LGBT Rights Research Articles

When Laws Solve Problems that Do Not Exist: Transgender Rights in the Nation’s Schools

When Laws Solve Problems that Do Not Exist:Transgender Rights in the Nation’s Schools Josh Corbat Time and again research has shown us that schools in which students feel safe and included promote academic achievement and overall student health (see, for example, Greytak, Kosciw, Villenas, & Giga, 2016; Michael, Merlo, Basch, Wentzel, & Wechsler, 2015). Parent networks, community organizations, and school boards nationwide continuously espouse one common goal: to create the safe environments students deserve and to promote the academic, physical, and mental well-being of all members of our educational communities. Although this is certainly an admirable goal, it is far from a reality. Michael and colleagues (2015) have shown, in a review of the pertinent literature, that school policies and directives must better align with this goal in order to establish and maintain safe school environments. For members of our communities that are outside the mainstream culture and outside the now defunct gender dichotomy, these efforts are particularly important. In a report conducted and published by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) nearly all (87%) transgender students have reported being verbally harassed at school and over half (53%) have been physically assaulted because of their gender expression (Greytak et al., 2009). It is an undeniable shame, then, that battles—legal and moral—are still waged in many local communities and states to undermine the safety of this targeted group of students. North Carolina’s House Bill 2 (HB2, also known as the Public Facilities Privacy and Security Act) was passed in March of 2016 and immediately made national headlines. Two key components of HB2 were forcefully met with opposition by a variety of civil rights groups. The law stipulates, based on biological sex, which bathroom individuals must use in public buildings. Additionally, it overturns existing legislation across the state and bars any future legislation that protects the rights of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. Simply put, HB2 made discrimination against the LGBT community legal in North Carolina. HB2 also created a new challenge specifically for transgender women and men in a legislative move the Washington Post called a “cunning trick” (Guo, 2016). Modified from a bill passed in Tennessee designed to protect interstate commerce from capricious local legislation, HB2 was written to ensure that businesses could operate statewide without being burdened by local ordinances and laws that prescribe how they can treat members of the LGBT community. This, combined with verbiage lifted from a variety of model bills in the religious freedom strand of legislation (such as Indiana’s 2015 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, one of several state laws modeled on the federal act of the same name signed into law in 1993 by President Bill Clinton), makes HB2 a potent affront to forward-thinking policies nationwide. This rhetorical “trick” employed by HB2 and a variety of similar policies allows conservative lawmakers and special interest groups to hide behind trade and economic issues—as well as religious “rights” in some cases—in defending these discriminatory pieces of legislation, a move that has proved successful in the past (Guo, 2016). The success of the conservatives in these cases is, of course, a setback to the movement for LGBT rights. [End Page 85] Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibits any form of sex-based discrimination in any federally funded educational programs or activities. The Dear Colleague Letter on Transgender Students published jointly by the Departments of Justice and Education states, in no uncertain language, that these protections extend to transgender students in our nation’s schools (Lhamon & Gupta, 2016). HB2 clearly violates this policy, and also disregards the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees all citizens equal protection under the law. The Dear Colleague letter was published a few months after the passage of HB2, raising questions about whether the North Carolina legislature would have taken this bold step in the face of such a stark proclamation. Attempts by the Republican supermajority in the North Carolina legislature to defend the law in court, as well as the earmarking of half a million dollars in North Carolina’s emergency fund for the future costs of defending the bill, make...

The Sochi Olympics, Celebration Capitalism, and Homonationalist Pride

In July 2013, the Russian government passed two anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) laws that drew international criticism. Russia’s impending hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games inspired more sustained international attention to these laws than might have otherwise been the case. In this article, we apply the mutually supporting frameworks of queer/trans necropolitics and celebration capitalism to a content analysis of coverage of the Sochi Olympics in the Advocate and Xtra, the leading LGBT publications in the United States and Canada, respectively. We contend that the Advocate and Xtra participated in a homonationalist process of manufacturing consent as the United States, Canada, the West in general, and the Olympic Games were glorified while issues relating to racism and colonialism in Russia, the United States, and Canada were ignored and these geopolitical formations in general were falsely generalized as safe havens for LGBT people. This conclusion is based on two key observations. First, we noted complete silence about racist and ethnic violence in Russia and in the specific site of Sochi in the Advocate and only one (unelaborated) acknowledgment of Sochi as a historical site of ethnic cleansing in Xtra. Second, in spite of the recent expansion of formal citizenship rights for LGBT people, more uniformly in Canada than in the United States, Advocate and Xtra coverage failed to acknowledge the dissonance between American and Canadian governments positioning themselves as LGBT and human rights leaders and the harm these National Security States continue to deliver to racialized, impoverished, and gender and sexual minority populations.

