Fabricating Difference - Steven W Ramey
8. Give Me Liberty or Give Me Pizza: (Or, How the Public Transcript Fabricates Difference)
Fabricating Difference - Steven W Ramey
Thomas J. Whitley [+]
Thomas Whitely, after earned his Ph.D. at Florida State University, worked in university administration before transitioning to politics and local government; from 2018-2022 he served as the Chief of Staff for John Dailey, the mayor of Tallahassee, Florida, and he is currently the Director of Strategic Innovation for the City of Tallahassee.
Description
This essay heeds Aaron Hughes' call to focus not on amorphous, politically loaded, and problematic concepts (such as, what Islam really is) but, rather, on the work that social groups perform in order to build and maintain identities and borders by examining the work that the narrative that "Christianity is anti-gay" performs rhetorically and socially. Using James Scott's concept of the public transcript to analyze the "Christianity is anti-gay" narrative reveals how the public transcript is actively engaged in fabricating difference in contemporary religious liberty debates in the United States.