The Sexual Orientation of Legitimacy: Queer Experts in Courts and Legislatures

How does the sexual orientation of “experts” who are called to testify before courts and legislatures impact the way judges, lawmakers perceive the reliability of their testimony on gay rights issues? To answer this question, this paper draws on institutional archives as well as interviews with people who testified before U.S. and French judicial and legislative bodies that were considering the legalization of marriage and parenting for same-sex couples between 1990 and 2015. These people included psychologists, sociologists, historians, economists, and other academics and professionals. This paper explores the degree to which the sexual orientation of these experts mattered to policymakers. It finds that policymakers and experts alike, including those who identified as LGBTQ, were conscious of the perception that heterosexual experts were somehow more “neutral.” Building on a theory of “expert capital,” this paper argues that experts in both countries engage in forms of impression management to downplay the potential threat that a minority sexual orientation poses to their legitimacy as experts in the eyes of decision-making institutions.