Showing posts with label гей. Show all posts
Showing posts with label гей. Show all posts

Friday, January 24, 2025

thai land

В Таиланде вступил в силу закон о легализации однополых браков. Ожидается, что на церемонии в Бангкоке сегодня в брак вступит более тысячи пар.


Король Таиланда Маха Вачиралонгкорн в сентябре подписал принятый парламентом закон, который легализует подобные союзы.

В законе брак определяется как партнерство двух лиц, а не мужчины и женщины, как было раньше. Однополые пары получат право пользоваться всеми льготами, а также усыновлять и удочерять детей.

Таиланд стал первым государством Юго-Восточной Азии, где легализованы союзы между людьми одного пола.

«Неважно, какого вы пола и кого вы любите, любовь не знает границ. Все будут защищены одними и теми же законами», — заявила на прошлой неделе премьер-министр страны Пхэтхонгтхан Чиннават.

Monday, December 18, 2023

 same sex couples

Ватикан разрешил благословлять гомосексуальные пары


Католическое духовенство теперь имеет право благословлять гомосексуальные пары. Религиозное управление Ватикана, как сообщает Католическое агентство новостей, опубликовало соответствующую декларацию.

Папа Римский Франциск, отпраздновавший накануне свой 87-ой день рождения, одобрил это решение.

В феврале 2021 года религиозный орган Ватикана объявлял, что благословение гомосексуальных пар в католической церкви невозможно. Теперь же в Ватикане заявили, что церковь «расширила и обогатила» свое понимание того, что такое благословение.

«Можно благословлять пары в нестандартных ситуациях и пары одного пола, не подтверждая тем самым официально их статус и не изменяя каким-либо образом давнее учение Церкви о браке», — говорится в декларации.

@BILD_Russian

Friday, November 17, 2023

LGBT

Минюст попросил признать ЛГБТ «экстремистским движением»


Минюст России подал в Верховный суд заявление о признании международного общественного движения ЛГБТ экстремистским и о запрете его деятельности на территории страны.

«В деятельности ЛГБТ-движения, функционирующего на территории Российской Федерации... выявлены различные признаки и проявления экстремистской направленности, в том числе возбуждение социальной и религиозной деятельности», — сообщается на сайте ведомства.

Верховный суд рассмотрит иск 30 ноября.

Friday, November 10, 2023

Vatican statement

Ватикан заявил, что люди, совершившие трансгендерный переход, смогут проходить обряд крещения в католической церкви, если это не приведет к скандалу или не вызовет «замешательство».


В доктринальном отделе Ватикана также заявили, что трансгендерные люди могут быть крестными родителями при крещении и свидетелями на свадьбе.

Этот шаг – очередная попытка папы Франциска сделать Католическую церковь более доступной для ЛГБТ-сообщества.

Ватикан разъяснил отношение к транс-людям после того, как бразильский епископ Хосе Негри написал письмо руководителям церкви с шестью вопросами, касающимися ЛГБТ и их участия в крещении и бракосочетании.

подробнее
Если ссылка выше не открывается, читайте здесь.

partnership

Парламент Латвии проголосовал за введение института партнерства


Сейм Латвии в окончательном чтении принял пакет законопроектов о введении в стране института партнерства.

Инициативу поддержали 53 парламентария, против проголосовали 43.

Теперь с 1 января 2024 года в Латвии два человека любого пола, ведущие общее домохозяйство, смогут юридически заключить у нотариуса партнерские отношения.

Monday, November 6, 2023

same sex marriages vs AK47

Страны, где используется автомат Калашникова, и страны, где разрешены однополые браки


Очень забавная, пускай и не несущая в себе глубокого смысла карта: автомат Калашникова используется (или даже производится) в половине мира - и их всех стран, где он используется, однополые браки разрешены только в ЮАР!

С другой стороны, в 35 странах мира в той или иной степени легализованы однополые браки - и в 34 из них не используются АК! Особенно ярко это разделение заметно в Южной Америке, где однополые браки легализованы во многих странах - но только не там, где используется детище легендарного советского оружейника (Чили, Перу, Венесуэла)

С другой стороны, верхняя карта (да и отчасти нижняя) - это свидетельство мягкой силы СССР, которого уже больше 30 лет как нет, но наследие его всё ещё живо. Если бы эти же силы и ресурсы тратились на улучшение жизни в стране - глядишь, и жили бы мы до сих пор в СССР (и были бы рады этому факту)...

Thursday, April 20, 2023

LGBT propaganda criteria

Роскомнадзор опубликовал критерии определения "ЛГБТ-пропаганды"


Роскомнадзор разработал критерии, по которым в России будут определять запрещённую "ЛГБТ-пропаганду".

Документ, в котором они перечисляются, опубликован на официальном портале правовой информации.

Согласно приказу Роскомнадзора, в России будут блокировать ресурсы, если на них будет информация, которая:
🔻направлена "на убеждение в привлекательности нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений, предпочтений и установок, в том числе на формирование положительного образа людей, состоящих в нетрадиционных сексуальных отношениях";
🔻 направлена "на формирование искаженного представления о социальной равноценности традиционных и нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений, предпочтений и установок";
🔻 "оправдывает отказ от традиционных сексуальных отношений в пользу нетрадиционных";
🔻 "вызывает интерес к нетрадиционным сексуальным отношениям и направлена на изменение негативного отношения к ним путем навязывания сведений о нетрадиционных отношениях, в том числе систематического распространения материалов с изображением или описанием нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений";
🔻 "обосновывает преимущество нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений над традиционными";
🔻 направлена "на формирование положительного отношения к смене пола".

Критерии вступят в силу 1 сентября 2023 года и будут действовать шесть лет. Закон, полностью запрещающий "пропаганду нетрадиционных сексуальных отношений" среди людей всех возрастов, был принят в России осенью прошлого года.

Saturday, December 10, 2022

Testosterone and partnering are linked

via relationship status for women and ‘relationship orientation’ for men


Cross-cultural evidence links pair bonding and testosterone (T). We investigated what factors account for this link, how casual relationships are implicated, and whether gender/sex moderates these patterns in a North American sample. We gathered saliva samples for radioimmunoassay of T and self-report data on background, health, and social/relational variables from 115 women and 120 men to test our predictions, most of which were supported. Our results show that singles have higher T than long-term (LT) partnered individuals, and that casual relationships without serious romantic commitment are more like singlehood for men and LT relationships for women–in terms of T. We were also able to demonstrate what factors mediate the association between partnering and T: in women, frequency of partnered sexual activity mediated the effect in men, interest in more/new partners mediated the effect. This supported our prediction of relationship status interpretations in women, but relationship orientation in men. Results replicated past findings that neither sexual desire nor extrapair sexuality underlie the T-partnering link. We were able to rule out a large number of viable alternative explanations ranging from the lifestyle (e.g., sleep) to the social (e.g., social support). Our data thus demonstrate pattern and mediators for the development of T-pair bonding associations, and emphasize the importance of neither under- nor overstating the importance of gender/sex in research about the evolution of intimacy.

Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Key Demographic and Economic Characteristics of Same-Sex and Opposite-Sex Couples Differed

Written by: Zachary Scherer

There were about 1.2 million same-sex couple households in the United States in 2021, according to recently released Census Bureau data. {если прорейтинговать РФ — получится  порядка 1/2 млн, поскольку пара это таки двое, получаем около 1 млн, то-есть, меньше 1%}

Roughly 710,000 of the same-sex couple households were married and about 500,000 were unmarried.

These and many other estimates can be found in the Census Bureau’s recently released package of tables and graphics about the characteristics of same-sex couple households, which are based on American Community Survey (ACS) data.

The package, which shows estimates from 2005 through 2021, was not released in 2020 due to the impact of COVID-19 on ACS data collection.

A larger share of same-sex (31.6%) than opposite-sex (18.4%) married couples were interracial.

Other highlights from the release:The average age of householders in same-sex married couples (48.9 years) was lower than in opposite-sex married couples (52.8 years). But the average age of householders in same-sex unmarried couples (42.0 years) was higher than in opposite-sex unmarried couples (39.9 years).

The share of female-female and male-male couples with both partners employed did not differ significantly, though median household income in female same-sex couple households ($92,470) was lower than in male same-sex couple households ($116,800).
Both partners had at least a bachelor’s degree in a larger share of same-sex (29.6%) than opposite-sex (18.1%) unmarried couples.

A larger share of same-sex (31.6%) than opposite-sex (18.4%) married couples were interracial.
The District of Columbia (2.5%) had the highest percentage of same-sex couple households of any state or state equivalent.

This is the second time the Census Bureau has released ACS estimates of same-sex couple households since revising the survey’s relationship to householder question to more accurately capture same-sex relationships.

The ACS does not identify all couples living together since it only collects information about each household member’s relationship to the householder, rather than about the relationships among all household members.

Further information regarding ways the Census Bureau has changed how it collects information about same-sex couples over time is available.

Zachary Scherer is a statistician in the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.

Thursday, November 3, 2022

LGBT at war

"Мой жених - военный, и у него есть любимый. Но я должна выйти за него"

Илона Громлюк BBC News Украина

У Леды нет даже обручального кольца. "Какие времена, такая и невеста", - говорит она

33-летняя крымчанка Леда Космачевская, которая живет в Киеве, объявила, что выходит замуж за украинского военного, у которого уже 15 лет есть любимый мужчина.


Об этом решении она с разрешения жениха публично объявила в своем "Фейсбуке", прикрепив фотографию, где она сидит завернутой в покрывало, которое выглядит как свадебное платье.

"Какие времена, такая и невеста", - написала Леда. Выходя замуж за своего давнего знакомого, она хочет подстраховать его перед тем, как он отправится на фронт.

"Я беру на себя ответственность за поиск, опознание, похороны, оповещение близких и знакомых. Это я при необходимости скажу врачу, что мой муж хотел стать донором. Это я не буду просить священника об отпевании, потому что мой муж этого не хотел. Это я выполню его последнюю волю и я встречу его первой, когда он вернется с победой", - написала Леда.

Она говорит, что не хотела бы этого делать, тем более, что у ее будущего мужа есть партнер, с которым он живет уже 15 лет.

Да и сама Леда любит другого. Он тоже военный.

Но в Украине брак могут заключить только мужчина и женщина, а если брака нет, то люди официально не являются родственниками, и партнера не пустят к любимому человеку в реанимацию или в морг, не сообщат ему о пленении или ранении.


И это беспокоит военного, жениха Леды, у которого, кроме его партнера, никого нет.


То самое фото в покрывале вместо свадебного платья. "Захотелось зафиксировать себя в моменте, посмотреть, какие у меня глаза. Эта фотография - визуализация моих чувств", - говорит Леда

Леда Космачевская говорит, что никогда не ходила на марши за права ЛГБТ, но стать супругой гея согласилась на следующее же утро после того, как он сделал ей предложение - причем сделал он его по телефону.

Она говорит Би-би-си, что ей было страшно думать о том, как вообще близкие люди могут обсуждать, что делать, если кого-то из них вдруг не станет из-за войны, а тем более жутко думать об однополых парах, которым часто приходится скрывать свои отношения.

"Он сказал мне, что больше всего боится оказаться без вести пропавшим или остаться навсегда в поле, и что никто не узнает, что с ним случилось", - пересказывает Леда разговор с женихом.

Она предполагает, что именно ее этот человек выбрал потому, что знал историю про ее давнюю подругу, которую Леда поддерживала в борьбе с раком.

Леда говорит, что представляет себе кошмарные, но вполне возможные в условиях боевых действий ситуации, когда, например, погибших военных привозят в морг, а от них почти ничего не осталось, и тела приходится опознавать по каким-то фрагментам.

За восемь месяцев войны Украина потеряла тысячи мужчин, которые были чьими-то сыновьями, мужьями и отцами.

"Зачастую это может сделать только партнер, который хорошо знает это тело. Но это не будет считаться достаточным [доказательством в случае с однополыми парами], и потому я буду проводником, тем человеком, который сможет провести партнера в морг", - объясняет Леда.

Она детально обсудила со своим будущим мужем, как ей вести себя в случае его смерти, плена, что делать с завещанием. В ближайшее время Леда познакомится с партнером этого военного.

Что при этом чувствует ее любимый, который тоже воюет, Леда публично говорить не хочет.

"Жалею, что написала про любимого", - говорит она. Вопрос о нем ей задали в комментариях в "Фейсбуке" уже десятки раз.

"Я написала про него, чтобы показать на личном опыте, что я знаю, что чувствует человек, который любит военного. Все, что я могу сказать, это то, что он знает о моем решении", - говорит Леда.

"Протест против средневековья в головах"


Она не понимает, почему Украина до сих пор никак не облегчила законодательно жизнь однополых пар.

"Если это [выглядит как мой] протест, то это протест против средневековья в головах многих граждан, против скреп, которые были навязаны стороной, которая пытается нас уничтожить, [это (навязчивость) выдывает сомнение, больше похоже на глубокуб укоренэнность] а также это - просьба к власти защитить всех граждан Украины, чтобы они не "выкручивались" и не страдали", - объясняет Леда.

В июне петиция к президенту Украины Владимиру Зеленскому о легализации браков для ЛГБТ набрала нужные для рассмотрения 25 тысяч подписей, но вопрос остается в подвешенном состоянии. Зеленский ответил, что во время войны такое решение одобрено не будет, но у правительства есть идеи насчет альтернативы в виде гражданского партнерства.

Однако прошло пять месяцев, а шагов в этом направлении не видно.

Прайд в Киеве в 2018 году

В украинском обществе идея легализации однополых партнерств все еще очень непопулярна. Об этом, кроме прочего, свидетельствует и большое количество негативных комментариев под постом Леды.

Леда называет бурю, что разразилась в комментариях под ее постом, "порталом и в рай, и в ад": хоть там и нахлынула большая волна оскорблений и непристойностей, никто из близких ей людей не высказался против.

