LGBTQ Political Unity and Division

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

In the 2020 election, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) voters cast their ballots overwhelmingly for Joe Biden (Flores et al. 2020). This relative political unity in partisanship and voting behaviour emerged decades ago and has grown over time (Bailey, 1999; Edelman, 1993; Hertzog, 1996; Egan and Sherrill, 2005; Lewis et al., 2011; Schaffner and Senic, 2006; Sherrill, 1996). However, as scholarship on Black politics has shown, unity in partisanship and voting behaviour can co-exist with internal group divisions (Dawson, 1995; Tate, 2010; White and Laird, 2020).

To what extent is the LGBTQ community politically united? What are the lines of disagreement within the LGBTQ community? Given these disagreements, what explains LGBTQ political unity and voting behaviour? To what extent do marginalized sub-groups, such as bisexual or transgender people, relate to the broader LGBTQ identity and the vision of politics promoted by the LGBTQ movement?

This panel addresses these questions and more with three papers that focus on (1) the extent to which LGBTQ people feel unified as a community or share similar visions of politics, (2) what explains any feelings of unity among LGBTQ people, (3) and the degree to which LGTBQ people share the vision promoted by the contemporary LGBTQ movement.

These papers draw on different methodological approaches to address these questions, including individual-level survey data analysis, survey experiments, and archival research. Moreau, Donnelly, and Albaugh and Proctor draw on survey data from the 2020 Collaborative Multiracial Post-Election Survey. Moreau et al. study the degree to which different sub-communities within the LGBTQ coalition see their fates as linked with other members of their sub-community and with the broader LGBTQ coalition. Proctor examines the extent to which different members of the “LGBTQ community” buy into three different visions of community politics -- civil liberties, civil rights, and queer liberation -- using original survey questions. Murib traces the development of an alternative vision of identity, sexuality, gender, and politics to the predominant one in the “LGBTQ community” through an archival study of bisexual activism from 1970 to 2000.

This panel makes contributions both to the study of sexuality and politics and to the study of identity politics more broadly.

Sub Unit

• Division 47: Sexuality & Politics

Cosponsor

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

Individual Presentations

• What Causes LGBTQ Linked Fate? - Julie Moreau, University of Toronto; Michael J. Donnelly, University of Toronto; Quinn Albaugh, Queen's University

• Liberation, Rights, and Freedom: LGBT Collective Identities and Partisanship - Andrew Thomas Proctor, Wake Forest University

• “The Not-So Silent B” - Zein Murib, Fordham University-Lincoln Center

Chair

• Quinn Albaugh Queen's University

Discussants

• Phillip M Ayoub Occidental College

• Michael J. Donnelly University of Toronto