Contesting the borders of the imagined nation: The frame of religious marginalization in grassroots socially conservative discourses about sexuality in public education

This article examines the social construction of community through a discursive analysis of the cognitive frames used by socially conservative participants involved in conflicts about multicultural education in two case studies. The primary frame explored is that of religious marginalization. Within this frame, socially conservative activists produce texts that reify an ideological boundary between the values of social conservatives and those groups perceived as symbolic threats, primarily public educators and sexual minorities. Since one of the most 1controversial issues in contemporary conflicts about multicultural education is the role of religion and sexuality in the public schools, this article contends that the domain of the private sphere (religion, race, gender, and sexuality) is a central component of socially conservative constructs of nation and community.