A Tale of Two Ideologies : A Political Discourse Analysis of How LGBTI Rights are Used to Shape the Identity of the EU in Relation to Sexual Others in the Ninth European Parliament

In the past, concepts such as homonationalism and leveraged pedagogy have been used to describe the EU’s relationships to LGBTI rights, but more research indicated a shift towards a left-right divide. This thesis aims to research how the current (Ninth) European Parliament constructs the identity of the European Union in the context of debates regarding LGBTI rights and it aims to uncover how the political groups in the European Parliament currently use this to create sexual Others. By conducting a Political Discourse Analysis inspired by van Dijk (1997), this thesis analyses twelve plenary debates regarding LGBTI rights in the ninth legislative period (up until May 2023) of the European Parliament. The findings of this research show that the majority of Members of the current Ninth European Parliament frame the EU as a liberal protector of Human Rights, threatened by right-wing populists that are framed as an omnipresent, internal sexual Others. Debates about LGBTI rights in the Ninth European Parliament are characterized by an internal conflict between ‘the left’ and ‘the right’, which has caused the concepts of homonationalism and leveraged pedagogy to lose most of their explanatory value.