‘Straightening’ space and time? Peripheral moral panics in print media representations of Canadian LGBTQ2S suburbanites, 1985–2005.

This paper adopts a spatial-temporal lens to examine mainstream print media representations of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer and Two-Spirit (LGBTQ2S) suburbanites in Canada’s largest metropolitan areas in the 1990s. Due to major changes in Canadian gay rights legislation, the 1990s were a decade when the spatial and temporal reproduction of heteronormativity was contested, including in suburban areas. Through a focus on the metropolitan periphery, this paper argues that LGBTQ2S people and their politics were discursively positioned in print media coverage as spatially unexpected and temporally disruptive of heteronormativity. Drawing upon a suburban LGBTQ2S print-media database from 1985 to 2005 (n = 1300), an analysis of aggregate patterns is provided and three exemplary case studies of suburban ‘moral panics’ detailed from within case-study metropolitan areas of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The paper concludes that the greatest public debate in the print media was generated when queers intruded upon institutions that were central to the reproduction of heteronormative futures, that is, the institutions that are the very foundation of suburbia such as recreational spaces, religious institutions and schools.