Elite-Led Mobilization and Gay Rights: Dispelling the Myth of Mass Opinion Backlash - Hardcover

Bishin, Benjamin George; Hayes, Thomas Joseph; Incantalupo, Matthew Benjamin; Smith, Charles Anthony

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0472132709 ISBN 13: 9780472132706

Publisher: University of Michigan Press, 2021

Synopsis

Media and scholastic accounts describe a strong public opinion backlash—a sharply negative and enduring opinion change—against attempts to advance gay rights. Academic research, however, increasingly questions backlash as an explanation for opposition to LGBT rights. Elite-Led Mobilization and Gay Rights argues that what appears to be public opinion backlash against gay rights is more consistent with elite-led mobilization—a strategy used by anti-gay elites, primarily white evangelicals, seeking to prevent the full incorporation of LGBT Americans in the polity in order to achieve political objectives and increase political power. This book defines and tests the theory of Mass Opinion Backlash and develops and tests the theory of Elite-Led Mobilization by employing a series of online and natural experiments, surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court rulings in Obergefell v. Hodges and United States v. Windsor, and President Obama’s position change on gay marriage. To evaluate these theories, the authors employ extensive survey, voting behavior, and campaign finance data, and examine the history of the LGBT movement and its opposition by religious conservatives, from the Lavender Scare to the campaign against Trans Rights in the defeat of Houston’s 2015 HERO ordinance. Their evidence shows that opposition to LGBT rights is a top-down process incited by anti-gay elites rather than a bottom-up reaction described by public opinion backlash.

About this title

About the Author

Benjamin George Bishin is Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Riverside

Thomas J. Hayes is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut

Matthew B. Incantalupo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yeshiva University

Charles Anthony Smith is Professor of Political Science and Law at the University of California, Irvine

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Michigan Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0472132709
• ISBN 13: 9780472132706
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280