Кроме того, среди комментаторов много и просто незнакомцев, которые называют поступок девушки смелым, поддерживают ее и одновременно поражены тем, что дело дошло до таких крайностей.

В целом отношение украинцев к ЛГБТ и их гражданским бракам понемногу меняется. В 2016 году более 60% украинцев относились к ним негативно. Сейчас этот показатель упал до 38,2%, и на 20 с лишним процентов выросла доля тех, кто поддерживает идею позволить однополым парам регистрировать гражданский союз - это почти то же самое, что брак, но без права на совместное усыновление детей.

Леда тегнула в своем посте президента и его супругу Елену Зеленскую: "Думаю, она может понять партнера, у которого муж или жена рискуют жизнью. Я читала ее интервью про то, что происходило [у нее дома] 24 февраля, и задумалась про ответственность в паре. Возможно, до нее дойдет эта история, и она сможет повлиять на решение вопроса".

"Может, это наивно, но я надеюсь на женскую солидарность", - говорит Леда Космачевская.

Friday, June 24, 2022

Where Adoption is Illegal for LGBT+ Couples

In many countries, it is still illegal for members of the LGBT community to adopt and foster children. The following map uses data from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association(ILGA World) to show where joint adoption and second-parent adoption are allowed, along with the countries where there are no laws allowing same-sex couples to adopt.

A joint adoption is when a couple adopts a child who was not previously the legal child of either partner. A second-parent adoption, however, is when a partner, who is not biologically related to the child, adopts their partner's biological or adopted child. As our chart shows, a liberal stance on gay rights can be seen across Western Europe and North America, where at least some form of adoption is permitted. While most of the region’s countries support both kinds of adoption, in Estonia, San Marino, Slovenia and Switzerland, only second-parent adoption is permitted.

South America shows more of a mixed picture with Brazil, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia all supporting the continent’s more progressive laws. Meanwhile, South Africa is the only country in Africa to support both kinds of laws, according to ILGA.

This map reflects the ILGA’s latest data, which is from 2020. Chile, Switzerland and Croatia have since legalized LGBT adoption and the next update will reflect these figures.Where Adoption is Illegal for LGBT+ Couples

Friday, June 17, 2022

LGBT Adults Report Anxiety, Depression During Pandemic

Regardless of Household Type, LGBT Adults Struggled More With Mental Health Than Non-LGBT Adults

THOM FILE AND MATTHEW MARLAY JUNE 16, 2022 (без впн не увидите)

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults have consistently reported higher rates of symptoms of both anxiety and depression amid the coronavirus pandemic than non-LGBT adults, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

The results were the same regardless of the period in question: LGBT adults ages 18 and older reported roughly twice the rate of mental health challenges as non-LGBT adults (Figures 1a and 1b).

As previous research indicated, younger respondents were more likely to identify as LGBT. Future research will look at the intersection of age and mental health among respondents who identify as LGBT.

LGBT adults living in households with children were more likely than adults (regardless of LGBT status) in other types of households to report anxiety symptoms.

Household Pulse Survey and Mental Health


The Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) provides insight into the mental health and well-being of its respondents.

Since the HPS began in April 2020, it has asked two questions related to symptoms of anxiety and two questions about symptoms of depression.

In July 2021, it also began asking about sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI).

This analysis uses multiple data collection phases of the survey to assess the pandemic’s mental health toll on U.S. adults 18 years and older:
  • Phase 3.2: July 21–October 20, 2021 (Approximately 6.2 million invitations sent, 382,908 responses, response rate of 6.1%).
  • Phase 3.3: December 1, 2021–February 7, 2022 (Approximately 3.1 million invitations sent, 211,303 responses, response rate of 6.7%).
  • Phase 3.4: March 2– May 9, 2022 (Approximately 3.1 million invitations sent, 209,694 responses, response rate of 6.7%).

Mental Health Challenges and Household Type


Previous Census Bureau research indicated that adults living alone during the pandemic were more susceptible to mental health challenges than those living with others, but this current analysis shows that when differentiating between LGBT and non-LGBT households, mental health disparities become more nuanced (Figures 2a and 2b).

Although the HPS does not collect information about all members of a household, it does ask about the presence of other adults and children. “Without kids” includes the adult respondent living with at least one other adult but no children; “with kids” includes the adult respondent living with children, either with or without other adults.


Throughout the time series, LGBT adults living in households with children were more likely than adults (regardless of LGBT status) in other types of households to report anxiety symptoms.

The depression results were slightly less definitive. But regardless of the mental health outcome in question or LGBT status, HPS data consistently pointed to mental health struggles being more pervasive for LGBT adults.

Whether it be adults living by themselves (Figures 3a and 3b), in households with children (Figures 4a and 4b), or in households without children (Figures 5a and 5b), LGBT adults reported higher rates of both anxiety and depression than their non-LGBT counterparts during Phases 3.2-3.4 of the survey.



Defining LGBT


Earlier versions of the HPS asked respondents only for their sex (male or female). Since July 2021, the survey has included three separate SOGI questions.

The first asks about assigned sex at birth:
  • What sex were you assigned at birth on your original birth certificate?
Choice of answers: Male or Female.

The next question asks about current gender self-identification:
  • Do you currently describe yourself as male, female, or transgender?
Choice of answers: Male, Female, Transgender, or None of these.

The latest version of the survey also now asks about sexual orientation:
  • Which of the following best represents how you think of yourself?
Choice of answers: Gay or lesbian; Straight, that is not gay or lesbian; Bisexual;Something else; or I don’t know

Survey respondents are categorized as LGBT if they report a sex at birth that does not align with their current gender identity; report a sexual orientation of gay, lesbian, or bisexual; or if they currently identify as transgender.

Respondents whose sex at birth aligns with their current gender identity and who select Straight on the sexual orientation question are categorized as non-LGBT.

Respondents who select None of these on the current gender question and either Something else, I don’t know, or Straight on the sexual orientation question are categorized as “Other.”

Additionally, respondents whose sex at birth aligns with their current gender identity but who select either Something else or I don’t know on the sexual orientation question are also categorized as “Other.”

Survey questions related to sexual orientation and gender identity aim to understand the effect of the coronavirus pandemic across different subpopulations.

However, because the HPS is designed to rapidly produce experimental estimates, caution should be exercised when using these results as standalone markers of the prevalence of LGBT adults in the general population.

Measuring Anxiety and Depression


For mental health, the survey asks four questions, two relating to symptoms of anxiety and two relating to symptoms of depression.

These questions were developed in partnership with the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). This analysis follows an approach outlined by NCHS, which categorizes individuals based on how frequently they reported feeling anxious or depressed, consistent with diagnoses of generalized anxiety disorder or major depressive disorder.

Near Real-Time Data From HPS


The HPS is designed to provide near real-time data on how the pandemic has affected people’s lives. Information on the methodology and reliability of these estimates can be found in the Source and Accuracy statements for each data release. These statements also include information on the invitations and response rates.

