(iPoster) Voices across the Rainbow: Policy Opinion Diversity in the US Queer Community

• In Event: Poster Session: Public Opinion 2

Abstract

Interest in LGBTQ+ individuals and issues has grown within political science. This growing interest, particularly in the public opinion subfield, has brought queer politics more into the academic mainstream. However, most public opinion examinations of queer topics focus on how heterosexual and cisgender people feel. Comparatively little is known about how LGBTQ+ people themselves feel about political and policy issues. What are the differences in public policy views between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans compared with their non-queer counterparts? Do people of different queer identities express distinct opinions? This paper contributes to the public opinion literature by examining policy preferences of LGBTQ+ people as a group, and comparing individual segments of the community, to see if there is a diversity of opinions within the larger collective. Leveraging insights from literatures in gender, femme, and queer theories, a new theory of gender-affirming political opinion expression is offered to help explain differences among segments of the larger LGBTQ+ population. The theory views the expression of political opinions through the lens of gender role expectations, helping to explain why individual segments of the queer community express more (less) liberal (conservative) opinions than others. Theoretically, transgender men, bisexual men, and lesbian women may be more conservative than other categories of people within the LGBTQ+ community. Conversely, gay men, bisexual women, and transgender women may be likelier to hold more liberal views. Pooled, cross-sectional survey data from the 2016-2024 waves of the Cooperative Election Study (CES) are used to examine these questions. This survey includes the necessary disaggregation to identify individuals across segments of the LGBTQ+ community, with thousands of respondents per sub-group. Results indicate that queer people as a group express more liberal policy positions than other Americans. Yet, this monolithic interpretation obscures distinct viewpoints among different segments of the queer community. Substantively, the political representation of queer people is complicated by the lack of a unified voice. If the LGBTQ+ community lacks opinion cohesion, it may be inaccurate to conceptualize a larger, generalized queer representation.

Author

• Broderick James DeBettignies, University of Iowa