Exploring the Limits of Inclusion: Race and LGBTQ Politics in the US

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Recent rollbacks in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) rights have alarmed mainstream advocates in the United States. From opening the door to employment discrimination by federal contractors to banning openly transgender people from serving in the military, the Trump administration has revealed how tenuous and fragile advances in formal equality can be. These swift changes not only call into question decisions to prioritize single issue, assimilationist strategies over broader and more comprehensive demands for change, but raise questions about the extent to which assimilationist strategies are even available to LGBTQ people of color.

The panel considers whether democracy’s defining institution—citizenship—can accommodate radical sexual and gender difference when other forms of social exclusion compound this difference. Through an analysis of contemporary mainstream LGBTQ advocacy, Zein Murib explores the limited extent to which citizenship demands can effectively address the needs of the most marginalized in the LGBTQ collective: transgender people of color, the undocumented, the incarcerated and those experiencing homelessness.

At the same time the same Supreme Court that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Justices gutted key protections in the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The 2013 decision severely impacted the ability of low-income people of color to exercise their most basic political right. Courtenay Daum explores how subsequent voter identification laws at the state level have “hidden costs.” The disenfranchisement that results from these laws for LGB, and especially T, voters is exacerbated for communities of color. When put in conversation with Murib’s paper, it is unclear if the mainstream LGBTQ movement has the language to seek redress for the disenfranchisement Daum describes.

While some members of the LGBTQ community confront obstacles to basic rights, LGBTQ politicians are more visible than ever before. With the first candidacy of an openly gay man for President, Mayor Pete Buttiegieg’s lack of support among Black voters made headlines. Recalling discussions of race and sexuality that defined California’s Proposition 8, once again LGBTQ communities were cast as white and communities of color as homophobic. Using survey data, Samantha Acuña’s paper questions racialized stereotypes to unpack the dynamics of homophobia across four communities of color.

The answer, according to political science, to political exclusion in a democracy is the increased participation of historically marginalized groups. Every Democratic candidate in the Presidential has engaged, at least discursively, in courting the LGBTQ vote. Research on LGBTQ voters reveals a group consciousness and political homogeneity that belies potential differences, specifically preferences for formal or informal political participation. Returning to the dilemma of whether to pursue incrementalist change through formal means or radical change through informal mechanisms, the final paper of the panel conducts an intersectional analysis of LGBTQ political coherence and participation. Julie Moreau, Stephen Nuño-Perez and Christine Slaughter aim to better understand the extent to which LGBTQ linked fate is an explanatory variable for political coherence and specific forms of participation across racial groups.

Taken together, these papers offer a complex and thorough consideration of the intersection of race and LGBTQ politics in the US just months away from a highly contentious election that may (or may not) reset the course for LGBTQ political inclusion in the US. The panel directly addresses the year’s conference theme of “Democracy, Difference and Destabilization” through considering the political tensions that arise when foregrounding questions of racial difference in the analysis of LGBTQ politics and productively destabilizes common sense about democratic inclusion.

Sub Unit

• Related Groups / Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus

Cosponsors

• Division 32: Race, Ethnicity, and Politics

• Division 47: Sexuality & Politics

Individual Presentations

• Citizenship for Whom? Rightful Citizenship Claims and LGBT Advocacy - Zein Murib, Fordham University-Lincoln Center

• Voting Rights and Intersectional LGBTQ Populations - Courtenay W. Daum, Colorado State University

• Race and Homophobia in the United States - Samantha Ruth Acuna

• An Intersectional Analysis of Linked Fate and LGBTQ Political Behavior - Julie Moreau, University of Toronto; Stephen A. Nuño-Perez, Northern Arizona University; Christine Marie Slaughter, Princeton University

Chair

• Ravi Kumar Perry Howard University

Discussant

• Melissa R. Michelson Menlo College