Commentary on Nancy Nicol’s Politics of the Heart: Recogniiton of Homoparental Families

This paper comments on the strategies and goals of a politics of recognition as celebrated by Nancy Nicol’s important documentary coverage of the gay and lesbian movement for family rights in Quebec. While agreeing that ending legal discrimination against lgbt families is important, I suggest that political recognition of same-sex families and their children is a too limited goal for queer families and their allies. Moreover, it is a goal, I argue, that often trades on trades on troublesome assumptions about gender, class, race, age and normative commitments to monogamy as these relate to distinctions between, for example, “fit” and “unfit” parents.