Data users interested in state level sample sizes, the number of respondents, weighted response rates, and occupied housing unit coverage ratios can review the quality measures file, available on the Household Pulse Survey Technical Documentationwebsite. In comparison to other Census Bureau surveys, response rates for the HPS are low, and data users should exercise caution when interpreting estimates from the survey, especially with regards to the impact of potential non-response bias.

As a part of the Census Bureau’s experimental data series, the HPS was designed to have low respondent burden, provide quick turnaround on product releases, and produce estimates that meet urgent public needs. All estimates discussed here were calculated from public-use microdata files.

Thom File is a sociologist in the Census Bureau’s Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.
Matthew Marlay is a sociologist and demographer in the Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division.

Monday, June 13, 2022

Shaped—and Skewed—a Generation’s Attitudes

How TIME’s Reporting on Gay Life in America


LGBTQ issues on the cover of TIME in (L-R) 2019, 1997, 1975, 2014 and 1969 TIME
BY ERIC MARCUS


Editor’s note: At TIME, we aim to apply the same scrutiny to ourselves that we do to the world. In that spirit, TIME is publishing this article by Eric Marcus, author of Making Gay History.

TIME magazine helped me come out to my mother. Inadvertently. It was June 1977 and I was back in home Queens, N.Y., from my first year at Vassar College. At school I’d haltingly made my way out of the closet — transitioning from a first-semester girlfriend to a second-semester boyfriend and torturing myself (and the girlfriend and boyfriend both) over knowing what I wanted and hating who I was because I’d failed to drive those feelings away.

Over lunch one afternoon at our kitchen table, with the latest issue of TIME turned to an article about Anita Bryant’s successful campaign to repeal a gay-rights bill in Dade County, Fla., I raged over the injustice of both Bryant’s assertion that gay people were a danger to children and the cowardly legislators who caved to prejudice and ignorance. Unknowingly, my red-faced outrage offered another clue to my mother that there was more than a little self-interest at stake for me in the fate of the gay civil-rights movement. Weeks later, she would ask me if I was gay.

June 20, 1997 TIME article about Anita Bryant’s campaign to repeal a gay-rights bill in Dade County, Fla.

It wasn’t until more than a decade later, when I began researching an oral-history book on what was then called the gay and lesbian civil-rights movement, that I realized that TIME magazine had also played a role in shaping how my mother thought of homosexuals — and how she’d come to view her teenaged gay son.

In my research, as I struggled to gain an understanding of why people saw homosexuals as sick, sinful and criminal, I stumbled on a 1966 essay in TIME that just about burned the skin off my face as I read it. I think it was meant as a meditation on what to make of the then-growing visibility of gay life in America. But while it’s couched as enlightened analysis, it now reads as shockingly regressive. (There was no byline, which was the norm for the magazine at the time.) To this day, there are words and phrases from that essay that I can recite from memory: Deviate. Witty, pretty, catty, and no problem to keep at arm’s length. Caused psychically, through a disabling fear of the opposite sex. A case of arrested development. A pathetic little second-rate substitute for reality, a pitiable flight from life. No pretense that it is anything but a pernicious sickness. Had my mother read that essay? Did she recall those words when I responded to her question with a shaky “yes”?

As I came to discover, TIME wasn’t alone. The media in those years, as is most often the case today, reflected society’s prevailing views about homosexuals. Back then, homosexuality was still considered a treatable mental illness, sexual relations between two people of the same sex could get you arrested in almost every state, and thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of gay men and lesbians had been hounded out of federal employment since President Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1953 banning them from government jobs. In New York, a state law about “disorderly” conduct was interpreted as making it illegal to serve known homosexuals alcohol, and the police routinely raided gay bars.

The now-celebrated 1969 Stonewall uprising — triggered by a police raid of the Stonewall Inn gay bar — which is being marked this month by 50th anniversary celebrations, marches and protests, got a particularly pungent headline in the New York Daily News: “Homo Nest Raided, Queen Bees Are Stinging Mad.” The Village Voice, an alternative downtown newspaper, published an article in the immediate aftermath of the first night of rioting in which the reporter used a slur to refer to the uprising’s participants, earning the Voice, just days after the start of the uprising, one of the first public protests that would come to characterize the newly militant era of “gay liberation.”

TIME, which didn’t cover the uprising, gave prominent play to the rage and wave of activism unleashed in the weeks and months that followed. The Oct. 31, 1969, cover story was headlined “The Homosexual: Newly Visible, Newly Understood.” The magazine got the “newly visible” part right. The piece displays an overall attempt at straightforward reporting, a marked change from the tone of three years prior. And yet the picture the article painted of the “newly understood” homosexual was still dripping with sarcasm and contempt. One section of the report noted several “types” of homosexuals: “The Blatant Homosexual,” “The Secret Lifer,” “The Desperate,” “The Adjusted,” “The Bisexual,” “The Situational-Experimental.” After describing these different categories, the writer notes: “The homosexual subculture, a semi-public world, is, without question, shallow and unstable.”

Although that cover story also said some comparatively nice things about homosexuals, is it any wonder members of the newly formed Gay Liberation Front and the Daughters of Bilitis (an organization for lesbians founded in 1955 in San Francisco) picketed the Time-Life building after its publication? On Nov. 12, 1969 — my 11th birthday — demonstrators handed out leaflets, which read: “In characteristic tight-assed fashion, Time has attempted to dictate sexual boundaries for the American public and to define what is healthy, moral, fun, and good on the basis of its own narrow, outdated, warped, perverted, and repressed sexual bias.” Gay people weren’t going to take it anymore.

When I told my mother eight years later that yes, I was gay, she just looked at me with a blank stare. Was she trying to figure out what kind of homosexual I was? A no-longer-secret lifer? Desperate? An experimenter? Definitely not adjusted. In truth, I was a depressed gay teenager who feared that his life was ruined because of this one, immutable flaw. But I wasn’t about to tell my mother that. I responded with a question of my own: “Do you feel guilty?” I’d come to understand from the research I’d done in the Vassar College library that parents of gay children often felt that it was their own fault (also thanks to TIME and all the other news outlets and so-called experts who blamed homosexuality on a dominant mother and passive father). My mother said that she didn’t feel guilty, that she was disappointed. I would rather she had felt guilty. Her disappointment left me in tears.

In the years that followed, change came — but not rapidly, and with more effort and heartbreak than I’d imagined it would take. TIME, like every other major news outlet, shifted away from parroting society’s prejudice and misunderstanding to more honest and balanced reporting. Even before my mother asked me that fateful question, TIME had published a cover story on Leonard Matlovich, who was challenging the ban on gay people serving in the military. That and subsequent cover stories — the 1997 Ellen DeGeneres “Yep, I’m Gay” cover or the 2014 Laverne Cox cover about transgender civil rights, for example — helped reshape in a positive way how people like me thought of ourselves and how the rest of the world saw us.

