Homomilitarism: The Same-Sex Erotics of the US Empire in Guam and Hawai‘i

This article examines articulations for and against gay marriage in the successful legalization of Bill 232 in Hawai‘i and in the failed passage of Bill 185 in Guam to signal a profound ideological shift in the US colonization of these locations. The article likens this shift to a discursive and material process it calls “homomilitarism,” wherein the same-sex erotics of gay marriage have emerged to confront and reproduce the dominant paradigm of heteronormativity in the militarist and tourist industries of the Pacific. While these systems appear unrelated, the article demonstrates how they, in fact, constitute a new discourse of American rule in the post-9/11 Pacific. In this way, homomilitarism can be read as a contemporary brand of imperial discourse through which debates on same-sex rights, legislation, and marriage are vigorously advanced or restricted while simultaneously upholding the US empire in Guam and Hawai‘i and marginalizing indigenous claims to these islands.