Analogical Reasoning and the Regulation of Race and Same-Sex Sexualities in Canada, 1969–2005

In this dissertation, I conceptualize the Canadian states regulation of sexuality as a racial project. To do so, I trace the historical development of analogical reasoning as a mode of racial and sexual governance in Canada between 1969 and 2005. I take a case study approach and use critical discourse analysis to examine House of Commons transcripts and Supreme Court of Canada decisions from three moments that are frequently cited as turning points in Canadian LGBTQ2S history: Parliament's 1969 decision to decriminalize anal sex that occurred in private between two consenting adults over 21 years of age; the Supreme Court's 1995 ruling in Egan v. Canada in which the Court decided sexual orientation was analogous to the grounds of discrimination enumerated in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, one of which is race; and Parliament's 2005 decision to legalize same-sex marriage. I analyze how prime ministers, members of parliament, and Supreme Court judges developed and mobilized the analogical logic that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is like racism. I argue that this use of analogical reasoning serves the Canadian states interests in two ways. First, because state actors analogized contemporary discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to examples of racism that were either based in the United States or in Canadas past, the analogies invisibilized the ongoing realities of racism and white settler colonialism in Canada, securing Canadas self-construction as "post-race" and delegitimizing critiques of Canadian racism. Second, I suggest that the construction of race and sexual orientation as analogical rather than intersecting phenomena has been part of an effort to diffuse more radical demands for justice by people working against multiple and intersecting forms of racial and sexual repression. Ultimately, I argue that the reforms I describe in this dissertation, which were supposedly aimed at enhancing the inclusion of LGBTQ2S people in Canadian society, strengthened, rather than undermined, heteronormativity, racism, and white settler hegemony in Canada.