Marcus and his mother at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation

My mother came around, too, and by the early 1990s was an activist in her own right, volunteering to lead a support group for gay men whose partners had died from AIDS and helping found the Queens chapter of PFLAG (once known as Parents, Families and Friends, of Lesbians and Gays). Mom died 15 years ago and I wonder what she would have made of the recent TIME cover story on presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg and his husband Chasten under the headline “First Family.”

Actually, I don’t have to wonder. Knowing my mother she’d have the magazine’s cover taped to her refrigerator — her makeshift vision board — and would be on the phone to me, wanting to know if I could get her tickets to the inauguration.

Eric Marcus is the author of Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights and the founder and host of a podcast of the same name. Learn more at www.makinggayhistory.com.

Sunday, February 20, 2022

LGBT Identification in U.S. Ticks Up to 7.1%

об этом  уже было (или тут), но детали существенны, они тут:

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

LGBT identification up from 5.6% in 2020
One in five Gen Z adults identify as LGBT
Bisexual identification is most common

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual has increased to a new high of 7.1%, which is double the percentage from 2012, when Gallup first measured it.

Gallup asks Americans whether they personally identify as straight or heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender as part of the demographic information it collects on all U.S. telephone surveys. Respondents can also volunteer any other sexual orientation or gender identity they prefer. In addition to the 7.1% of U.S. adults who consider themselves to be an LGBT identity, 86.3% say they are straight or heterosexual, and 6.6% do not offer an opinion. The results are based on aggregated 2021 data, encompassing interviews with more than 12,000 U.S. adults.
Line graph. Americans' Self-Identification as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Something Other than Heterosexual. Trend from 2012 to 2021 (question not asked in 2018 and 2019). Currently, 7.1% of U.S. adults identify as LGBT, up from 5.6% in 2020, 4.5% in 2017 and 4.1% in 2016. Between 2012 and 2015, the range was 3.5% to 3.9%.


The increase in LGBT identification in recent years largely reflects the higher prevalence of such identities among the youngest U.S. adults compared with the older generations they are replacing in the U.S. adult population.

Roughly 21% of Generation Z Americans who have reached adulthood -- those born between 1997 and 2003 -- identify as LGBT. That is nearly double the proportion of millennials who do so, while the gap widens even further when compared with older generations.
Gen Z adults made up 7% of Gallup's 2017 national sample, but in 2021 accounted for 12% as more from that generation reached age 18 over the past four years. In contrast, the proportion of those born before 1946 has fallen from 11% in 2017 to 8%.

LGBT Identification Has Been Stable in Older Generations, Rising in Younger


Since Gallup began measuring LGBT identification in 2012, the percentage of traditionalists, baby boomers, and Generation X adults who identify as LGBT has held relatively steady. At the same time, there has been a modest uptick among millennials, from 5.8% in 2012 (when some members of the generation had not yet turned 18) to 7.8% in 2017 and 10.5% currently.

The percentage of Gen Z who are LGBT has nearly doubled since 2017, when only the leading edge of that generation -- those born between 1997 and 1999 -- had reached adulthood. At that time, 10.5% of the small slice of the generation who were adults identified as LGBT.

Line graph. Americans' Self-Identification as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Something Other than Heterosexual, by Generation. Trend in 2012, 2017 and 2021. LGBT identification has generally been stable among Generation X, baby boomers and traditionalists since 2012. The proportion of millennials identifying as LGBT has increased since 2012, while there has been a sharp increase among Generation Z since 2017.

Now a much greater proportion of Gen Z, but still not all of it, has become adults. The sharp increase in LGBT identification among this generation since 2017 indicates that the younger Gen Z members (those who have turned 18 since 2017) are more likely than the older members of the generation to identify as LGBT.

Should that trend within Gen Z continue, the proportion of U.S. adults in that generation who say they are LGBT will grow even higher once all members of the generation reach adulthood.

Bisexual Identification Most Common Among LBGT Americans


More than half of LGBT Americans, 57%, indicate they are bisexual. That percentage translates to 4.0% of all U.S. adults. Meanwhile, 21% of LGBT Americans say they are gay, 14% lesbian, 10% transgender and 4% something else. Each of these accounts for less than 2% of U.S. adults.
Gallup's pre-2020 polling did not measure how many Americans identified with each LGBT category, separately. However, earlier data collected from other research institutions as well as Gallup's 2020 estimate have consistently found bisexual to be the most common LGBT identity.

Prior Gallup analyses show bisexuals are much more likely to marry spouses or live with partners of a different sex than with spouses or partners who are the same sex as they are.

Nearly One in Six Generation Z Adults Identify as Bisexual


Bisexual is the most common LGBT status among Gen Z, millennials, and Gen X, while older Americans are about as likely to say they are gay or lesbian as to say they are bisexual.

Overall, 15% of Gen Z adults say they are bisexual, as do 6% of millennials and slightly less than 2% of Gen X.

Women (6.0%) are much more likely than men (2.0%) to say they are bisexual. Men are more likely to identify as gay (2.5%) than as bisexual, while women are much more likely to identify as bisexual than as lesbian (1.9%).

Bottom Line

The proportion of U.S. adults who consider themselves to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has grown at a faster pace over the past year than in prior years. This is occurring as more of Gen Z is reaching adulthood. These young adults are coming of age, including coming to terms with their sexuality or gender identity, at a time when Americans increasingly accept gays, lesbians and transgender people, and LGBT individuals enjoy increasing legal protection against discrimination.

Given the large disparities in LGBT identification between younger and older generations of Americans, the proportion of all Americans who identify as LGBT can be expected to grow in the future as younger generations will constitute a larger share of the total U.S. adult population. With one in 10 millennials and one in five Gen Z members identifying as LGBT, the proportion of LGBT Americans should exceed 10% in the near future.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.

SURVEY METHODS

Tuesday, August 31, 2021

male state

презик

Что такое Мужское Государство и как с ним бороться

(повтор)
Пару слов о самой концепции «Мужского государства». Что это вообще за «движение»? Я о них как-то уже писал, но не грех повторить. В общем, это по сути что-то типа «движения задротов», причем – в самом прямом смысле. Это как бы мужчины, которые принадлежностью к «задротам» пытаются гордиться и даже на этом основании немного качать права. Дескать – да, вот мы такие – нищие, непривлекательные, убогие, бабы нам «не дают» - а нам тоже хочется! И дальше километры обвинений и жалоб в адрес «красивых телок» - вплоть до «требований» (!!) – пусть, мол, каждая красивая тёлка будет обязана (!) «давать» представителям «сообщества», а то, дескать, «несправедливо», «мы тоже хотим». Такая вот «политическая программа», если можно так выразиться.

Отсюда понятно, почему эти фрики так взбесились от фотографий «чернильниц». Это типа «удара по больному»: мол, нам и так никаких баб не достается, поскольку все они вьются вокруг отечественных толстосумов и «хозяев жизни» - так мало того, тут еще и какие-то негры невесть откуда, и тоже к нашим бабам руки тянут, а они, дуры, тому и рады! Это сколько ж нам тогда еще в очереди стоять?? УБЕРИТЕ ХОТЯ БЫ НЕГРОВ!!

