'I'm not homophobic, I'm Chinese': Hong Kong Canadian discourses of heterosexuality, homosexuality, and multiculturalism in same-sex marriage debates, 2002-2006

This dissertation is a multidisciplinary study of the Toronto Hong Kong Canadian participation in the same-sex marriage debates in 2002-2006. It is also a critical intervention in current debates about Canadian multiculturalism and nationalism. This project's main body consists of four chapters. Chapters Two and Three make up a two-part study of the Toronto Hong Kong Canadian anti-same sex marriage discourse. Chapter Two is an in-depth analysis of the theological and doctrinal arguments against marriage reform. Chapter Three incorporates the study of religion to explore Hong Kong Canadian opponents' appeal to Chinese-ness, Christian authenticity, and narratives of multiculturalism and nationalism. Chapter Four focuses on Toronto Hong Kong Canadian supporters of same-sex marriage. It studies the ways in which they adopted mainstream arguments for marriage reform and re-framed the debates also as discussions about the historical and present-day treatment of racialized Canadians. Chapter Five expands the scope of the study to the rest of English Canada and investigates mainstream political and media responses to Hong Kong Canadian same-sex marriage campaigns.;The project demonstrates how responses by and towards Hong Kong Canadians in the marriage debates expose multiple fractures in the Canadian doctrine of cultural, religious, and sexual pluralism. The method of this dissertation consists of oral interviews, critical engagements with popular media, and discourse analysis. It uses articles from secular and Christian Chinese periodicals and the mainstream and gay press, campaign materials, court documents, and interviews with Hong Kong Canadian activists. My central argument is that religious beliefs, immigration experience, colonial history, and multicultural ideologies heavily informed Hong Kong Canadian and mainstream Canadian discourses on heterosexuality, marriage, and same-sex desires. As well, through campaigning for and against marriage reform, activists and politicians articulated divergent and often competing visions of what Canada was and should be. All in all, the dissertation shows that Hong Kong Canadian same-sex marriage campaigns and the controversies surrounding them are windows through which we can understand Canada from the perspectives of racialized and white, queer and straight, and religious and secular Canadians at the beginning of the 21 st century.