Dying to Be Normal

Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics

Brett Krutzsch

First book to show how memorialization influenced national debates over LGBT rights
Demonstrates how religion shaped secular gay activism and the process of gay assimilation in the United States
Addresses the activism surrounding Harvey Milk, Matthew Shepard, Tyler Clementi, Brandon Teena, the It Gets Better Project, the Pulse Nightclub Massacre, and more

Dying to Be Normal

Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics

Brett Krutzsch

Description

On October 14, 1998, five thousand people gathered on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to mourn the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student who had been murdered in Wyoming eight days earlier. Politicians and celebrities addressed the crowd and the televised national audience to share their grief with the country. Never before had a gay citizen's murder elicited such widespread outrage or concern from straight Americans.

In Dying to Be Normal, Brett Krutzsch argues that gay activists memorialized people like Shepard as part of a political strategy to present gays as similar to the country's dominant class of white, straight Christians. Through an examination of publicly mourned gay deaths, Krutzsch counters the common perception that LGBT politics and religion have been oppositional and reveals how gay activists used religion to bolster the argument that gays are essentially the same as straights, and therefore deserving of equal rights.

Krutzsch's analysis turns to the memorialization of Shepard, Harvey Milk, Tyler Clementi, Brandon Teena, and F. C. Martinez, to campaigns like the It Gets Better Project, and national tragedies like the Pulse nightclub shooting to illustrate how activists used prominent deaths to win acceptance, influence political debates over LGBT rights, and encourage assimilation. Throughout, Krutzsch shows how, in the fight for greater social inclusion, activists relied on Christian values and rhetoric to portray gays as upstanding Americans. As Krutzsch demonstrates, gay activists regularly reinforced a white Protestant vision of acceptable American citizenship that often excluded people of color, gender-variant individuals, non-Christians, and those who did not adhere to Protestant Christianity's sexual standards.

The first book to detail how martyrdom has influenced national debates over LGBT rights, Dying to Be Normal establishes how religion has shaped gay assimilation in the United States and the mainstreaming of particular gays as "normal" Americans.

Dying to Be Normal

Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics

Brett Krutzsch

Dedication
List of illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Memorialization, Gay Assimilation, and American Religion
Chapter One: The "Gay M.L.K.": Harvey Milk
Chapter Two: The "Crucifixion" of "Anyone's Gay Son": Matthew Shepard
Chapter Three: The "Epidemic of Bullying and Gay Teen Suicides": Tyler Clementi and It Gets Better
Chapter Four: "The Place Where Two Discriminations Meet": Race, Gender, and the Threat of Violence
Epilogue: The Pulse Nightclub Massacre and the Queer Potential of Memorialization

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Dying to Be Normal

Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics

Brett Krutzsch

Author Information

Brett Krutzsch is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion at Haverford College. His scholarship examines intersections of religion, sexuality, gender, race, and politics in the United States.

Dying to Be Normal

Gay Martyrs and the Transformation of American Sexual Politics

Brett Krutzsch

Reviews and Awards

"A must-read for scholars and activists alike, Krutzsch's agile and far-reaching analysis demonstrates the tactics and the consequences of assimilationist gay politics: veneration of white, cisgender gay men through sanitized, semi-fictionalized, and Christianized versions of their lives that erase their own realities and those of their communities. Krutzsch reminds us that there have always been other options, and challenges us to reject assimilationist tactics that are ultimately rooted in exclusion." --Melissa M. Wilcox, author of Queer Nuns: Religion, Activism, and Serious Parody

"Dying to Be Normal offers a fascinating and heartbreaking history of the memorialization and martyrdom of gay figures in the United States. Krutzsch reveals how religious and secular narratives work in this history - often in unexpected ways - to make some gays appear normal, a process that all too often transubstantiates complicated queer lives into suitable Christian narratives, while leaving others, especially queer people of color, outside the circuit of memory. This moving, unflinching analysis raises the bar for how we talk about religion and sexuality in American politics." -- Anthony Petro, author of After the Wrath of God: AIDS, Sexuality, and American Religion

"Brett Krutzsch's Dying to Be Normal is a brilliant study of martyrdom and memorialization as central to gay activism in the United States. Although religiosity and sexuality are often thought to be opposing forces, the book shows that religion and sex are powerfully entwined. Christian nationalism and Protestant secularism may form the current parameters of political possibility, but Krutzsch provides an expansive, alternative analysis that opens toward a diverse sexual democracy." -- Janet R. Jakobsen, Claire Tow Professor of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University