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Social Advocacy for Equal Marriage: The Politics of “Rights” and the Psychology of “Mental Health”
Author(s) -
Kitzinger Celia,
Wilkinson Sue
Publication year - 2004
Publication title -
analyses of social issues and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.479
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1530-2415
pISSN - 1529-7489
DOI - 10.1111/j.1530-2415.2004.00040.x
Subject(s) - dignity , human rights , mental health , politics , sociology , economic justice , social psychology , criminology , inequality , political science , psychology , law , psychotherapist , mathematical analysis , mathematics
Using the contemporary issue of equal access to marriage for same‐sex couples as a case study, we examine two distinctive frameworks within which social advocacy may be pursued. We argue that when we speak as psychologists, we use a discourse of mental health; when we speak as social activists, we use a discourse of human rights and justice. Although these two frameworks may converge in supporting equal access to marriage, they represent radically different ways of understanding inequality and advocating for social change. A discourse of mental health focuses on psychological damage or deficit (caused, for example, by the social exclusion of particular groups or individuals. A discourse of rights asserts universally‐applicable principles of equality, justice, freedom, and dignity. Further, the paradigmatic framework of psychology as an approach to understanding human beings in the world seems fundamentally antithetical to the conceptual framework of human rights, as a basis for social justice.