No abstract

Objective. We examine racial differences in support for same‐sex marriage, and test whether the emerging black‐white gap is a function of religiosity. We explore how religious factors play a crucial role in racial differences, and how secular factors have varying effects on attitudes for whites and African Americans. Methods. Using data from the General Social Surveys, we estimate ordinal logistic regression models and stacked structural equation models. Results. We show that the racial divide is a function of African Americans' ties to sectarian Protestant religious denominations and high rates of church attendance. We also show racial differences in the influence of education and political values on opposition to same sex marriage. Conclusions. Religious factors are a source of racial differences in support for same‐sex marriage, and secular influences play less of a role in structuring African Americans' beliefs about same‐sex marriage.

Transgender people in the United States change genders in relation to androcentric, heterocentric, and middle-class whitenormative cultural narratives. Drawing on ethnographic data primarily with transgender people of color, I analyze the ways in which gender, race, social class, and sexuality all combine to create specific background identities-intersected identity frames-which others attribute in interaction. We can better understand these intersected identity frames through the experiences of transgender people, who actively engage in identity management. The meanings others attach to specific combinations are foregrounded in the context of transitioning; some audiences employ dominant, white cultural narratives, while others draw upon ethnic cultural narratives. In all cases, transitioning throws the multi-dimensionality of intersected identity frames into sharp relief against the background of intersecting social and cultural structural arrangements.

Some transgender people in the USA actively experience changes in institutional power linked to transitioning. As such, they serve as informants to the interconnections of institutional inequalities and social identities and positions. Centering the experiences of ''trans'' people of color and drawing from feminist standpoint theory, I theorize a multifaceted prism to expand upon existing intersectional models by linking multifaceted social positions to institutional inequalities and challenging dichotomous understandings of categories. I then use this multifaceted prism to critique my own positionality as a researcher and to analyze experiences of trans people of color.