ABSTRACT
Why struggle for liberation in the context of leisure and sport research? Usually the argument for ending the marginalization, discrimination and violence enacted toward sexual minorities in leisure and sport is enough to justify a need for such work. However, the complex tensions raised in our critique of the leisure and sport studies literature on lesbian and gay people has changed how we think about emancipation for sexual minorities (and sexual majorities for that matter). This is not to say that we do not believe we can strive for equality and fi rstclass citizenship rights for sexual minorities through institutional policies and/or the effective training of ‘leisure service professionals’. Rather, tensions located in our examination of the research literature on this issue point to Vaid’s (1995) assertion that the mainstreaming of lesbian/gay culture may have yielded a better cultural and political life for lesbians/gay men, but that those improvements are merely shifts in discourse and nothing more than a virtual equality. Consequently, we suggest the use of Queer, as both theory and practice, for transforming the oppressive/marginalizing structures of leisure and sport, as a means of both subverting the privilege and entitlement earned through heterosexuality and masculinity and for questioning the heteronormative behaviours which function to maintain heterosexuality’s dominance.
