PERFORMING SEXUALITY ON THE DIPLOMATIC STAGE A Comparative Study of Openly Gay Ambassadors in Hungary and Spain

Abstract

In just over three decades, the U.S. federal government shifted from purging suspected gay employees to appointing the world’s first openly gay ambassador in 1999. Yet this historical transformation remains largely overlooked in both public discourse and academic scholarship, despite the growing presence of openly gay ambassadors within diplomacy – a field long structured by heteronormativity. This thesis seeks to examine how sexuality is staged in such a context, drawing on a performative theoretical approach to diplomacy. Inspired by practice theory and employing Erving Goffman’s (1956) dramaturgical model, it develops an inductive analytical framework to explore the staging of homosexuality across three dimensions: setting, appearance, and manner. To generate context-rich insights, the study adopts a qualitative approach and analyzes diplomatic performances on official social media platforms – key arenas for contemporary public-facing diplomacy, aligned with the concept of digital diplomacy. Using a comparative case study design, it investigates the performances of two openly gay U.S. ambassadors posted to European Union (EU) member states: Ambassador James Costos in Spain (2013–2017), a gay-friendly environment, and Ambassador David Pressman in Hungary (2022–2025), a gay-unfriendly environment. The analysis reveals that while both ambassadors performed sexuality on the diplomatic stage, their performances diverged across the three dimensions, shaped not only by personal and institutional factors but also by the sociopolitical climate of the host country. This thesis demonstrates that even within diplomacy’s heteronormative structure, sexuality can be actively and meaningfully staged – and that context plays an important role in shaping both the boundaries and the possibilities of such performances.