Changing Attitudes toward Homosexuality: Do Policies Matter?
Attitudes toward homosexuality have been changing rapidly in the last three decades, amidst activism and conflict over lesbian and gay rights. Americans have fought about whether workplaces should have the legal right to fire a lesbian or gay employee. We argued whether it should bea crime for two men or two women to have sex with each other, consensually, in the privacy of their own home. And we debated whether same-sex marriage should be legitimated by the state.Various U.S. states have made different choices about lesbian and gay rights. Using ANES (American National Election Survey) data and multilevel modeling, my colleagues and I test whether the adoption of pro-gay or anti-gay policies at the state level as an impact on the attitudes of residents of those states.
Tina Fetner is Associate Professor of Sociology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. She teaches introduction to Sociology, as well as the sociology of sexualities, social inequality, and gender. She does research on sexualities and social movements. Her book, How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism, explores the history of contentious politics around lesbian and gay rights in the United States and examines the dynamics of opposing movements. in other work, co-authored with Robert Andersen, she examines the role of social forces in changing attitudes toward homosexuality. She has active research projects on Gay-Straight Alliance student groups in high schools, and on same-sex marriage in Ontario, Canada, with Adam Green and Barry D. Adam. She received her PhD in Sociology from New York University in 2001.