Stairway to Heaven: LGBTQ+ Gatherings as Civil-Religious Rituals

This paper applies ritual theory to study public LGBTQ+ gatherings, including Pride parades, silent vigils, and commemorative litanies. The analysis of public LGBTQ+ rituals has often focussed on Pride parades and their carnivalistic exuberance. We call instead for more attention to the whole nexus of public rituals that this movement consists of, and we argue that these rituals are central to LGBTQ+ community building and meaning-making in this social movement. Using participant and non-participant observation, as well as publicly available data, the paper studies assembly forms, ritual scripts, symbolic interactions, sites, and objects that link the various public rituals within the LGBTQ+ movement. We find that, over the last five decades, these ritual elements have coalesced to provide members of the LGBTQ+ community access to the sphere of transcendence. Our findings suggest that this community might be slowly changing its character from social (protest) movement to becoming a viable civil religion.