An Intersectional Analysis of Gender and Race for Sexual Minorities Who Engage in Gay and Lesbian Rights Activism

Social movements aimed at increasing rights for sexual minorities have mobilized in the United States and throughout the world, yet studies on why gays and lesbians from a variety of racial backgrounds join and participate in these collective actions are rare. To address this gap, this study used a survey to identify the key factors that inspired four types of gay and lesbian rights activism: voting, petition signing, protesting, and civil disobedience. After conducting an intersectional analysis on 285 self-identified gays and lesbians from throughout the U.S. of how gender, race, and framing factors impacted these political behaviors, this study concluded that the act of publicly revealing one’s sexual identity and experiencing heterosexist discrimination generally increased activism on the behalf of gay and lesbian rights (regardless of gender or race). However, race and gender differences were noted, as White lesbians were less likely to protest and vote than lesbians of color. For gay men, race was less crucial to activism but experiencing workplace discrimination and embracing an activist identity were especially relevant in predicting activist behaviors.     

Working Class Masculinity: Keeping Gay Men and Lesbians out of the Workplace

Recent survey research suggests that heterosexuals’ attitudes toward lesbian and gay rights have become more progressive. However, we find in our research that negative attitudes and barriers against gay men and lesbians in workplaces still remain. Our project represents one case study of hidden animosity toward homosexuals, which varies from “overt disgust” to “don’t ask, don’t tell” policies that reinforce negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. As such, we contend that attitudes toward lesbian and gay rights are not becoming more progressive; instead various methods of discrimination are increasingly being used to exclude gay men and lesbians from the workplace. We argue that White working class men have constructed and maintained a form of White male solidarity, a collective practice directed toward women, People of Color, and non-heterosexuals that maintains racism, sexism, and homophobia in the local, national, and global context.     

Cheshire Calhoun's Project of Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory

I support Cheshire Calhoun's argument that there is a distinctive type of sexuality injustice addressed to lesbians and gays, but challenge her definitional strategy regarding the concepts of “lesbian” and “gay” and the “universalistic essentialist” distinction that she draws between patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality. Finally, I take issue with the political implications of her claim that lesbians’ and gays’ special oppression stems from our exclusion from the legal prerogatives of marriage and parenthood.     

Affective responses to non-sexual imagery depicting gay men and lesbian women

ABSTRACT

When examining negative attitudes and behaviors directed toward gay men and lesbian women (i.e., homonegativity), researchers tend to use measures that require participants to respond to belief statements. This methodology is problematic for two reasons: 1) it focuses on the social categories “gay men” and “lesbian women” and ignores the practices of relational intimacy engaged in by gay and lesbian persons (practices that, arguably, are at the crux of homonegativity); and 2) it overlooks the affective responses that sexual minorities evoke in heterosexual people. These issues were tackled in the current study. Specifically, heterosexual participants (N = 241) were asked to report their affective state using six basic emotions while viewing photos depicting male-male, female-female, and heterosexual couples. Findings demonstrated that participants, regardless of gender, reacted most negatively to images of female-female couples engaging in everyday intimacies. Theoretical explanations for these findings are explored.     

Oppression and Resistance: Frye's Politics of Reality

Marilyn Frye's first book, The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory, presents nine philosophical lectures: four on women's subordination, four on resistance and rebellion, one on revolution. Its approach combines a lesbian perspective with analytical philosophy of language. The major contributions of the book are its analysis of oppression, highly suggestive discussions of the roles of attention in knowledge and ignorance and in arrogance and love, a defense of political separatism not based on female supremacism, and a development of the idea of lesbian epistemology. Its proposal for resisting White racism will be controversial. Its treatment of gay rights is not balanced by an acknowledgement that drag queens, like “totaled women,” are products of oppression, not simply of intolerance. The most philosophically problematic aspect of the book is its analysis of coercion and of the roles of coercion in women's subordination. This creates an unresolved tension with the positive message of the second half of the book. Despite this difficulty, these essays are an outstanding contribution to contemporary feminist theory.     

Creating an embodied queer Judaism: liturgy,ritual and sexuality at San Francisco’s Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, 1977–1987

ABSTRACT

Gay and lesbian synagogues, unique to the American religious landscape, first appeared in the early 1970s. At the height of the gay synagogue movement in the late 1980s and early 1990s, over two dozen such congregations met the spiritual needs of gay and lesbian Jews across the United States. As they grew and expanded, these synagogues incubated a new “queer Judaism” centred on innovative rituals, liturgy, and embodied practices grounded in gay and lesbian (and later, also bisexual and transgender) experiences. In this essay, I offer a 10-year case study of the development of queer Judaism at Congregation Sha’ar Zahav (CSZ), San Francisco’s gay and lesbian synagogue, founded in 1977. Within the landscape of gay and lesbian synagogues, CSZ stands out for being founded in San Francisco when that city was the capital of American gay culture. Inspired by the Gay Liberation Movement and the flowering of grassroots Jewish community organizing in the late 1960s and 1970s, the founders of CSZ asserted a right to difference, building and promoting links between Judaism, sexuality, gender, and identity. In this context, CSZ helped build a queer, sex-positive Judaism that celebrated and politicized sexual minorities, created new forms of chosen family, and fostered an ethic of egalitarian and lay-led inclusiveness.     

