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Introduction -- Thinking about the South, the Southwest, and Festivals -- Mardi Gras and Fiesta in the American Gulf South and Southwest -- The Hottest Ticket in Town Is a Gay Ball: On Being Wanted -- Inclusive Collective Partying: On Making Community -- Social Elites, Glass Closets, and Contested Spaces: On Being Treated the Same -- Fundraising and Benevolent Aid: On Taking Care of Our Own -- Partying with the Mayor and Your Mom: On Progress -- Conclusion.

The importance of citywide festivals like Mardi Gras and Fiesta for the LGBTQ communityFestivals like Mardi Gras and Fiesta have come to be annual events in which entire cities participate, and LGBTQ people are a visible part of these celebrations. In other words, the party is on, the party is queer, and everyone is invited. In Queer Carnival, Amy Stone takes us inside these colorful, eye-catching, and often raucous events, highlighting their importance to queer life in America's urban South and Southwest. Drawing on five years of research, and over a hundred days at LGBTQ events in cities such as San Antonio, Santa Fe, Baton Rouge, and Mobile, Stone gives readers a front-row seat to festivals, carnivals, and Mardi Gras celebrations, vividly bringing these queer cultural spaces and the people that create and participate in them to life. Stone shows how these events serve a larger fundamental purpose, helping LGBTQ people to cultivate a sense of belonging in cities that may be otherwise hostile. Queer Carnival provides an important new perspective on queer life in the South and Southwest, showing us the ways that LGBTQ communities not only survive, but thrive, even in the most unexpected places

The passage of the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California in 2008 stunned gay rights activists across the country. Although facing a well-funded campaign in support of the ballot measure, LGBT activists had good reasons for optimism, including the size and strength of their campaign. Since 1974, the LGBT movement has fought 146 anti-gay ballot initiatives sponsored by the religious right and has developed innovative strategies to oppose these measures. In Gay Rights at the Ballot Box, Amy L. Stone examines how the tactics of LGBT activists have evolved and unravels the complex relation

The passage of the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California in 2008 stunned gay rights activists across the country. Although facing a well-funded campaign in support of the ballot measure, LGBT activists had good reasons for optimism, including the size and strength of their campaign. Since 1974, the LGBT movement has fought 146 anti-gay ballot initiatives sponsored by the religious right and has developed innovative strategies to oppose these measures. In Gay Rights at the Ballot Box, Amy L. Stone examines how the tactics of LGBT activists have evolved and unravels the complex relation.

At annual, citywide festivals like Fiestas in the U.S. Southwest and Mardi Gras or Carnival in the South, LGBTQ events are often the hottest tickets in town. This recognition and celebration, in turn, is a key part of securing full citizenship--the sense of being an important, unattenuated member of society--for LGBTQ community members.

AbstractOver the past 20 years, sociological research on LGBTQ people and communities has disproportionately studied coastal regions and big cities in the United States. Scholars pay the most attention to queer urban life in "great cities" like New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Chicago and understudy lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) life in the South, rural and suburban areas, and ordinary cities. This research ignores demographic evidence about where LGBTQ people live in the United States. I argue that these geographical choices—born out of convenience or theoretical purpose—shape the approach to studying queer life and the unintentional reproduction of a middle‐class, cosmopolitan universal gay subject. I chart a future path for sociology research on LGBTQ life that accounts for geography and moves beyond metronormativity.

AbstractSince the late 1970s, the Religious Right has mobilized to oppose the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) movement in the United States. Sociologists have studied the relationship between these two movements as a classic movement‐countermovement dynamic, in which the strategies, actions, and framing of one movement impact the other. I analyze the way Religious Right reactive and proactive opposition to gay rights has affected the LGBTQ movement. First, I provide an overview of the literature on the negative impacts of the Religious Right, including the diversion of movement goals, transformation of frames, and marginalization of queer politics. Second, I examine the way Religious Right activism may increase mobilization.