The role of community

Within New Labour discourse, community performs the key function of inculcat­ing the values of citizenship, social inclusion, and the social control of deviant behaviour. We can see this rationale underpinning the legislation. It is implicit in the Regulatory Impact Assessment in its discussion of the relationship between the Act and ‘social attitudes’, by which is meant that civil partnerships will strengthen communities and social cohesion. The deviant behaviour that is assumed to be in need of control through community is homophobia: ‘The Government believes that the creation of a new legal status for same-sex couples would play an import­ant role in increasing social acceptance of same-sex relationships, reducing homo­phobia and discrimination and building a safer and more inclusive society.’[123] By bringing their relationships into the public sphere — into the wider community — lesbians and gays can look forward to acceptance, inclusion and presumably full citizenship within that public space. The deviance of homophobia will (somehow) be controlled through the act of coming out as a couple. It is only through lesbians and gays entering the public sphere that homophobia is pushed out of that same sphere. Thus, gays are now required to leave the closet (rather than remain closeted) in order to advance the goal of social inclusion. While Conservative politicians once claimed that only by closeting themselves could lesbians and gays achieve acceptance and reduce homophobic violence, we now find a call to come out in order to achieve the same ends.