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Reassessing the Foster-Care System: Examining the Impact of Heterosexism on Lesbian and Gay Applicants

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2020

Damien W. Riggs
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Abstract

In this essay, Riggs demonstrates how heterosexism shapes foster-care assessment practices in Australia. Through an examination of lesbian and gay foster-care applicants’ assessment reports and with a focus on the heteronormative assumptions contained within them, Riggs demonstrates that foster-care public policy and research on lesbian and gay parenting both promote the idea that lesbian and gay parents are always already “just like” heterosexual parents. To counter this idea of “sameness,” Riggs proposes an approach to both assessing and researching lesbian and gay parents that privileges the specific experiences of lesbians and gay men and resists the heterosexualization of lesbian and gay families by focusing on some potentially radical differences shaping lesbian and gay lives.

Type
Research Article
Information
Hypatia , Volume 22 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Writing Against Heterosexism , Winter 2007 , pp. 132 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by Hypatia, Inc.

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