Race, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Politics of Respectability among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Racial Minorities

ABSTRACT

Although support for the legalization of same-sex marriage was widely shared among the LGB community, the reasons for that support among LGB individuals from different socio-demographic backgrounds are poorly understood. To fill this gap, I investigate the relationship between race and perceptions of same-sex marriage legalization among LGB racial minorities. Drawing from the 2010 Social Justice Sexuality survey, two major findings emerge: First, respondents’ perception of homophobia in their respective racial communities is the most significant predictor of their perceived impact of same-sex marriage legalization. Second, characteristics explaining LGB racial minorities’ perceptions of same-sex marriage legalization are racially distinctive. Results are interpreted through a lens of the “politics of respectability” contributing to our understanding of intersectional stigmas and the social construction of race.

KEYWORDS:

• Race
• Same-Sex Marriage
• Sexuality
• Respectability
• LGBT

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Dr. Catherine Bolzendahl as well as Archibaldo Silva, Mikaela Smith, Jessica Kang, Ksenia Gracheva, Martin Jacinto, and Aaron Tester of UCI sociology for words of encouragements and helpful comments.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Individuals who identify as Trans* and/or gender variant are excluded here because they are not available in these data in sufficient numbers to allow analysis.

2. Participation in respectability politics is a positive or negative social mechanism is debated, it has been central in racial minorities’ assertion of belongingness in the larger American society and marriage is an important aspect of evincing such belongingness.

3. For more information on dataset, see Appendix A.

4. The analytic sample is restricted to respondents who have data on all used variables – for treatment of missing cases, see Appendix A.

5. See Appendix A for original variable distribution and explanations for recoding. Alternative measures and models of the dependent variable produce similar results, including a binary comparison (large impact vs. else) and with multinomial models.

6. Alternative measures specifying each denominational affiliation with dummy variables yielded no significant difference, so all affiliations are collapsed into 1.

7. For more detailed information on each variable’s original question, distribution, and explanations for recoding, see Appendix A.

8. Sociologists of culture have previously shown the theoretical merits of using survey data and quantitative analyses to reveal and understand how individuals accept and respond to available cultural norms, values, scripts, and frames (see Harding 2007 and Vasiey 2009 for more information). Similarly, I argue that my findings make an important contribution to understand how LGB racial minorities’ culturally rooted experiences of stigma and respectability may shape their interpretation of the social worlds around them.

9. As alternate analyses investigating individual interaction term in each model produce similar results, I included all interaction terms in the single model.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jess Lee

Jess Lee is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Her research focuses on racial and sexual minorities, with an emphasis on how socio-structural characteristics affect their identity-based group membership and boundaries. Her current research examines the relationship between Asian American ethnic heterogeneity and their ethnoracial group boundaries.