Advancing LGBT Rights in Turkey: Tolerance or Protection?

Tolerance is treated as a virtue and a key principle in liberal theories of the state and human rights. Critics of liberalism have already addressed limitations of tolerance, and the United Nations (UN) introduced broader and more inclusive human rights and non-discrimination norms. Yet, tolerance is still invoked in human rights advocacy, and the UN promotes teaching tolerance as a means to protect human rights. However, there is an asymmetrical relationship between the “tolerant” and the “tolerated,” which must be questioned for its human rights implications. The paper contends that tolerance does not ensure non-discrimination, freedom from persecution, or ending violence. Instead, it can be complicit in violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. As an illustrative case, it examines Turkey—a country that has pursued the liberal policy of tolerance by not criminalizing homosexuality—during a reform period that involved further liberalization of law but not the protection of LGBT rights.

After Obergefell: The Next Generation of LGBT Rights Litigation

Leading to Obergefell v. Hodges, the road to marriage equality was uneven. Several state courts in the 1970s rejected same-sex marriage, based on circular reasoning that avoided the critical constitutional question. The federal government entered the debate and enacted the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. DOMA restricted the definition of marriage to one man and one woman; and, no state was required to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state. State legislatures that had not previously acted enacted mini-DOMAs and others passed constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. Within two decades the Supreme Court reversed its position on the criminalization of sexual intimacy between consenting homosexuals. That same year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that the state’s legislative ban on same-sex marriage “confers an official stamp of approval on the destructive stereotype that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable and inferior to opposite-sex relationships.” Other state and federal courts followed in finding bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. By the time of Obergefell, 37 states and the District of Columbia recognized same-sex marriage. While this turnaround was rapid in constitutional time, it was painfully slow for LGBT couples who were denied the right to marry. Obergefell is this generation’s Loving v. Virginia. Yet, the sad reality is that the right to same-sex marriage is just the beginning of a conversation. Since Obergefell, the backlash has been swift, with public officials refusing to issue marriage licenses because of individual religious objections; and, despite public accommodations laws, some merchants refusing to serve gay couples. The aftermath of Obergefell is just beginning. The authors in this symposium evaluate the opinion, reflect on it, and forecast for the future the anticipated legal and social consequences of the Court’s recognition of the constitutional right to marry a same-sex partner.

Threshold event: Exploring a commercial sponsorship of LGBT rights during the Sochi games

This mixed methods study examines the 2014 Sochi Olympics as an exceptional time period in which the commercial culture shifted potentially forming a convergence of mainstream support behind LGBT r...

Allied Identities

Allies are extremely important to LGBT rights. Though we don’t often enumerate what tasks we expect allies to do, a fairly common conception is that allies “support the LGBT community.” In the first section I introduce three difficulties for this position that collectively suggest it is conceptually insufficient. I then develop a positive account by starting with whom allies are allied to instead of what allies are supposed to do. We might obviously say here that allies are allied to the LGBT community, but I will argue that this community is better thought of as a loose coalition because there are often intersectional issues and conflicting interests that challenge any unified sense of community. I argue that people typically become allies because a friend or family member is experiencing some kind of specific harm; if that harm or discrimination is what causally explains why people become allies, then allies are required to do more than we commonly think. Although allies have a prima facie obligation to honor what members of a subcommunity identify as a harm, this obligation is defeasible if an ally believes fulfilling the obligation would be harmful. I conclude by looking at how we can understand what an ally is in terms of a larger discussion about moral obligations. If people already have these obligations, whatever they are, because morality requires it, then the status “ally” is redundant. I conclude by showing that certain social statuses can not only transform or reprioritize prior moral commitments, but can also introduce new kinds of responsibility that an agent did not have before.

