Sexual Orientation and Stereotyping: Cues About Lesbian and Gay Politicians

• In Event: Queer(ing) Candidates

Abstract

There is a substantial literature exploring the stereotyping faced by women and racialized candidates, however, to date there is still relatively little research into the stereotypes of lesbian versus gay candidates even though a growing number of sexual minorities are seeking elected office. Furthermore, despite the fact that many of these high profile candidates are married, even less attention is paid to the role that a candidate’s marital status may play in constructing those stereotypes. This is important given that our past work finds that voters penalize single lesbian and gay candidates more than married candidates (Everitt and Horvath unpublished). This paper contributes to this nascent literature by exploring stereotypes about sexual minority candidates, and how this identity intersects with candidate gender and marital status. It then examines how these multiple identities may contribute to increases or decreases in voter support.

Our study is based on a representative survey experiment of voters in Canada, a country which was one of the first to legalize marriage equality for gays and lesbians, has had high levels of public support for gays seeking electoral office and has a witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of gay and lesbian political candidates in recent elections. In other words, it is a country in which we might expect low levels of public prejudice for these individuals, allowing us to test for more symbolic biases and stereotyping towards gays or lesbians having to conform with particular social norms.

We begin by assessing the change in voters’ assessments of candidates’ character traits or policy competencies once they discover that a candidate is gay or lesbian. We then test to see whether these stereotypes are mitigated by whether a gay or lesbian candidate conforms to norms of heterosexual prototypical candidates, captured by a reference to being in a long-term married relationship or alternatively a reference to past relationship only. Finally, we assess how these responses are affected by voter levels of religiosity, traditionalism, conservativism and their feelings towards gays and lesbians, and by respondent demographics such as gender, sexual orientation, age or education.

Our study contributes to a growing literature by clarifying the factors leading to the success and failure of LGBT+ candidates, the changing nature of prejudices, and symbolic representation. Our findings show that voters respond more positively to norm conforming behavior when it comes to gay and lesbian candidates and conclude that this may contribute to candidate success at the polls. In addition, we show that gay and lesbian candidates both draw a great deal support from LGBT+ identifying voters themselves, but that this does not always translate into less reliance on stereotypes in their assessments.

Authors

• Joanna Everitt, University of New Brunswick Saint John

• Laszlo Horvath