Out on the Diplomatic Stage: Performing Homosexuality in Heteronormative Institutions

How do openly gay diplomats navigate visibility and belonging within the heteronormative institution of diplomacy? This paper examines how sexuality is performed by openly gay U.S. ambassadors in contrasting socio-political environments. Diplomacy, long structured around the figure of the heterosexual male diplomat and his female spouse, continues to reproduce exclusionary norms of gender and sexuality. Although recent scholarship has recognized diplomacy as a performative and embodied practice, revealing how gender, class, and symbols shape the projection of state authority, it has paid little attention to how sexuality itself is staged, negotiated, or constrained in diplomatic life. The paper addresses this gap by offering a comparative, empirically grounded analysis of how openly gay ambassadors enact and manage sexuality in their public performances. Drawing on Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical framework, diplomacy is conceptualized as a stage where sexuality is performed through setting, appearance, and manner. Using qualitative analysis of speeches, social media posts, and public events, the study compares Ambassadors James Costos in Spain and David Pressman in Hungary. A central tension complicates these performances: diplomats must represent their state’s values, including, for example, support for LGBTIQ+ rights, while not interfering in the host country’s internal affairs. It is expected that local contexts condition, but do not determine, how (homo)sexuality is performed on the diplomatic stage. By extending the study of political representation to the diplomatic sphere, the paper aims to reveal how sexual minorities reshape elite political institutions. I argue that homosexuality is not only present but actively performed in diplomacy, offering a new lens through which to examine how even deeply heteronormative institutions can change; not only through formal policy but through embodied, symbolic, and relational acts. In doing so, the paper demonstrates how queerness unsettles the presumed neutrality of high-status political arenas and expands debates on inclusion, visibility, and symbolic power.