Between ‘Homotopia’ and Homophobia: Exploring the Cultural Politics of Sexuality in Liverpool.

In 2013 the UK Parliament passed the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, leading to widespread claims that ‘the final piece of the legislative jigsaw’ for LGB equality in the UK had been secured (Summerskill 2013: 2). Threaded through the celebrations of this landmark occasion was a tacit belief: with legal equality in place, the destigmatisation and depathologisation of LGBT+ people would filter down into society and negative attitudes towards LGBT+ people would continue to soften. Domestic LGBT+ politics appeared, in other words, to be on the verge of redundancy. Almost a decade later and those celebrations look, at the very least, premature. Indeed, whilst a ‘gay marriage’ at the town hall no longer merits a piece in the local newspaper, the ‘hearts and minds’ of the UK’s population seem far from persuaded by LGBT+ equality. Across the UK there has been an upsurge in reports of anti-LGBT+ violence, and in 2019 – for the first time since 1987 – the British Social Attitudes survey showed decreasing acceptance of same-sex relationships (Bulman 2019). The divide between legal and social norms has never seemed wider. In this paper I consider the potential that local cultural politics holds for gaining a better understanding of, and perhaps challenging, this legal-social divide. In Liverpool, where this research is situated, conflicts over sexual politics came to a head in Autumn 2021; responding to a spate of homophobic and transphobic incidents in the city, ‘Homotopia’ (a Liverpool-based arts and social justice organisation) commissioned a series of public artworks. Within a few days of their appearance, two of the pieces hung in tatters, ripped off the wall in a visceral refusal of the message – encapsulated in the title of one of the pieces – that ‘Hate Has No Place in Liverpool’ (Kusabbi 2021). My analysis follows the public discourse that surrounded this back-and-forth between ‘homotopia’ and homophobia, to explore two key questions. Firstly, what can be learnt about the contemporary state of sexual politics from this encounter between politics, art and resistance: what are the vital contours and who are its key (actual and imagined) interlocutors? Secondly, what is the significance of ‘place’ for sexual politics: what role did ‘Liverpool’ - a city made rich through colonialism and impoverished through Thatcherism - play in the framing of this encounter? Bulman, M (2019) ‘Acceptance of same-sex relationships slowing down in UK, report suggests’ The Independent Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lgbt-gay-relationships-britain-acceptance-social-attitudes-survey-bsa-a8998596.html. Accessed 17/7/2019 Summerskill, B (2013) Stonewall Annual Report. Retrieved from http://www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/stonewall_sept_2013_annual_report.pdf Accessed 25/11/2015.