Всё настолько бредово, что кажется каким-то абсурдом. Но нет – эти люди среди нас, мало того, они уже угрожают кому-то УБИЙСТВОМ; по сути, это в чистом виде отечественный «вокеизм», а участники «Мужского государства» - это как бы и есть «белые негры» отечественного извода, которых научили, как им качать права.

Вызывают ли эти люди сочувствие? Да ничуть. Ничего кроме гадливости они вызывать не могут. Но я тут задумался – а откуда вообще весь этот «вокеизм» берется? В чем, так сказать, его идеологическая основа? Какое еще, к черту, «мужское государство»?? Работать иди! Не идут.

И вдруг понял. Корень всего этого – в утверждении, которое мы учили еще в школе: «Человек создан для счастья, как птица для полета».

Вот он, корень зла! Эти люди тоже считают, что они «созданы для счастья». И понимают буквально: вот же, идет мимо красивая телка – отчего, собственно, я не могу ее трахнуть? Разве я не создан для счастья??

Сопливые интеллигенты, я знаю, в этом месте начнут гамлетовски сомневаться, задаваться излюбленным вопросом «а не в этом ли состоит сермяжная правда», призывать «подумать, а так ли уж эти несчастные не правы» - понятно, почему: платить-то – то есть отдаваться прыщавому уроду – придется, как поначалу думает совестливец, не ему, а той самой «телке», чужими-то интересами всегда можно пожертвовать… В ответ я могу лишь предложить страдальцу за народ представить, что в «мужском государстве» есть и геи (как оно и должно быть по статистике). Гей – он ведь тоже человек? Он, стало быть, тоже имеет право на счастье? А коли так – может самому интеллигенту, как той красотке, тоже обслужить временно несчастного гея по полной, так сказать, программе, анально и орально? Нет? А ПОЧЕМУ?!

Гниль – именно в этом «праве на счастье». Нет никакого права. Право есть одно – зарабатывать деньги, общаться и помогать другим по мере сил. А счастье – это только КАК ПОВЕЗЕТ. И стоит лишь только по дурости признать это «право на счастье» за ВСЕМИ – ооо, сразу такая хтонь полезет, что только держись…

В этом - урок всей человеческой истории. Нет права на счастье – и слава богу.

Monday, June 28, 2021

The U.S. Can't Move Forward on LGBTQ Rights Without Reparations


Demonstrators carry signs calling for protection of the LGBTQ community from discrimination as they march in a picket line in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1967 .

BY OMAR G. ENCARNACIÓN JUNE 26, 2021 7:00 AM EDT

Encarnación is Professor of Political Studies at Bard College, where he teaches comparative politics and Latin American and Iberian studies. His new book is The Case for Gay Reparations

It is generally hard to know when a social revolution has achieved its goals. In the case of the American gay rights revolution, however, it appears that this is an easy one to call. At least as far as the national media is concerned, the view that gay rights have been decisively won has become conventional wisdom. Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution is one of the best-known journalistic accounts of the struggle for gay rights in the U.S. That book’s premise is pointedly echoed by a 2019 article in The Atlantic titled “The Struggle for Gay Rights is Over.” But America’s gay rights revolution seems unfinished or incomplete in the absence of a national reckoning with the country’s shameful history of systemic discrimination and violence towards the LGBTQ community. The absence of this reckoning makes the U.S. an outlier among Western democracies with a history of repression of homosexuality.

In recent years, the idea of “gay reparations,” broadly understood as policies intended to make amends for the legacies of systemic gay discrimination and violence, has become something of a global phenomenon. In 2017, the British Parliament enacted Turing Law, a legislation that conveyed an apology and a posthumous pardon to those convicted of “gross indecency,” a criminal charge intimately associated in British history with the persecution of gay men since the Victorian era. It honors Alan Turing, the famed computer scientist credited with breaking German military codes during World War II. In 1952, Turing was convicted of gross indecency, after confessing to a homosexual relationship with another man, and forced to undergo chemical castration. Britain’s example has been emulated by Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand. Germany has offered financial compensation to those who faced prosecution under Paragraph 175, the infamous portion of the German Penal Code that criminalized same-sex attraction dating to 1871; it also built a national monument to the victims of the so-called “Gay Holocaust,” the unknown number of gay males who perished in Nazi concentration camps. As part of a policy of “moral rehabilitation,” Spain has pledged to wipe clean the criminal records of some 5,000 gays and lesbians imprisoned under the homophobic laws of the Franco regime.

Given the variety of gay reparations available, which one should the U.S. embrace? For the Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., the most prominent American organization demanding gay reparations, the United States should emulate the British example. In particular, the “Mattachines,” whose name references a pre-Stonewall gay rights organization that fought for acceptance of homosexuality within the legal and medical establishments, want an acknowledgement and an apology from the US Congress for the Lavender Scare, the witch-hunt of homosexuals triggered by President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 executive order banning “perverts” from working in the federal government. That order occasioned the firing of thousands of federal employees on the suspicion of being homosexuals and forced many to undergo obotomies, insulin-induced comas, and gay conversion therapy with the aim of changing their sexual orientation at federal institutions such as Washington, D.C’s St. Elizabeths Hospital. An acknowledgment and apology, the Mattachines contend, will be a giant step toward realizing “full citizenship” for gay people, a type of ethical citizenship that is not only concerned with rights and responsibilities but also with repairing indignity and degradation.

It’s hard to disagree with the Mattachines’ demand for an apology not only for the Lavender Scare, but also for the many other indignities and degradations that the American gay community has endured at the hands of the government, such as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That notorious 1993 policy forced gays and lesbians to keep their homosexuality a secret if they wished to remain in the military. By the time it was lifted in 2011, some 13,000 service men and women had been dismissed from their jobs for their unwillingness to comply with the policy. As suggested by the Western European experience, an apology to the LGBTQ community is often a gateway for other reparations, including rehabilitation and compensation. Moreover, an apology would be grounded in historical precedent, an important point since it would lend legitimacy to the apology. Past apologies in American history include the Acknowledgement and Apology for Mistreatment of Native Hawaiians (1993); the Acknowledgement and Regret for the Chinese Exclusion Laws (2012); the apology given to Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II (1988); and the apologies for the institution of slavery and Jim Crow laws issued by the House of Representatives (2008) and the Senate (2009).

Finally, as the most popular and least controversial form of gay reparation, an apology is unlikely to trigger a backlash from the traditional foes of the LGBTQ community. The Christian Right has met every gay rights breakthrough in American history with a vigorous pushback. After the 1969 Stonewall Riots, the touchstone of the contemporary gay rights movement, moral crusaders like Phyllis Schlafly, Anita Bryant, and Jerry Falwell declared war on homosexuality. Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court decision that struck down all remaining sodomy laws across the US, launched a wave of state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and an unsuccessful attempt to ban gay marriage in the US Constitution. Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage, triggered the claim that marriage equality would undermine the civil rights of Christians. This claim, in turn, gave rise to “religious freedom restoration laws” intended to address “Christian victimization.” These laws allow for discrimination against LGBTQ people as long as this discrimination is rooted in sincerely held religious beliefs.

