Social Movement Growth, Domain Expansion, and Framing Processes: The Gay/Lesbian Movement and Violence against Gays and Lesbians as a Social Problem

Abstract

This work offers an empirical analysis of 32 gay/lesbian sponsored anti-violence projects in the United States. The analytic focus is on how gay and lesbian communities have brought attention to the scope and consequences of anti-gay and lesbian violence in the United States, which “has taken its place among such societal concerns as violence against women, children and ethnic and racial groups” (Comstock 1991:1). In large part, this is because within lesbian and gay communities across the United States there has been an “unprecedented level of organizing against violence” (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force 1991:22). This activism continues to include documenting the incidents and prevalence of anti-gay and lesbian violence, establishing crisis intervention and victim assistance programs, sponsoring public education campaigns, and undertaking surveillance efforts in the form of street patrols. My analysis of these activities brings together elements of the social problems and the social movements literature; it demonstrates that domain expansion (Best 1990) accompanies social movement growth and provides a necessary resource for framing select social conditions as a social problem.