Electing queers in politics does not queer politics: Reflections on the representational role of out LGBQ legislators in Canada

A key idea in the field of political representation of social minorities (such as women, racialized individuals, or LGBTQ+ people) is that those from these minorities are best suited to represent them. This would be so, according to Young (2000: 143-44), because “to the extent that what distinguishes social groups is structural relations, particularly structural relations of privilege and disadvantage, and to the extent that persons are positioned similarly in those structures, then they have similar perspectives both on their own situation and on other positions in the society.” It is assumed that this representation would have symbolic (e.g. acting as a role model for these minorities) and substantive (e.g. participating in the formulation of public policies addressing their interests) effects. However, an intersectional assessment of this reasoning quickly reveals its flaw. Indeed, when looking at the demographic and socio-economic profile of Canadian LGBQ legislators, they are highly unrepresentative of LGBTQ+ people and communities in terms of marital status, education and occupation, and place of residence: most of them are married (or in a common-law relationship for years), highly educated and hold elitist professions, and they are urban dwellers. Therefore, considering this intersectional profile which is hardly representative of LGBTQ+ people, what is the logic that governs their intelligibility as the latter’s advocates and how their hegemonic profile impacts on their representation roles? The idea that I want to explore in this paper is that, less than representing LGBTQ+ people and communities, LGBQ legislators in Canada are instrumentalized by the Canadian state to substantiate the mock-intersectional discourse it deploys under the guise of equality, diversity, and inclusion: LGBQ politicians are evidence that the Canadian state is intersectional, as articulated through the language of equality, diversity and inclusion, but their influence on public policy is barely intersectional, their contribution being confined to operating as an ideological smokescreen to preserve a petit bourgeois homonormative order. To put it another way, LGBTQ+ politicians do not represent LGBTQ+ people and communities; rather, their presence in politics serves to sustain a discourse of equality rights that involves the crushing of diversities in the name of a homogenizing inclusion.