Ellen Ann Andersen

Culture and Mobilization: Tactical Repertoires, Same-Sex Weddings, and the Impact on Gay Activism

Social movement scholars have long been skeptical of cultures impact on political change, perhaps for good reason, since little empirical research explicitly addresses this question. This article fills the void by examining the dynamics and the impact of the month-long 2004 same-sex wedding protest in San Francisco. We integrate insights of contentious politics approaches with social constructionist conceptions and identify three core features of cultural repertoires: contestation, intentionality, and collective identity. Our analyses, which draw on rich qualitative and quantitative data from interviews with participants and movement leaders and a random survey of participants, highlight these dimensions of cultural repertoires as well as the impact that the same-sex wedding protest had on subsequent activism. Same-sex weddings, as our multimethod analyses show, were an intentional episode of claim-making, with participants arriving with a history of activism in a variety of other social movements. Moreover, relative to the question of impact, the initial protest sparked other forms of political action that ignited a statewide campaign for marriage equality in California. Our results offer powerful evidence that culture can be consequential not only internally, with implications for participant solidarity and identity, but for political change and further action as well. We conclude by discussing the specifics of our case and the broader implications for social movement scholars.

Support for Confrontational Tactics among AIDS Activists: A Study of Intra-Movement Divisions

Theory: Expectations about why groups and social movements differ in terms of their support for confrontational tactics can be applied to subgroups within a larger set of political activists. Hypotheses: Political distrust, personal suffering, ideological intensity, and divergent social locations encourage support for ACT-UP and disruptive political tactics among AIDS activists, with strong mediating effects being exerted by sexual orientation. Methods: The data are based on a 1992 national mail survey of AIDS activists. OLS regression was used to analyze the sample as a whole and the subsamples of gay and straight respondents. Results: Whereas distrust and dissatisfaction had a small impact, personal suffering, ideological commitment, and divergent social locations tended to increase support for disruptive behavior. These relationships differed, however, among gays and straights due to their immersion in disparate social networks and milieus. The results highlight the importance of within-movement heterogeneity.

Exploring Multi-Issue Activism

Multi-issue activists are sorely understudied, despite their acknowledged importance as bridges between social movements and issue domains. In this article we explore multi-issue activism, beginning with a large sample of AIDS activists and charting the degree and nature of overlapping issue involvement, the key role of “initiator” issues, and individual characteristics that promote multi-issue activism. We demonstrate that the great majority of these AIDS activists had sizable prior and ongoing participation histories in other issues, suggesting that movement across issue areas may be the norm rather than the exception. We also show that involvement in specific past issues served as gateways to later involvement in AIDS, that psychological engagement in politics prompted cross-issue activism even among these already activated individuals, and that unique personal characteristics (in this case gender and sexual orientation) led to more issue interconnectedness.

Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines and America's Struggle For Same-Sex Marriage

Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines. By Andrew Koppelman. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. 224p.

Out of the Closets and into the Courts: Legal Opportunity Structure and Gay Rights Litigation

35.00. Americas Struggle For Same-Sex Marriage. By Daniel R. Pinello. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 213p.

The Importance of Social and Political Context: The Case of AIDS Activism

55.00 cloth,

Out of the Closets and into the Courts

19.99 paper. The landscape of marriage in the United States is changing yet again, driven this time by tensions over the rights of same-sex couples to marry. States across the nation have revisited their laws in recent years to clarify the legal rights and responsibilities of same-sex couples, with widely divergent outcomes. Massachusetts permits same-sex couples to marry, currently the only state to do so. Six other states grant same-sex couples all the state-level rights and benefits of marriage, typically under the name of civil unions. On the flip side, 26 states have amended their constitutions expressly to limit marriage to opposite-sex couples; 17 also bar the establishment or recognition of alternative legal regimes designed to give the substantive rights of marriage to same-sex couples. One additional state, Hawaii, amended its constitution to give the states legislature the sole ability to decide who may marry, a move that successfully derailed a constitutional challenge to the states existing marriage regime. The federal government has also gotten into the game. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) limits marriage to opposite-sex couples for all federal purposes and authorizes states to opt out of recognizing same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions.