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 Whitley serves as the Director of Strategic Innovation for the City of Tallahassee. Prior to this role, he served as Chief of Staff to the Mayor of Tallahassee. He holds a PhD in Religious of Western Antiquity from Florida State University.
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.