All of this said, gay reparations in the U.S. should not begin and end with an apology. Any apology or act of remorse should be supplemented with a truth commission tasked with chronicling the systemic discrimination that the LGBTQ community has endured over the course of American history. Truth commissions are nonjudicial bodies entrusted with the task of investigating a particular event or history, usually one involving human rights abuses, premised on the view that shedding light on the truth is critical to overcoming trauma, to say nothing of avoiding history repeating itself. In some cases, a truth commission is a means to an end, as was the case of the truth commission that investigated Argentina’s infamous Dirty War. The commission’s final report, Nunca Más (Never Again), opened the way for the successful prosecution of the top brass of the Argentine military on human rights charges. But in other cases, as in South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation providing an unvarnished chronicle of the truth (usually from the victims’ perspective) is an end in itself.

Brazil and Canada provide contrasting examples of how a truth commission can be employed to make amends to the gay community. In 2011, the Brazilian Congress created a truth commission to examine the human rights abuses committed by the military regime in place between 1964 and 1985. Due to the insistence of activists, the Commission became the first one in the world to incorporate LGBTQ repression. Presented in 2014 to President Dilma Rousseff (herself a victim of the military regime), the final report found that: “Although there was no formalized and coherent state policy to exterminate homosexuals, the state’s ideology of national security clearly contained a homophobic perspective that represented homosexuality as harmful, dangerous, and contrary to the family. This view legitimized direct violence against gay people, violations of their rights and of their way of living and socializing.”

Canada’s gay reparation policies were set into motion by “Grossly Indecent: The Just Society Report,” an accounting of the repression of sexual minorities in Canadian history released in 2017 by the Egale Human Rights Trust, Canada’s leading LGBTQ organization. At the heart of the report was the so-called “gay purge,” a policy of government-sanctioned discrimination that lasted until the 1990s, and that caused thousands to lose their government jobs and face prosecution because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. The report demanded that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau apologize to the LGBTQ community and make reparations to the victims of anti-gay discrimination. In November 2017, Trudeau expressed “shame and sorrow and deep regret for the things we have done that I stand here today and say we were wrong. We apologize. I am sorry. We are sorry.” The apology came with a payout of $85 million to the victims of those purged from the government because of their homosexuality. According to Canadian media reports, the payout represents “the largest financial commitment by any national government for past wrongs committed against sexual minorities.”

Despite the seemingly uncontroversial nature of an apology to the American LGBTQ community and a truth commission to document systemic anti-gay discrimination and violence, no one should expect smooth sailing for either proposal. Reparations are inherently difficult, stemming from their perception as exclusionary and divisive. Those making the case for reparations invariably uphold themselves as a historically repressed minority deserving of reparations. Inevitably, this victimization invites others to wonder whether they, too, are deserving of reparations. In the case of the United States, discussions about gay reparations are made more difficult by the unaddressed legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws.

None of this, however, should deter American gay activists from demanding some form of reparation. Indeed, it behooves American LGBTQ rights organizations like Human Rights Campaign and others to capitalize upon this moment of national reckoning with racial injustice to remind the public of the painful legacy of anti-gay laws, policies and practices and how this legacy intersects with other forms of oppression in American history. LGBTQ people of color are more likely to be victims of discrimination and police violence than the wider LGBTQ population. The impressive gay rights advances of recent decades–especially the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015 and the extension of anti-LGBTQ discrimination protection under the 1964 Civil Rights Act in 2020 (all victories won at the Supreme Court) are something to celebrate and take pride in. But these victories cannot remove the stain that the history of anti-gay discrimination and violence has left on American democracy. The removal of this stain can only come from a formal reckoning with this history.

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

share of US adults identified as LGBT

A total of 5.6 percent of U.S. adults identified as LGBT in 2020, a new record high. Gen Z, newly added to the latest edition of a survey by Gallup, is the gayest generation in terms of self-identification. Almost 16 percent of those born between 1997 and 2002 identified as LGBT, compared with around 9 percent of Millennials.

While scientists believe that the share of LGBT individuals has not actually changed over time, younger people in the U.S. are more likely to be openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or transsexual. Even within the generation of Millennials, defined as those born between 1981 and 1996, self-identification quotas rose in the past years. In 2014, only 6.3 percent of Millennials had said they identified as LGBT.

For older generations, levels of self-identification did not change majorly in the past decade. The Gallup survey question did not ask respondents to identify as other sexes, sexual identities or sexual orientations like intersex, asexual or queer.Infographic: 5.6 Percent of U.S. Adults Identify as LGBT | StatistaЭто 20й год, а вот и 21 подоспел:

Share of LGBT population living in the U.S. states as of February 2021, by status of transgender exclusions in private health insurance coverage

Sunday, April 25, 2021

Enfants de familles homoparentales : les résultats scolaires, une preuve de réussite

Published on N-IUSSP.ORG April 19, 2021

Children of same-sex parents: an educational success story


Jan Kabátek, Francisco Perales

Challenging claims of disadvantage in same-sex parented families, Jan Kabátek and Francisco Perales find that same-sex-parented children actually outperform their peers in many areas of academic achievement.

Over the last 50 years, there have been dramatic changes in social attitudes and legislation toward same-sex relationships (Roseneil et al 2013). Within this short time frame, many countries have moved from criminalization to robust institutional support – enabling same-sex couples to be formally recognized, marry, and adopt children. Despite these developments, same-sex parenting remains a highly controversial and politicized issue, and one that is tightly intertwined with discussions around same-sex marriage.

Data from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey, a large cross-national survey of public opinion, confirms that support for same-sex parenting is far from unanimous. A sizable share of the population across multiple countries still believes that same-sex parents cannot raise children as well as different-sex parents (Figure 1).

These beliefs are often bolstered by “common wisdom” arguments that are rarely backed up by robust empirical evidence. For example, some commentators maintain that children need both male and female parental role models to thrive, that non-biological parents invest less effort in parenting their children, and that children in same-sex-parented families may be subjected to shame and bullying.

However, these beliefs have also been fueled by questionable academic studies examining the comparative outcomes of these children.

Prior research


Mark Regnerus’s, a sociologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin conducted a controversial study in 2012 that serves as a cautionary tale about the negative and far-reaching consequences that poor data and unsuitable analytical methods can exert on research findings in this field.

The  (2012) study claimed that people raised by same-sex parents experienced worse health and socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood than people raised by different-sex parents. Yet subsequent re-analyses of the same data by several leading researchers demonstrated that such associations emerged almost entirely due to an array of misclassification, mismeasurement and other analytic problems (Cheng and Powell 2015, Rosenfeld 2015).

The damage of the Regnerus study was however done, with its spurious findings receiving intense international media coverage and becoming a ‘go-to’ resource for activist groups lobbying against same-sex marriage. Such findings not only permeated the public debate on same-sex parenting, but were also presented in court in attempts to prevent the introduction of same-sex marriage legislation across US states.

