Participating on Public Conversations: homosexuality and same sex marriage

Abstract

Considering the success of the Project Public Conversations (PCP, in Portuguese) in the proposition of conversations between people with opposing views on controversial issues, we aimed to understand the meanings produced with participants from PCP meetings on their participation in the conversation about homophobia and same sex marriage. Two meetings on the criminalization of homophobia and two on same sex marriage were performed. The social constructionist discourse sustained this search. Different data production strategies were used: feedback form in the post-group; individual interviews in post-group and after a year and a half of participation in the meeting. These strategies were useful for the improvement of the intervention considering its capacity to produce rich meanings about the participation in the meeting, the conversation structure, the posture of the facilitators, arresting moments of the meeting, suggestions for changes and effects of the conversation over time.