Unnatural acts lead to unconsummated marriages: Discourses of homosexuality within the House of Lords debate on same-sex marriage

In June and July 2013, the UK House of Lords debated, and ultimately accepted, a Bill to legalise same-sex marriage. Following the model of Baker’s (2004) work on a set of earlier Lords debates relating to homosexuality, this study uses a corpus-based keywords analysis to assess the main lexical differences between those arguing in favour and those arguing against a change to the marriage laws. In so doing, it sheds light on the ways in which discourses relating to homosexuality are constructed and accessed by the Lords. In general, it is shown that supporters of reform take advantage of their hegemonic liberal position to construct a simple line of argument in contrast to the opponents, who are forced to use more subtle and elaborate lines of reasoning by the limited discursive space available to those espousing anti-LGBT sentiments