse of the Republican Party? Angelia Wilson investigates.

Practically Between Post-Menopause and Post-Modern

Hanging above my desk are a few postcards which undoubtedly formed the wallpaper of many feminist lesbian graduate students over the years: ‘we are everywhere’; ‘ be a bloody train driver’; and Rosie the riveter with defiant strong fist. As a collection they occasionally fan flames of motivation, but one in particular has begun to irritate me: ‘ I ’ ll be a post-feminist in post-patriarchy’. I must have purchased it before my encounters with ‘ post ’ modern theory, because initially I thought it had a certain utopian appeal. Now, the simplistic binary opposition is seductive in its political directness but the underpinning defiance of all things post-modern is disappointing in its dismissive tone. The postcard may also irritate me because, after years of exposure to the sunlight coming through my office window, it is beginning to fade. Symbolically, this becomes my irritation with feminism — that ‘it’ seems to forever belong to a baby-boomer few who fought at its vanguard and, having earned the right to pass on wisdom, have become its only spokeswomen; that while students, and those on the ‘ Queer omnibus’, may support equal pay, women ’ s right to divorce and child-care initiatives, they would wince at being labelled with the ‘F-word’. While feminism seems to belong to one generation, queer seems to belong to another: one respected but dated, the other cutting-edge and cool.