Solidarity Across Civil Rights? Same-Sex Relations and Racial Attitudes

• In Event: 090 - Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Intersectional Approaches to Sexualities Research

Abstract

Over the last twenty years, many civil rights organizations working for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) rights have focused on winning the right to same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage rights activists call upon race and ethnicity-based civil rights organizations to support the movement for marriage, positing a similarity between anti-miscegenation laws of past and current exclusionary marriage laws as grounds for solidarity across causes. Yet simultaneous to gains made by LGBT civil rights groups, the twenty-first century has seen the erosion of race and ethnicity-based civil rights laws (such as the Voting Rights Act) along with increasing economic inequality between racial groups. Intersectionality offers a framework for theorizing solidarity across civil rights groups. Multiple researchers have tested the level of support for same-sex marriage within marginalized racial and ethnic groups, yet the racial attitudes of people who engage in same-sex relations have largely escaped sociological scrutiny. Using the General Social Survey, I conduct exploratory testing to measure whether individuals who have engaged in same-sex relations have different racial attitudes than individuals who have engaged in strictly different-sex relations—or, whether cross-movement solidarity is found in the racial attitudes of those engaged in same-sex sex. I find that engagement in same-sex relations can account for a negligible amount of variation in racial attitudes. My findings warrant further research into the social and cultural significance of same-sex marriage advocates’ assumptions of solidarity across contemporary civil rights movements.

Author

• Emily Allen Paine, University of Texas-Austin