LGBT families and "motherless" children : tracking heteronormative resistances in Canada, Australia, and Ireland

This chapter examines the production of a certain figure of the mother" and especially the discourses of motherlessness, motherless families, and motherless generations" put forth by organizations and individuals working in opposition to the implementation of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans) equalities legislation in Australia and Ireland, and to a lesser extent in the Canadian context. Legal and social changes are often reflected in local debates surrounding the enactment of legislation enabling same-sex marriage (SSM), parenting, and adoption. With equality rights for LGBT people in place in all three countries, battles regarding SSM and parenting have taken a different shape in contemporary debates. A key set of oppositional discourses propagated by anti-SSM organizations defends the correctness of the normative heterosexual nuclear family form and heterosexual marriage, and aggressively reasserts conventional gendered parenting roles and biological imperatives associated with mothering and fathering" what we term "heteroactivism"" to capture the notion of a type of activism seeking to restore normative heterosexualities (Browne et al., "LGBT Families"; Browne and Nash, "Heteroactivism").