Nevertheless, the Regnerus study constitutes an outlier in the broader literature on same-sex parenting. A large majority of studies on the topic have found that same-sex parents are able to provide their children with as healthy and nurturing home environments as different-sex parents. Yet these studies have also been often called into question, with critics pointing out that they are typically based on suboptimal data and methods (Allen 2015).

The most common criticism is that the studies tend to rely on ‘convenience’ samples. These are small and selective samples of same-sex-parented families, who may be approached at LGBT events or recruited through mailing campaigns. Critics (rightfully) argue that the outcomes of such families may differ from those of the broader population of same-sex families, and that this can distort the reliability of the studies and their conclusions.

Our new study


In our study, we were able to move beyond the vast majority of research conducted in this space. We did this by analyzing data covering the full population of children living in the Netherlands (more than 1.4 million children in total), comparing the academic outcomes of all children raised by same-sex couples with all children raised by different-sex couples. We conducted the study in the Netherlands because it is one of only a few countries in the world that allows researchers to link together life-long anonymized data from multiple population registers, containing high-quality administrative information on children and their families (Kabátek and Ribar 2020).

Thanks to these data, we were able to statistically account for various pre-existing characteristics that may differ between same-sex- and different-sex-parented families—for example, the higher average education attainment of individuals in same-sex couples, or their lower average incomes. This means that our analyses compared children in same-sex- and different-sex-parented families that are similar in all observable characteristics except for their parents’ sex.

Our key findings go counter to those reported by Regnerus (2012). Children in same-sex-parented families attain higher scores on national standardized tests than children in different-sex-parented families. Their advantage amounts to 13 per cent of a standard deviation, which is comparable to the advantage associated with both parents being employed as opposed to being out of work. We also find that children in same-sex-parented families are slightly more likely (1.5 per cent) to graduate from high school, and much more likely (11.2 per cent) to enroll in college than children in different-sex-parented families.

Our results thus challenge “common wisdom” arguments against same-sex parenting, and lend preliminary support to other scholarly perspectives that emphasize the possible benefits of same-sex parenthood. For example, same-sex parents are likely to face substantive barriers to parenthood (including social scrutiny, greater costs of conceiving a child, and legislative hurdles) and overcoming these barriers may strengthen their commitment to parental roles. Combined with the fact that same-sex couples face minimal odds of becoming parents through ‘accidental’ pregnancies, this can result in more positive parenting practices in same-sex-parented families.

Implications for other countries


The Netherlands features high levels of public approval of same-sex relations and provides robust legislative protection to sexual minorities. Therefore, we argue that the Dutch institutional context represents a ‘best-case scenario’ concerning the achievement of children in same-sex-parented families.

Same-sex-parented families in other countries may be subject to environmental hurdles that remain beyond the control of parents and that may negatively affect their children. These may include a lack of access to the social institution of marriage and more profound experiences of stigma and discrimination (Perales and Todd 2018).

By undertaking our analyses in the Netherlands, we were able to retrieve findings that are more likely to reflect the influence of same-sex parenting itself, and less likely to reflect external influences stemming from non-inclusive institutional environments. Therefore, our findings portray a viable scenario of what could happen in countries with more restrictive institutional environments, should they direct comparable efforts towards the inclusion of sexual minorities.

Altogether, the message stemming from our findings is clear: being raised by same-sex parents bears no independent detrimental effect on children’s outcomes. In socio-political environments that provide high levels of legislative and public support, children in same-sex-parented families thrive.

*Source figure 1 – worldvaluessurvey.org


References

  • Allen Doug (2015) More Heat Than Light: A Critical Assessment of the Same-Sex Parenting Literature, 1995–2013, Marriage & Family Review, 51(2): 154-182. doi.org/10.1080/01494929.2015.1033317
  • Cheng Simon, Powell Brian (2015) Measurement, methods, and divergent patterns: Reassessing the effects of same-sex parents. Social Science Research, 52, July, 615-626. DOI: 10.1016/j.ssresearch.2015.04.005.
  • Kabátek Jan, Perales Francisco (2021) Academic Achievement of Children in Same- and Different-Sex-Parented Families: A Population-Level Analysis of Linked Administrative Data From the Netherlands. Demography. doi.org/10.1215/00703370-8994569
  • Kabátek Jan, Ribar David C (2020) Daughters and Divorce. The Economic Journal, December. doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueaa140
  • Perales Francisco, Todd Abram (2018) Structural stigma and the health and wellbeing of Australian LGB populations: Exploiting geographic variation in the results of the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite. Social Science & Medicine, 208: 190-199. doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2018.05.015
  • Regnerus Mark (2012) How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study. Social Science Research, 41(4): 752-770.
  • Roseneil Sasha, Crowhurst Isabel, Hellesund Tone, Santos Ana Cristina, Stoilova Mariya (2013) Changing Landscapes of Heteronormativity: The Regulation and Normalization of Same-Sex Sexualities in Europe. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 20(2): 165–199. doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxt006
  • Rosenfeld Michael J. (2015) Revisiting the Data from the New Family Structure Study: Taking Family Instability into Account. Sociological Science, September, DOI 10.15195/v2.a23.

Friday, March 19, 2021

Male gays in the female gaze: women who watch m/m pornography

Garrard Conley was sent for conversion therapy
to ‘treat’ his sexual identity
 
This paper draws on a piece of wide-scale mixed-methods research that examines the motivations behind women who watch gay male pornography. To date there has been very little interdisciplinary research investigating this phenomenon, despite a recent survey by PornHub (one of the largest online porn sites in the world) showing that gay male porn is the second most popular choice for women porn users out of 25+ possible genre choices. While both academic literature and popular culture have looked at the interest that (heterosexual) men have in lesbian pornography, considerably less attention has been paid to the consumption of gay male pornography by women. Research looking at women's consumption of pornography from within the Social Sciences is very focused around heterosexual (and, to a lesser extent, lesbian) pornography. Research looking more generally at gay pornography/erotica (and the subversion of the ‘male gaze’/concept of ‘male as erotic object’) often makes mention of female interest in this area, but only briefly, and often relies on anecdotal or observational evidence. Research looking at women's involvement in slashfic (primarily from within media studies), while very thorough and rich, tends to view slash writing as a somewhat isolated phenomenon (indeed, in her influential article on women's involvement in slash, Bacon-Smith talks about how ‘only a small number’ of female slash writers and readers have any interest in gay literature or pornography more generally, and this phenomenon is not often discussed in more recent analyses of slash); so while there has been a great deal of very interesting research done in this field, little attempt has been made to couch it more generally within women's consumption and use of pornography and erotica or to explore what women enjoy about watching gay male pornography. Through a series of focus groups, interviews, and an online questionnaire (n = 275), this exploratory piece of work looks at what women enjoy about gay male pornography, and how it sits within their consumption of erotica/pornography more generally. The article investigates what this has to say about the existence and nature of a ‘female gaze’.

Keywords: pornography gay female gaze women male/male pornography