Redemption and Respectability: AIDS Stigma and the Moral Politics of Gay Marriage
In Redemption and Respectability: AIDS Stigma and the Moral Politics of Gay Marriage, Dr. Erick DuPree examines how AIDS stigma and the pursuit of marriage equality reshaped gay male identity, prioritizing respectability and moral acceptance while sidelining sexual freedom and cultural vibrancy.
In the throes of the AIDS crisis, gay men were condemned as moral pariahs—cast as diseased, deviant, and dangerously out of step with societal mores. Redemption and Respectability: AIDS Stigma and the Moral Politics of Gay Marriage critically examines how AIDS stigma and the pursuit of marriage equality transformed gay male identity, prioritizing respectability and moral acceptance over cultural vibrancy and sexual freedom.
Dr. Erick DuPree explores how the AIDS crisis cast gay men as moral pariahs—diseased, deviant, and out of sync with societal norms—while marriage equality movements offered a path to legitimacy by aligning with ideals of monogamy, domesticity, and conformity. This work interrogates the tensions between liberationist queer practices and the sanitization required to achieve public approval, highlighting how institutions such as media and state policy shaped a narrow template of “good” gay citizenship. Those who fell outside these frameworks faced a dual burden: enduring residual prejudices tied to disease and exclusion while navigating the erasure of practices and solidarities central to queer cultural identity.
Through rigorous critical analysis, DuPree challenges readers to interrogate the implications of the mainstream embrace of marriage equality, questioning whether it truly dismantles deeply entrenched societal prejudices or merely reconfigures them within a narrow and acceptable moral framework. By centering the socio-political processes that have defined the pursuit of respectability, this study highlights how the integration of marriage rights into LGBTQ+ activism has often prioritized societal validation over the preservation of diverse queer identities and practices. DuPree underscores the profound cost of this assimilationist approach, illustrating how the quest for moral redemption through conformity to heteronormative ideals has led to the marginalization of sexual and cultural autonomy. This work invites readers to critically reassess the compromises made in the pursuit of acceptance, urging a deeper reflection on the identities, relationships, and forms of solidarity that are lost when liberationist visions are exchanged for respectability politics.