The Homonormative Economic Frame and COVID-19 Relief Debates

The main drive toward participating in a group life, and the main shunning of such life, come essentially from one source: identification. In its positive form it is a manifestation of the need for acceptance . . . one wanders into the bar in the hope of finding the convivial spirit that comes from being with one's own.

—Donald Webster Cory, The Homosexual in America, 1951¹

On June 13, 2020, the owners of The Stonewall Inn launched a fundraiser. Beset by months of closure and lost revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the historic bar faced permanent closure.² After all, even historic landmarks in a capitalist society still have to pay bills, being an eponym for the modern trans and queer rights movement is not enough. This hardship though, much like Stonewall itself, is inextricably tied to how the coronavirus has affected multiple facets of trans and queer life from where one works to where one finds community, and usually outside the purview of mainstream political and media discourses. The dichotomy in these responses, between federal and state lawmakers and community organizers, provide insight to how trans and queer life and economics intersect.

The response by lawmakers to the pandemic employed a homonormative economic frame to justify policy proposals. Homonormativity, as initially and subsequently developed, relies on a "privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption"³ and "good sexual citizens" who adhere to these normative structures.⁴ Thus, in economic terms, these norms are reflected by where and how one works and by where and how one spends their time. Homonormative economic frames attempt to assimilate trans and queer individuals under the umbrella of mainstream economic problems (e.g., being able to afford a mortgage, raising a family, securing one's 401(k)) usually by changing the representation involved in depicting the problem (e.g. in 2008, TD Bank became one of the first banks to feature same-sex couples in advertisements for a variety of financial products).⁵ Such a frame privileges certain types of work and economic practices over others and in the context of the pandemic is tied to how relief efforts are directed. By contrast, the response by community members centered facets of queer life ignored, intentionally or not, by mainstream lawmakers and media pundits and ones that provided important spaces where one could be unapologetically queer. These spaces range from gay bars and trans and queer student centers on college campuses to local theaters and community spaces, such as the regular matches hosted by BLOWW, the Boston League of Wicked Wrestlers.

Coverage of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (the CARES Act) employ this homonormative economic frame and excludes, intentionally or not, important aspects of queer life. In the rest of this essay, I survey the main features that mainstream news outlets and trans and queer nonprofits highlight from the CARES Act and contrast that with critics of the legislation as well as efforts undertaken nationally and locally by trans and queer community members to fill in those holes. This I argue highlights how homonormativity affects political debates even when they are economic in nature.

In March 2020, Congress debated numerous efforts for coronavirus relief. In addition to vaccine research and extending unemployment and food stamps, discussion over broader relief gained momentum resulting in the CARES Act, which was signed into law on March 27, 2020, a day after weekly jobless claims increased from their usual weekly average in the 200,000s to over 3,300,000.⁶ Efforts to pass eviction freezes, small business relief, and other measures differed in success in state and local legislatures across the United States. Given this focus, economic coverage of COVID-19 relief (aside from businesses and the stock market) centered on unemployment benefits, housing security (mortgage and eviction relief ), and ways to ensure continuing healthcare access in various degrees.

Mainstream LGBTQ nonprofits echoed these efforts. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Williams Institute at UCLA both reiterated bullet points about the CARES Act centered on unemployment and stimulus pay-ments. For example, in their March...