No abstract

Recent survey research suggests that heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbian and gay rights have become more progressive. However, we find in our research that negative attitudes and barriers against gay men and lesbians in workplaces still remain. Our project represents one case study of hidden animosity toward homosexuals, which varies from "overt disgust" to "don't ask, don't tell" policies that reinforce negative attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. As such, we contend that attitudes toward lesbian and gay rights are not becoming more progressive; instead various methods of discrimination are increasingly being used to exclude gay men and lesbians from the workplace. We argue that White working class men have constructed and maintained a form of White male solidarity, a collective practice directed toward women, People of Color, and non-heterosexuals that maintains racism, sexism, and homophobia in the local, national, and global context.

This paper had two objectives. First, we developed for each large metropolitan area of the United States with a population of 500,000 or more in 1990 four indexes of gay partnering and four indexes of lesbian partnering. We compared and related these indexes and their variable measurements with one another. Second, using what we argue is the statistically and demographically preferred set of gay and lesbian partnering rates, we proposed and tested an assortment of ecological hypotheses relating characteristics of the metropolitan areas with the gay and lesbian partnering rates. Rates of gay and lesbian partnering, we show, are more influenced by such metropolitan characteristics as physical climate and the crime rate than by a religious characteristic such as the number of Southern Baptist adherents. Among the conclusions of the paper is our claim that there needs to be greater consideration of the methodological issues related to the use of government data for the development of rates of gay and lesbian partnering.

In this paper, we examine how parents in the US who practise voluntary simplicity enact family and social reproduction. Two key findings emerged. First, adult simplifiers in our study typically grew up within families that practised voluntary simplicity or frugality and transmit these consumption patterns to their own children. Second, simplifiers often struggle with other family members, friends and society over issues related to the tensions that emerge as they seek to simplify their lives while at the same time raising children who will not be 'shunned' by a mainstream, consumption-focused society. We conclude that parents who voluntarily simplify are able to maintain their social class status through redefining what it means to be middle class through the creation and utilization of 'green capital'

This paper has two objectives. Using data from the 2000 census, we develop for each of the 331 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) of the United States in 2000 an index of gay male partnering and an index of lesbian partnering. Drawing on the theoretical perspective of human ecology, we propose and test an assortment of hypotheses relating characteristics of the metropolitan areas with the gay male and lesbian partnering indexes.