The ADTA’s First Half-Century: Ma(r)king History with an Eye to the Horizon

The author, as co-editor of the American Journal of Dance Therapy, introduces six essays by a small group of experts, invited to share reflections on the social, political, economic, scientific, and cultural context for the development of the profession of dance/movement therapy (DMT) over the first half century of the American Dance Therapy Association (ADTA). Through allusions to pivotal events in the United States circa 1966, this introductory editorial characterizes the U.S. zeitgeist around the year of the ADTA’s founding. Specific references are made to the signing of the Voting Rights Act, the establishment of Medicaid and Medicare, the founding of the National Organization for Women, as well as the violent targeting of civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, and the spontaneous launching of the modern LGBT rights movement with the Stonewall Rebellion in New York’s Greenwich Village. Commentary on the six essays to follow the editorial includes discussion of DMT as a female-dominated profession, which has apparently suffered the economic consequences of gender bias. Strategies for countering devaluation of the profession and building respect for it—including improving dance/movement therapists’ cultural competence, upgrading both quantitative and qualitative research, and fostering alliances between the ADTA and sister institutions—are likewise advanced.

LGBT Rights in Malawi: One Step Back, Two Steps Forward? The Case of R v Steven Monjeza Soko and Tiwonge Chimbalanga Kachepa

AbstractIn late 2009 two Malawians, a man and a transgender woman, united in an engagement ceremony. Police charged both under Malawi's anti-sodomy provisions. The case captured the nation's attention and drew scrutiny from foreign governments and human rights organizations. Several western nations threatened to withdraw aid unless the prosecution was discontinued. Nevertheless, the defendants were convicted and sentenced. Following a visit from the UN secretary general, Malawi's president pardoned the couple, but emphasized that the “two gay boys” had offended Malawi and its people. This article examines this case (R v Soko and Kachepa) and its impact on Malawi's LGBT rights movement. Using Thomas Stoddard's “rule-shifting, culture-shifting” paradigm, it considers the efficacy of international and domestic advocacy efforts and concludes that aid conditionality is, in many ways, counter productive. Conversely, multi-dimensional domestic advocacy is a promising strategy to change the relevant law and public attitudes associated with the Malawian LGBT community.

Exploring Perceived Discrimination Among LGBT Individuals in Turkey in Education, Employment, and Health Care: Results of an Online Survey

ABSTRACTThis article explores the discrimination practices encountered by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals in education, income, employment, and health care in Turkey. Limited quantitative data on LGBT individuals are available in Turkey. This study collected data from 2,875 LGBT individuals through a Web-based survey. The findings suggest that LGBT individuals report perceived direct and indirect discrimination in accessing education, employment, and health care. In a country where LGBT rights are not yet recognized and antidiscrimination legislation covering sexual orientation and gender identity is still nonexistent, findings demonstrate perceived discrimination of LGBTs rarely turns into a legal complaint. Even when they do, most LGBTs in our sample report that they did not feel that the justice system addressed their grievances.

Social Norms and Egalitarian Values Mitigate Authoritarian Intolerance Toward Sexual Minorities

In the United States, acceptance of sexual minorities (e.g., gay men and lesbians) has increased substantially since the early 1990s. This study examined whether authoritarians' attitudes have been influenced by the societal shift toward greater acceptance of sexual minorities. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) collected between 1992 and 2012, we tested a model in which authoritarianism, endorsement of egalitarian values, and social norms shifting in the direction of tolerance predict individual attitudes toward sexual minorities and LGBT rights issues. Results indicated that (1) there was a subset of authoritarians who endorsed egalitarian values, (2) authoritarians in general became more tolerant (i.e., held less negative attitudes) toward sexual minorities between 1992 and 2012, and (3) “egalitarian authoritarians” held more positive attitudes toward sexual minorities than other authoritarians. The findings contribute to contemporary theory and research on authoritarianism, which is moving from a monolithic view of authoritarianism to one in which culture and core values activate and shape manifestations of authoritarian tendencies.