Thinking about the Plurality of Genders

Linda Nicholson argues that because gender is socially constructed, feminist theorizing must be about an expansive multiplicity of subjects called “woman” that bear a family resemblance to each other. But why did feminism expand its category of analysis to apply to all cultures and time periods when social constructionism led lesbian and gay studies to narrow the categories “homosexual” and “lesbian”? And given the multiplicity of genders, why insist that feminist subjects are different, resembling women rather than a multiplicity including women as well as not‐women and not‐men?     

Political Implications of Group Stereotypes: Campaign Experiences of Openly Gay Political Candidates1

The survey of openly gay officials and candidates was undertaken to investigate openly gay candidates’ perceptions about the role of stereotypical beliefs associated with their group in their political experiences. In addition to examining the general presence of stereotypical rhetoric in the campaign experiences of openly gay candidates, I investigated how its pervasiveness varied with the “liberalness” of the district in which the candidates competed, the timing of the candidates’ sexual-orientation disclosure, and the success or failure of their electoral efforts. While stereotypical beliefs about gay men seem not to play a prominent role in all openly gay candidates’ electoral experiences, generally speaking, their perceived influence is magnified under certain conditions.     

Moved by the Spirit: Theological Literatures of LGBT Advocacy

Debate over the question of how to effectively acknowledge and advocate for the presence of LGBT people as legitimate members of religious denominations and a population entitled to ministry has generated a substantial body of monographic literature within the field of theology. The earliest works were published during the era of the homophile movement in the 1960s prior to the Stonewall riot in 1969 that marks the beginning of the contemporary gay and lesbian civil rights movement. The subsequent decades have witnessed an expansion and diversification of this genre with the emergence of specific liturgies and ceremonies addressing significant LGBT life events, autobiographies and biographies of openly lesbian and gay clergy, and writings confronting issues of ethnicity and activism.     

Exploring Normative Creativity: Testing the Relationship Between Cognitive Flexibility and Sexual Identity

Brown (1989) proposed that lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals possess greater “normative creativity” and flexibility than heterosexuals because they have fewer norms for living in heterosexually dominated society. In this article we explore one possible individual difference between heterosexuals and nonheterosexuals in the domain of normative creativity by examining the relationship between cognitive flexibility and sexual identity among 358 university students. Participants with sexual identities not directed toward one gender exclusively (e.g., bisexual, biaffectionate, or queer) scored significantly higher on a measure of cognitive flexibility than did heterosexual and gay/lesbian participants; the latter two groups did not differ from each other. These results suggest that it is having a nonexclusive sexual identity, rather than a lesbian or gay identity, that is related to greater cognitive flexibility.     

The description of gay and lesbian families in second-parent adoption cases

Lesbians and gay men are turning to the courts to recognize their family relationships. In this article every reported court decision where a lesbian or gay couple has successfully completed a second-parent adoption is reviewed to analyze the presentation and judicial analysis of the petitioning parties in conjunction with the current debates within family theory. Traditional family theorists argue that the contemporary family is in transition but will always be recognizable as the traditional family; postmodern theorists argue that the traditional “family” is a fiction. Results from this study indicate that judges in second-parent adoption cases rely on a traditional definition and vision of the family in evaluating the gay and lesbian petitioners before them. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

My Soul to Take: A Phenomenology of the Struggle for an Authentic Gay Spirituality

This phenomenological study explored the “coming‐out” experience of 7 gay men who were significantly influenced by conservative Christianity in their formative years and who are living as “out” gay men. Four commonalities were revealed in their experience of this phenomenon: (a) a realization and acceptance of their gay identity, (b) a reckoning that action was required, (c) a rejection of the oppressive religious authority in their lives, and (d) a reorientation in their pursuit of a healthy spirituality. The study includes a review of the relevant literature and recommendations to counselors in addressing the unique needs of spiritually oriented lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning individuals.     

Authoritarian Resilience Versus Everyday Resistance: The Unexpected Strength of Religious Advocacy in Promoting Transnational Activism in China

This article examines one of the most sensitive forms of transnational activism—the money and services foreign advocacy groups provide to empower locals—and explores the reasons why some aid groups have been allowed to work in certain locations when conventional wisdom and experience would indicate otherwise. In a careful comparison of four Chinese cities with similar geographic, political, and economic conditions, we find that only one particular form of religious activist network has been tolerated and its rule‐breaking nature has created a persistent activism of “everyday resistance.” Thus, decoding the mechanisms of its success, named “backdoor listing” and “minority‐majority alliance,” can help to expand our knowledge about not only the possibility of religious freedom in China, but also our theoretical understanding of the transnational activism strategies that are being widely debated and employed to improve human rights worldwide.     

