Through the lens of gender: Ideology and practice in the same-sex marriage movement and countermovement

Research on same-sex marriage is mostly concerned with either historical or legal analyses of the quest for marriage equality. Little attention has been given to the social movement that promotes this cause, much less its opposition. Those who do mention them usually simply highlight their effect on various legal or legislative battles, with little close empirical analysis of the beliefs held by the activists.;In order to fill this gap I use ethnographic data drawn from interviews with activists associated with the same-sex marriage movement and counter-movement, along with archival data from movement websites and newsletters. I use the sociological literature on social movements to argue that while a gendered analysis allows one to examine activism "on the ground," a movement/counter-movement framework offers the opportunity to compare the meanings of gender on both sides of an issue.;Throughout the dissertation I assert that a gendered, movement/counter-movement analysis offers key insights into the ways that gender ideologies influence intimate social movement activities. Furthermore, it allows for a comparison of these aspects across opposing movements. First, gender shaped the opposing activists' analyses in distinct ways. While the anti same-sex marriage activists offered a gendered assessment of the opposition, pro same-sex marriage activists used gender to analyze fellow movement members. Second, gender similarly influenced task distribution in both movements such that men and women tended to perform tasks that were consistent with traditional gender assumptions. Third, gender similarly structured the reasons activists on both sides gave for why same-sex marriage should be either legal or illegal. Most significantly, on each of these points I argue that a gendered analysis of this movement and its counter-movement reveals both movement complexities and unanticipated similarities between opposing movements.;This dissertation therefore highlights the importance of the gender and social movements literature in filling gaps in the movement/counter-movement literature by attending to activist interactions. It also underscores how a movement/counter-movement framework can expand gender and social movements research, which has a tendency to overlook movement/counter-movement dynamics. Finally, this dissertation contributes to sexuality studies by showing how gender ideologies interact with sexual identities and shape sexual politics.