Carrie Anne Platt
Committee:
Sarah Banet-Weiser, Chair
G. T. Goodnight,
Larry Gross, Sharon Hays
ABSTRACT
Focusing the Family: The Rhetorical Construction of “Family Values” in Contemporary Cultural Politics
This dissertation explores the evolving use of “family values” as a warrant for the enactment of social policy or censorship in contemporary debates over same-sex marriage and media decency. It argues that “family values” should be read as a multi-faceted ideograph, one that has been focused and refocused by activists in response to specific rhetorical situations, in order to highlight and/or conceal particular ideological facets. The dissertation examines three major ideological facets of “family values”: nostalgia, moral authority, and gender, analyzing how these emphases are constructed and contested by opponents of same-sex marriage, decency crusaders, LGBT rights groups, and anti-censorship activists.