Tales of Plagues and Carnivals: Samuel R. Delany, AIDS, and the Grammar of Dissent

While even today lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people might have cause to distrust the healthcare establishment, how much more fragile was the relationship between sexual minorities and health professionals in the first decade of the AIDS epidemic. Dissent from consensus healthcare and health research then was a question of survival in the face of political and medical intransigence. This article focuses on one version of AIDS dissent: The narrative representations of AIDS in fiction by the gay African-American fantasy writer Samuel R. Delany, which rejected the rigid binarism of “safe” and “unsafe” sex practices, Delany’s evidence-based dissent. He also engaged in a related form of cultural dissent: speaking the unspeakably obscene, at a time when Silence?=?Death. Delany called into question both the inferential leaps based on limited epidemiological research that were represented in safer sex guidelines and the widespread public reticence about sexual behavior.     

Resources,Masculinities, and Gender Differences Among Pro-life Activists

Abortion politics are often about “pro-choice” and “pro-life” countermovements trying to gain power by winning the support of political bystanders. While more is known about the reasons people become pro-choice activists, far less research has examined the motives for pro-life men and women. To address the factors that mobilize abortion activism, this study examined the role of education, religious contexts, and gendered expectations in predicting pro-life activism. After surveying 820 college students, our data highlights the importance of activist networks in inspiring activism among pro-life advocates. In gender subsamples, being a biblical literalist, being married, and endorsing patriarchal family structures were linked to more pro-life activism among women, while embracing authoritarian outlooks, having less education, being poorer, and attending religious services did so for men. Implications for gender differences in pro-life activism and the complex ways in which pro-life attitudes intersect with traditional gender roles were explored.     

Gay,Lesbian, and Queer Theologies: Origins,Contributions, and Challenges

Abstract : Theologians and biblical scholars have been writing about Christianity and homosexuality for over three decades, but lesbian/gay and queer theologies are still unfamiliar. Since questions about lesbian, gay, and queer Christians are confronting many denominations, it is important to study these proposals. This essay argues that lesbian/gay theologies trace their histories to theologies of liberation, while queer theology is indebted to postmodern and queer theories. Recent Christological and anthropological proposals are presented, and the essay concludes by exploring the distinct political implications of these theological proposals.     

Inventing a Gay Agenda: Students' Perceptions of Lesbian and Gay Professors1

Students' perceptions of lesbian and gay professors were examined in 2 studies (Ns = 622 and 545). An ethnically diverse sample of undergraduates read and responded to a syllabus for a proposed Psychology of Human Sexuality course. Syllabuses varied according to the political ideology, carefulness, sexual orientation, and gender of the professor. Students rated professors on dimensions such as political bias, professional competence, and warmth. Lesbian and gay professors were rated as having a political agenda, compared to heterosexual professors with the same syllabus. Student responses differed according to their homonegativity and modern homonegativity scores. The findings from these studies suggest that students may use different criteria to evaluate lesbian, gay, and heterosexual professors' ability to approach courses objectively.     

Induced disgust affects implicit and explicit responses toward gay men and lesbians

In the current study, disgust was induced using a carefully controlled odor manipulation to observe its effect on participants' implicit and explicit responses to homosexuals. Participants were presented with a vial containing an odor that was described as “body odor” (n = 47) that induced a high level of disgust, or “parmesan cheese” (n = 43) that induced a moderate level of disgust, or an odor‐free vial (n = 53). Subsequently, participants viewed images of homosexual and heterosexual couples, and their viewing times and ratings of the images' pleasantness were recorded. Additionally, they completed a “feelings thermometer” task, the Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men scale that assessed feelings toward homosexuals, and the Three‐Domain Disgust Scale to measure sensitivity along three dimensions of disgust (pathogen, moral, and sexual). Results indicated that those in the body odor condition viewed images of gay (but not lesbian) couples for less time relative to images of heterosexual couples compared with participants in the other two conditions. With respect to explicit ratings, participants in the body odor condition reported colder feelings for gay relative to heterosexual men on the feelings thermometer compared with those in the no‐odor control condition. For pleasantness ratings, the odor manipulation served as a moderator, such that for those in the body odor condition only, higher sensitivity to sexual disgust predicted lower ratings for images of lesbian couples relative to straight couples. Thus, although induction of disgust biases implicit and explicit responses to gay couples, the degree to which this occurs for explicit ratings of lesbian couples depends on levels of sexual disgust. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.