Religion, politics and sexual rights: public controversies about sexual conversion therapy

Author(s)

Alexandre Oviedo Gonçalves

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2020-03-16

Examining board members

Regina Facchini; Jacqueline Moraes Teixeira; Rodrigo Toniol; Ronaldo Almeida; Sergio Luis Carrara

• Advisor: Regina Facchini

Abstract

From public statements made by some Pentecostal and neopentecostal religious leaders in Brazil, I propose to map the production of the public controversy "Gay Cure". The category "Gay Cure" refers to the controversy published in different média about the possibility or not of sexual reorientation. Therefore, it refers to the public debate initially incited by religious actors about the possibility of redirecting homosexuality to heterosexuality through psychotherapeutic programs and religious conversion. From this framework, the general objective of this research is to reflect on ways of regulating sexual conducts and processes of production of subjects provided with certain conceptions of the self. My hypothesis is that religious organizations produce politicized subjects who dispute moral and public life through the use of different institutional languages and places. Outlining this hypothesis for the empirical field analyzed here, I propose that since the 1990s religious organizations have been composing political frameworks to confront the LGBT citizenship process undertaken from the interaction between social movements and the Brazilian State. In dialogue with studies on religion and sexuality, I hope to contribute to the understanding of the modes of public presence of religions and their involvement with different regimes of moral regulation (religious, biopolitical and socio-legal). Outlining and specifying this general question, I try to analyze: (1) how science becomes a fundamental grammar for so-called religious actors to justify actions and interventions in the field of sexuality; (2) how categories in the field of psychology and psychoanalysis are integrated with the technologies of pastoral counseling and testimony for the narrative construction of themselves and; (3) how does the political and legal language of human rights begin to be used as an argument for interventions in the arena of sexuality and for the production of meaning and public construction of the subject of rights? (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 15/14272-8 - The pastoral vigilance - public speeches and evangelical pastoral practices forward to homosexuality
• Grantee: Alexandre Oviedo Gonçalves
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate