Attitudes towards political groups and their rights are often shaped by the core values held by individuals. In reference to LGBT people and their rights, research has often shown that core values play a role in understanding affect towards the group and related policies. Values such as moral traditionalism and egalitarianism have long been understood to be determinants of people’s attitudes toward LGBT rights. LGBT issues are framed relying on competing value frames, which change in their dominance over time. However, core values tend to be stable but American attitudes toward LGBT people and rights have undergone sharp increases in their favorability. One explanation for this change is an increasing political tolerance among the American public. Political tolerance is the degree to which the public supports the civil liberties of members of different social groups, and it is distinct though related to attitudes on LGBT issues of equality (e.g., marriage equality). Political tolerance encompasses attitudes toward the rights for LGBT people to exercise their free speech, political and social organization, and live free from government intrusion. In the US, adults have consistently expressed greater political tolerance for lesbian and gay people than issues of LGBT equality. Political tolerance toward lesbian and gay people has increased since the 1970s, but egalitarian values have remained rather stagnant. The effect of egalitarian values on political tolerance for lesbian and gay people was stronger in earlier years, and as Americans have become more tolerant of lesbian and gay people, the role of egalitarianism in affecting political tolerance has diminished. There are limitations of existing data, especially regarding the political tolerance of bisexuals, transgender people, and others who are generally considered to be within the broader LGBT community.
Article
Andrew R. Flores
Article
Timothy Rich, Andi Dahmer, and Isabel Eliassen
How does Asia compare to other regions in terms of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) rights? While Asia lags behind the West on typical metrics of LGBT rights, this fails to capture the diversity of tolerance historically in the region. At the same time, conservative backlashes to LGBT policies are evident across the region, often invoking traditionalist or religious opposition, as also seen outside of the region.
Moreover, much of the literature myopically focuses on one or two countries in Asia, rarely attempting to make broad comparisons across East, South, and Central Asia. Part of this is due to terminology differences, where “homosexual” is commonly used in some countries as a catch-all term for members of the LGBT community, compared to others in the region countries, especially in South Asia, with a longer history of specialized terminology for transgendered people. Yet broader comparisons in the absence of terminology differences remain rare despite growing attention to LGBT issues in public opinion polls, news, and academic work and despite the fact that the legal avenues chosen by LGBT rights proponents often mirror those chosen in the West.
State policies on LGBT policies also range considerably in the region, with only Taiwan currently recognizing same-sex marriage at the national level, but with decriminalization and antidiscrimination policies at the national and local levels increasingly common. However, a commonly overlooked trend is that of harsher LGBT policies enacted by local governments. Meanwhile, despite trends in the West of growing public tolerance on LGBT issues, far less consistency emerges in Asia, further complicating state efforts.
It is important to highlight Asia’s diversity in terms of rights and tolerance, but it is equally important to integrate evidence from Asia into cross-national research on LGBT issues to understand what is unique about the region and what may have been ignored in other regions.
Article
Erin Mayo-Adam
There is a growing body of research on law and policy concerning lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) family law and policy. LGBTQ families have existed for centuries despite laws and policies that criminalize their relational practices. However, the legal landscape has shifted a great deal over the past few decades, in large part due to the increased visibility of LGBTQ kinship networks and new constitutional protections for same-sex marriage. With this said, legal protections for LGBTQ families vary widely by state, especially parental, adoption, and foster care rights. Historically, family law and policy has fallen within the realm of state power, with some important exceptions (e.g., the Supreme Court has recognized a fundamental right to parent for legal parents). For this reason, there are broad protections afforded to LGBTQ kinship networks in some states, especially those with large urban and more liberal populations, and barriers that stand in the way of LGBTQ parental rights in other states that are more conservative or rural. The legalization of marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges did standardize some protections for same-sex couples in traditional relationships across the United States. Yet the case also presents new problems both for LGBTQ families that are more heteronormative and those that are not because it fails to recognize a fundamental right to parent for LGBTQ people who create non-biological families and live non-traditional lives.
In addition to these legal and policy changes, social scientists have used both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to shed light on the problems faced by LGBTQ families politically and legally. Researchers have examined how LGBTQ families attempt to protect their ability to parent in family court, how LGBTQ kinship networks identify innovative legal and political strategies aimed at overcoming barriers to legal recognition, and how LGBTQ identity is both constituted and made invisible through family law. Furthermore, scholars have produced a wealth of research refuting the myth that LGBTQ people are inadequate parents since the late 1980s and this research has been used in court cases across the United States to facilitate the legal recognition of LGBTQ families. Despite this research, gaps in both scholarship and legal recognition remain. Scholarship remains startlingly sparse given the legal and political barriers that stand in the way of LGBTQ family recognition, especially for LGBTQ people of color and trans and queer people. In order to address this gap, scholars should devote more resources to research on families that include LGBTQ people of color and trans and queer people, research on non-traditional queer kinship networks, and research on the unique ways that LGBTQ families are responding to political and legal barriers at the local level.
Article
Helma G. E. de Vries-Jordan
Marriage equality movements have been successful in achieving policy change in an increasing number of states. Hence, a growing body of scholarship has explored institutional and cultural factors that influence activists’ tactics and messaging and, in turn, contribute to marriage equality policy diffusion. Democracies with parliamentary, presidential, and semi-presidential systems, federal and unitary states with varying levels of centralization, and the presence or absence of constitutional anti-discrimination protections provide social movements with divergent political opportunity structures, contributing to dynamics in their tactical choices. In addition, the type of electoral system and party system, the presence of political parties that are movement allies, the use of conscience votes, the level of party discipline, the presence of out LGBT elected officials and straight political allies, and the degree of political will to enact policy change also impact activists’ strategic calculations. Finally, the use of personalized narratives in advocates’ messaging, the framing of marriage equality and LGBT rights as human rights norms, the adoption of family values frames to coopt opponents’ messaging, and the use of homonationalist versus homophobic discourses to justify policymaking decisions regarding same-sex marriage are explored. This article provides a comprehensive review of state-of-the-art research concerning all of the states that have legalized same-sex marriage as well as a detailed analysis of the mechanisms used to achieve policy change. After examining how different explanatory factors perform in accounting for the dynamics in marriage equality activism and policy convergence across a broad range of national contexts, new directions for future scholarship are suggested.
Article
Marissa Reilly, Elizabeth L. Hillman, and Elliot Koltnow
Examining the evolution of U.S military policy reveals how debates about the rights and opportunities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people have been shaped by military personnel policies, federal laws, and cultural practices within military units. LGBT individuals have experienced U.S. military service through regulatory regimes that have often defined them as burdensome deviants and denied them civil rights enjoyed by other service members.
LGBT people have served as volunteers and conscripts, openly and in the closet. Key periods of U.S. military history for LGBT service include World War II, the Cold War, as well as the Vietnam War era, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) regime (1994–2010), and the post-DADT period (2011 and beyond). During these periods of time, the armed forces and the United States reassessed the regulation of the service of LGBT service members and implemented changes that affected the rights, opportunities, and safety of LGBT military personnel and potential recruits. Those changes traced a path from outright exclusion of open service by LGBT persons to exemption, under which LGBT persons may serve under certain conditions, which often included the threat of expulsion, punishment, and extra-legal violence. In the post-DADT period, inclusion, or open service by some, but not all, LGBT groups, was made legal and safer through changes in law and military regulations and training that protected against some types of gender-identity and sexual orientation discrimination.
Because serving openly in the military is a sign of full citizenship in the United States as well as a means of achieving economic security, eliminating limits on LGBT military service has long been a focus of advocates for civil rights. Military service has been perceived as proving a citizen’s loyalty and patriotism as well as offering material and social advancement. With many LGBT people at greater risk of unemployment, homelessness, and premature death as a result of violence and social ostracism, military service has been an especially critical opportunity for political and economic advancement.
Honoring this history and identifying existing trends can help the United States, other nations, and international organizations to adapt their policies in recognition of gender and sexual diversity. Even when excluded by formal policy, people have found ways to serve, sometimes at great personal risk. Although their labor is officially lauded as an asset, their contributions and needs have not been fully recognized or appreciated by the state they pledged to serve. As the nation’s largest employer and provider of structural resources, the U.S. military’s support of LGBT military personnel and veterans matters greatly to social equity for a still-vulnerable LGBT population.
Article
Megan Osterbur
Hate crime policy has developed from the early legislation of the 1968 Civil Rights Act to the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act, to be increasingly inclusive in terms of identity and comprehensive in terms of ramifications. Hence a body of scholarship around the trajectory and implications of hate crime laws has developed, as has a robust discourse on the definitions of hate crime itself and theories on who perpetrates bias-motivated violence and why it occurs. Between definitions of hate crime, a tension exists between legal definitions and those of theorists who are attempting incorporate understanding of context into the definition. Similarly, the theories on who perpetrates hate crimes and why they occur exhibit tensions between strain-based theories. While some scholars have deployed Merton’s (1938) strain theory associated with societal anomie, others point to changing norms.
As hate crime laws have become more inclusive of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression, avenues of research into the disparities in experience of bias-motivated crimes between enumerated categories has increased. Persistent in the research on hate crime is the deficiency of data on victimization and ramifications beyond direct victims. While data on the scope of the policies is clear, inconsistencies in data collection around victimization render available resources insufficient.
Most recently, research on hate crime policy has intersected with queer theory to question whether hate crime laws are positive for the LGBTQ community or society at large. Organizations such as the Silvia Rivera Law Project, for example, have pushed back on calls for inclusive hate crime laws via challenging the propensity to provide additional resources to the prison-industrial complex. Furthermore, queer scholars of history find a disconnect between the origins of the LGBTI movement in resisting police powers to be antithetical to promoting increased police powers in the form of hate crime legislation.
Article
Pedro Alexandre Costa
According to recent U.S. census data, there are over 700,000 same-gender couples, of which 114,00 have children. U.K. census data further revealed over 200,000 same-gender parented families, and there is evidence that these numbers have been increasing in the last few decades. Between the late 1980s and early 1990s, research on the psychosocial well-being of LGB families was established with a focus on the potential impact of parents’ sexual orientation on the psychological adjustment of their children. Interest in LGB families was evidenced by the growing political and public attention, and became a central issue within the LGBT+ movement across the Western world, especially in Europe and the United States. However, attitudes toward LGB family policies have not evolved in a linear fashion insofar as they have accompanied the constant back and forth in LGB family policies and legislation. Negative attitudes toward LGB family policies are rooted in the negative evaluations of LGB individuals based on beliefs that LGB people are less fit as parents or unable to form and sustain healthy relationships because of their sexual or gender identity. However, these negative beliefs differ according to heterosexual individuals’ characteristics. Research has shown that men, older, less educated, non-White, politically conservative, highly religious, and authoritarian, as well as those who believe that homosexuality is controllable, strictly adhere to traditional gender roles and authorities, and do not have frequent or close contact with LGB individuals, hold higher levels of sexual prejudice toward LGB individuals and LGB family policies.
As of January 2020, same-gender marriage and parenthood are recognized in around 30 countries worldwide, although some countries recognize some forms of same-gender unions, but not marriage, whereas others recognize the right of LGB individuals to have children but not to marry. LGB family policies have progressed mostly through two different pathways: (a) the judicial pathway, which has involved litigation and court rulings on specific matters related to same-gender relationships and parenthood and which was undertaken in the United States, and (b) the legislative pathway, which has relied on political discussion and policy initiatives and was undertaken in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain). The different pathways to equality in LGB family policies have different impacts for LGB individuals. In particular, the constant negative messages regarding same-gender couples as being unable to have healthy relationships have been shown to contribute to chronic minority stress and psychological distress among LGB individuals. By contrast, the legalization of same-gender marriage and parenthood provide important benefits and protections for LGB families in addition to promoting their well-being. Examining the evolution of attitudes and legislation regarding LGB family policies is important to inform further initiatives aimed at correcting inequalities for LGB families.
