Attitudinal Change, Cohort Replacement, and the Liberalization of Attitudes about Same-sex Relationships, 1973–2018

Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex relationships have liberalized considerably over the last 40 years. We examine how the demographic processes generating social change in attitudes toward same-sex relationships changed over time. Using data from the 1973 to 2018 General Social Survey and decomposition techniques, we estimate the relative contributions of intracohort change and cohort replacement to overall social change for three different periods. We examine (1) the period prior to the rapid increase in attitude liberalization toward same-sex marriage rights (1973–1991), (2) the period of contentious debate about same-sex marriage and lesbian and gay rights (1991–2002), and (3) the period of legislative and judicial liberalization at the state and federal levels (2002–2018). We find that both intracohort and intercohort change played positive and significant roles in the liberalization of attitudes toward same-sex relationships in the postlegalization period, but that individual change was more important than population turnover over this period.

The Unfulfilled Promise of Democracy: Lesbian and Gay Activism in Indonesia

This chapter examines the transformation of activism for lesbian and gay rights from an understated, but relatively secure, position in the heterosexist context of the New Order to a much more visible, but also vulnerable, movement. Lesbian and gay activists believed that democracy would improve their capacity to move beyond demands for inclusion and equal treatment to demands for acceptance, which initially proved to be the case. But democracy also created space for homophobic forces intent on eradicating public expressions of homosexual or queer identity. One reaction to this hostility—which reached the highest levels of government in 2016—was to retreat to the “safer” forms of activism characteristic of the New Order. As this chapter demonstrates, however, activists have also responded by using digital media platforms to establish formal and informal networks and by reaching out to international organizations and to other Indonesian social movements with intersecting concerns.

Does God Speak Greek?: Pope Benedict XVI’s Euro-Supremacist Supersessionism and the Heterosexuality of Reason

Contemporary critics of Christian supersessionism rightly despise its connection to Christianity’s historical persecution of the Jewish people. But theologians and other scholars have not paid enough attention to the political work Christian supersessionism continues to do today. To this end, I examine the work of Pope Benedict XVI, arguing that what I term “Euro-supremacist supersessionism” pervades and helps to shape his theology. Benedict’s supersessionism serves to describe Europe and Christianity as inextricably linked: just as Europe is an essentially Christian continent so is Christianity an essentially European religion. Because it perceives this cultural formation as uniquely universal, Benedict’s supersessionism also advocates a type of European supremacy. But despite its roots in and resonances with German philosophical anti-Judaism, Benedict’s Eurocentric supersessionism does not advance an anti-Jewish politics. His Eurocentric supersessionism instead leads him to take political aim at three initially surprising targets: one, the growing presence of Islam within Europe; two, Europe’s intensifying embrace of lesbian and gay rights; and three, certain strands of liberation theology that originate outside of Europe. Why? I argue that, for Benedict, each of these movements both endangers the marriage he has established between Europe and Christianity—a union he deems necessary to each entity’s survival—and undermines his claim that Christianized Europe possesses a unique universality, which I argue supplies the main source of his implicit belief in its supremacy over all other cultural systems.

The Capture of the Democratic Party and the Clinton Victory

This chapter examines how the LGBTQ movement effectively moved the Democratic Party from opposition to LGBTQ rights to ardent supporters. Immediately after the development of LGBTQ urban enclaves discussed in the last chapter, liberal candidates for office began to support gay rights in order to secure votes and activist support for their campaigns. The liberal and urban wings of the party slowly embraced gay rights, but little change occurred among suburban and rural Democratic office holders until ACT-UP hit its peak years and broad media coverage of LGBTQ issues began in the early 1990s. One rural Democrat to support lesbian and gay rights in exchange for votes and campaign resources was Bill Clinton. Clinton’s 1992 campaign and the 1993 gay-in-the-military debate caused news coverage of LGBTQ issues to peak. Although most academics consider this to be when the Democratic party became supportive of gay rights, data analysis in this chapter shows that the party did not become uniformly supportive until after the mass public shifted more liberal on lesbian and gay rights in the later half of the 1990s.