UF Researchers Compile First National Survey Of Gay And Lesbian Issues

March 5, 1997

GAINESVILLE — The biggest civil rights movement of the 1990s has been the silent but growing pace at which American communities have added gay and lesbian rights to their anti-discrimination laws, say University of Florida researchers whose new book is based on the first national survey of these issues.

“Just as blacks dominated the civil rights battleground of the 60s, gays and lesbians are making their mark in the 90s, with a dramatic increase in anti-discrimination legislation and a growing shift in public opinion,” said James Button, a UF political science professor and co-author of “Private Lives, Public Conflicts,” an examination of gay rights nationwide.

The book also is written by UF political scientist Kenneth Wald and health science education Professor Barbara Rienzo. In exploring the cutting edge of this grass roots movement, the researchers also include in-depth case studies of five diverse communities. U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.,who is openly gay, wrote the introduction.

Seventy-nine of the 159 cities and counties that had extended civil rights protection to gays and lesbians by 1996 did so in the 90s, the highest adoption rate of anti-discrimination ordinances since the first was passed in East Lansing, Mich., in 1972, Button said.

Anti-discrimination laws are an important factor in changing public attitudes about homosexuality, even though more than a quarter of the communities that have them report local or state efforts to overturn them, the researchers said.

One sign of the new political primacy of gays and lesbians is that the number of cities and counties offering domestic partner benefits more than doubled since 1993. So did the number of openly gay elected officials in the two years before 1993, he said.

“While it’s clear that gays and lesbians have made significant strides, the bulk of that success has been in larger cities where they are physically concentrated and politically well-organized,” Wald said. “It’s a much grimmer reality in smaller cities and rural areas, where there is a collective unwillingness to face the problems that gays and lesbians encounter.”

The researchers said they found gays and lesbians continue to experience an inordinate amount of hostility on a daily basis.

“Even Americans who are sympathetic to the rights of gays and lesbians often regard homosexuality as an aberration or perversion,” Wald said. “People who make allegations about blacks are often regarded as cranks or misfits, but people who entertain broad stereotypes about gays and lesbians are still accepted.”

Because they are a primary institution for launching change, public schools have become the central battleground in the cultural war between people with traditional views about homosexuality and those who favor greater tolerance, Rienzo said.

School programs addressing the needs of lesbian and gay youth were rare but more likely to be found in large, affluent and more diverse communities with anti-discrimination laws on the books, Rienzo said.

Gays, lesbians and many health professionals feel strongly that for homosexuality to be understood, discussion must begin in the schools. Opponents, however, fear children will be unfavorably influenced and even become homosexual if gays and lesbians teach and the subject is included in the curriculum, she said.

Other signs of shifting attitudes range from the appearance of gay and lesbian characters on popular television programs, such as “Roseanne” and “Melrose Place,” to the readiness of the Walt Disney Company and other corporations to extend domestic partner benefits, he said.

“As Barney Frank says in the book’s introduction, politics works’ even for unpopular minorities,” Button said. “Just as blacks say the civil rights laws of the 60s were invaluable, gays and lesbians are finding such measures a first step toward social change.”

“Yet lack of pension rights and other marital benefits is a problem because gays and lesbians feel so vulnerable economically,” said Wald, who characterizes the movements’ gains as a silent revolution’ with one step backward for every two steps forward.’ “They feel any time they come out about their sexuality, they face economic retaliation.”