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Gay rights and moral panic: The origins of America's debate on homosexuality
Abstract
Using the 1977 campaign against the Dade County Florida gay rights ordinance as a focal point, this book provides an examination of the emergence of the modern lesbian and gay American movement, the challenges it posed to the accepted American notions of sexuality, and how American society reacted in turn.
... Second, it will look at the moderating effect of opinions about accommodating Islam in the country on anti-Muslim sentiments. The moderating effect of opinions has been explored in other contexts (Bishin et al., 2016;Bratton, 2002;Fejes, 2008;Traunmüller and Helbling, 2020;Zagarri, 2007), but the focus on the accommodation of Islam policies is still limited. Based on the above discussion, we hypothesise that, first, higher levels of accommodation of Islam are associated with a decrease in anti-Muslim sentiments (Hypothesis 1). ...
... This means that the accommodation of Islam policies have no apparent effect on those who disagree with accommodation. This finding is interesting because it counters what has been documented in the social movement literature (Bratton, 2002;Fejes 2008;Zagarri, 2007;however, see Bishin et al., 2016 for a different finding), according to which policies will have a socialising and a backlash effect, depending on the policy addressees' opinions. The absence of policy effect when opinions dissonate with the policy contents can be explained by the compromised statistical power of our tests due to the small number of level-2 units. ...
The capability of accommodation policies to create inclusive and cohesive societies for social integration has recently been called into question. Some people worry that accommodation may upset those who disagree about the policy and create a backlash effect. This study examines these issues using the theory of cognitive dissonance and empirically tests whether individuals’ policy preference influences the impact of accommodation of Islam policies on anti-Muslim sentiments. Using survey data from 15 Western European countries, we find that accommodation of Islam policies produce socialising effects on those whose opinions resonate with the policies. However, we do not find statistical evidence of backlash on those whose opinions dissonate with the policies. The findings suggest that accommodation of Islam policies do not radicalise dissonant opinions and are likely to reduce anti-Muslim sentiments among those whose opinions resonate with the policies.
In 1960, consensual sodomy was a crime in every state in America. Fifty-five years later, the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the fundamental right to marry. In the span of two generations, American law underwent a dramatic transformation. Though the fight for marriage equality has received a considerable amount of attention from scholars and the media, it was only a small part of the more than half-century struggle for queer family rights. Family Matters uncovers these decades of advocacy, which reshaped the place of same-sex sexuality in American law and society – and ultimately made marriage equality possible. This book, however, is more than a history of queer rights. Marie-Amélie George reveals that national legal change resulted from shifts at the state and local levels, where the central figures were everyday people without legal training. Consequently, she offers a new way of understanding how minority groups were able to secure meaningful legal change.
This article presents a critical discourse analysis of groups on the free speech social media platform Gab that were intended to be LGBTQ+-friendly but became spaces of queerphobia. Results indicate that Gab users deployed discourses of difference to situate the platform as heteronormative and to denigrate the LGBTQ+ community. In particular, discourses utilized in the name of free speech were used to establish LGBTQ+ individuals as abominations, undergird hegemonic masculinity, and marginalize queer folk by reducing them to sex acts and sex organs. This study provides a better understanding of the (in)efficacy of "free speech" as a content moderation policy and unpacks how anti-LGBTQ+ hate speech spreads in digital spaces.
The interrelationship between heteronormativity, homonormativity and hegemonic masculinity has widereaching ramifications for the representation of important moments and agents in LGBTQIAN+ history. In this study, the author examines how the films Howl, Stonewall and Milk enact the emancipation of their protagonists, while simultaneously reproducing their oppression and aestheticising their discrimination, thus making it consumable. This contradiction is emblematic of new forms of exclusion that function more subtly than blatant homophobia, outright sexism or overt racism, while at the same time rejecting a more complex repre-sentation of social experiences but instead solidifying static, definable identities.
The interrelationship between heteronormativity, homonormativity and hegemonic masculinity has widereaching ramifications for the representation of important moments and agents in LGBTQIAN+ history. In this study, the author examines how the films Howl, Stonewall and Milk enact the emancipation of their protagonists, while simultaneously reproducing their oppression and aestheticising their discrimination, thus making it consumable. This contradiction is emblematic of new forms of exclusion that function more subtly than blatant homophobia, outright sexism or overt racism, while at the same time rejecting a more complex repre-sentation of social experiences but instead solidifying static, definable identities.
A partisan divide over LGBT rights has emerged in the U.S. Yet unlike other issues on which the parties have traded places or polarized, most of the change on gay rights has occurred within one party, the Democrats. How did this unusual change occur? LGBT rights was originally a fringe cause, rejected by most politicians in both parties. As gay rights activists slowly became more prominent in the Democratic Party, many politicians adapted, abandoning earlier positions informed by their personal backgrounds and state or district constituencies. Meanwhile, incorporating the religious right led most Republicans to maintain the anti-LGBT rights stand that was once common to both parties, even as public opinion shifted. The result was a partisan divide in this issue area that had consequences for policy. The role of adaptation by incumbents in producing it—contrary to some prominent models—is evident in both Congressional co-sponsorship and roll-call data. The growing party divide is also evident in platforms. These findings contribute to a broader understanding of how party position change occurs.
The goal of many social movement organizations (SMOs) seeking political change is some kind of right. Rights‐based movements have been the signature form of political movement since at least the mid‐twentieth century in the West and are increasingly common in other parts of the world.