How Glitter Bombing Lost Its Sparkle: The Emergence and Decline of a Novel Social Movement Tactic*

This article explores the case of glitter bombing, a short-lived form of protest in the LGBT rights movement, to understand the mechanisms behind the decline of a novel tactic. To date, little attention has been directed toward tactics that have disappeared from movement repertoires. Using interview data, I find that glitter bombing declined due to many of the same factors that initially provided momentum for its diffusion. First, it was specific to LGBT rights to the degree that the audience of potential adopters was limited. At the same time, the radical nature of glitter bombing meant that adopters were peripheral movement actors who lacked organizational support. Activists dedicated limited resources to gaining media attention and online popularity, often at the cost of other crucial aspects of mobilization. Finally, an increase in repression multiplied these challenges by posing risks to adopters and shifting media coverage away from the tactic's celebratory framing.

A discussion of Stephen Macedo Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy & the Future of Marriage

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids legal discrimination against same-sex marriage. The decision sent shock waves throughout the country, with both supporters and opponents regarding it as signal of dramatic shifts in public opinion and a revolutionary development on the road to sex-gender equality. Just two days earlier, on June 24, 2015, Stephen Macedo’s Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage was published. Macedo has always worked at the intersection of legal theory, normative theory, and public policy, and Just Married offers a nuanced liberal democratic defense of marriage equality with striking resonance in light of Obergefell. We have thus invited a range of scholars on LGBT rights, and LGBT politics more generally, to comment on his book.

A discussion of Stephen Macedo Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy & the Future of Marriage

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids legal discrimination against same-sex marriage. The decision sent shock waves throughout the country, with both supporters and opponents regarding it as signal of dramatic shifts in public opinion and a revolutionary development on the road to sex-gender equality. Just two days earlier, on June 24, 2015, Stephen Macedo’s Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage was published. Macedo has always worked at the intersection of legal theory, normative theory, and public policy, and Just Married offers a nuanced liberal democratic defense of marriage equality with striking resonance in light of Obergefell. We have thus invited a range of scholars on LGBT rights, and LGBT politics more generally, to comment on his book.

A Discussion of Stephen Macedo’s Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy and the Future of Marriage

On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled, in Obergefell v. Hodges, that the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution forbids legal discrimination against same-sex marriage. The decision sent shock waves throughout the country, with both supporters and opponents regarding it as signal of dramatic shifts in public opinion and a revolutionary development on the road to sex-gender equality. Just two days earlier, on June 24, 2015, Stephen Macedo’s Just Married: Same-Sex Couples, Monogamy, and the Future of Marriage was published. Macedo has always worked at the intersection of legal theory, normative theory, and public policy, and Just Married offers a nuanced liberal democratic defense of marriage equality with striking resonance in light of Obergefell. We have thus invited a range of scholars on LGBT rights, and LGBT politics more generally, to comment on his book.

Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence by Christina B. Hanhardt

Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence, Christina B. Hanhardt. Durham, Duke University Press, 2013. xii, 358 pp. $25.95 US (paper). Residents of the West Village in New York City held a Take Back Our Streets rally in May 2002, near the location of riots that broke out in June 1969 after police raided the Stonewall Inn bar. In the intervening thirty-three years, however, the terms of political struggle had become markedly different. Rather than sexual outcasts fighting back against police abuse, the 2002 gathering featured privileged (mainly white) gay, lesbian, and straight homeowners calling for police to step up enforcement of quality-of-life laws. And whereas the leaders of the Stonewall riots were sex workers and transgender people, many of them people of colour, the 2002 leaders singled out queer youth of colour and trans women of colour as the sources of their problems. The very association between the West Village and LGBT residential concentration provided political cover for the 2002 rally organizers, protecting them from accusations of discrimination. American Studies scholar Christina Hanhardt's complex and rewarding new book examines the multiple ironies of this turn of events. When did LGBT neighbourhood organizing campaigns shift from safe street patrols, which sought to protect LGBT people from anti-gay violence, to appeals to the police to enforce curfews that targeted queer youth of colour? The answer, she finds, lies with the LGBT rights movement's claims to neighbourhood--space--as a physical location for identity formation and political action. In the second half of the twentieth century, the Castro in San Francisco and Greenwich Village in New York City became centres of LGBT residence and social life. Residential patterns, cultural and social institutions, and commercial establishments defined these areas as neighbourhoods; association with a gay neighbourhood became intrinsic to gay and lesbian sexual identities. Gay neighbourhood-based identities also became markers of whiteness. Focusing on neighbourhood responses to violence, Hanhardt argues that by mooring a dominant understanding of sexual identity to place, the promotion and protection of gay neighborhoods have reinforced the race and class stratification of postwar urban space (9). The book's five chapters move chronologically, each focused on neighbourhood-based LGBT activism. A three-way tension pervades Hanhardt's case studies: liberal attempts to marshal government resources for economic opportunity; neoliberal plans to police personal conduct; and radical-left movements that celebrated alternative modes of free expression and community organizing. …

The Battle Over Bathrooms: A Solution Without a Problem.

The author reflects on pushback against LGBT rights in the United States, including religious freedom laws and laws regulating which bathrooms transgendered people can use. She comments on how religious freedom laws allow business owners and public officials to refuse service to individuals who, according to the official or business owner, violates their religious beliefs. She talks about the over-representation of transgender people in jails and the failings of the criminal justice system.

Reconciling Religion and LGBT Rights

Why do some Christian colleges and universities approve lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) groups and inclusive nondiscrimination policies while others resist them? Scholars are beginning to develop models to explain LGBT inclusion in schools, but they have undertheorized the role of religion in facilitating or impeding LGBT inclusion. In this article, I draw from the literature on religion and the “culture wars,” especially insights into religions’ theological orientations, to explain Christian colleges and universities’ inclusion of LGBT students. I show that communal orientations—theological emphases on social justice—strongly predict the adoption of LGBT groups and inclusive nondiscrimination policies at Christian colleges and universities. By contrast, individualist orientations—theological emphases on personal piety—impede the adoption of such groups and policies. Importantly, I find little support for alternative explanations of Christian colleges and universities’ inclusion of LGBT students that focus on liberal or conservative teachings on same-sex relationships. Beyond bridging literatures on the political sociology of LGBT rights and religion and the culture wars, the article supports an emerging theoretical framework for understanding the role of religion in a wide range of social justice debates.

LGBT rights versus Asian values: de/re-constructing the universality of human rights

Law, especially from the international human rights regime, is a direct reference on which minority groups rely when it comes to ‘non-discrimination’. Drawing upon LGBT rights in Taiwan, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore, this article – through an application of K.H. Chen’s (2010) Asia as Method – critically reviews how global LGBT politics interact with local societies influenced by Confucianism. Along a perpetual competition between the universalism and cultural relativism of human rights, this article not only identifies the pitfalls of ‘Asian values’ from a cosmopolitan perspective but also contributes to a queered approach to human rights-holders against homonationalism.

LGBT Rights in Africa and the Discursive Role of International Human Rights Law

Much of Africa seems to be riding on a homophobic wave that is being billed as an African resistance to Western attempts to force homosexuality on Africa. This Africanisation of homophobia is however based on false premises. Pre-colonial Africa entertained a diverse set of ways in which non-heterosexuality and non-heteronormativity were expressed and it was colonialism that introduced the now widespread religious and legal norms that policed sexuality and gender. The current wave is also based on Western anti-LGBT rights discourses and is in some part sponsored by Western/American evangelical groups. The article argues that the imposition of an African label on colonial and neocolonial products needs to be challenged without effectively replacing it with an equally Western construct. The article advocates a grassroots and ground-up approach wherein international law on LGBT rights is used for its discursive value at the societal, national and regional levels. As part of this approach, it is argued that activists should temporarily refrain from bringing LGBT cases to the African Commission since a detrimental decision, which is currently extremely likely, can cause serious and long-term problems.

LGBT Rights and the Mini RFRA: A Return to Separate But Equal (Draft)

This Article focuses on the tension and interplay between those advocating for LGBT-inclusive laws and those seeking protection under state, mini RFRAs from what they characterize as religious discrimination to resist the trend toward LGBT equal rights.