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This unique book sheds new light on the most invisible members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. Hidden from view by a combination of prevailing cultural assumptions and their own unwillingness to be seen, older lesbians have been consistently under-represented in both popular culture and research. This ground-breaking study, based on an unprecedentedly large research sample of nearly four hundred lesbian-identified women between the ages of 60 and 90, offers a fascinating insight into the lives of older lesbians in the UK. Drawing on data from a comprehensive questionnaire survey and illustrated with vivid personal testimonies, it explores both the diversity and the distinct collective identity of the older lesbian community, arguing that understanding their past experience is crucial to providing for their needs in the future. It is essential reading for scholars in the fields of women's studies and genders and sexualities, and will also appeal to sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, social and cultural historians, and experts in ageing, gerontology, nursing and social work.

Part I. New archives, new epistemologies -- 1. Out back home: an exploration of LGBT identities and community in rural Nova Scotia, Canada / Kelly Baker -- 2. Horatio Alger's queer frontier / Geoffrey W. Bateman -- 3. Sherwood Anderson's "shadowy figure": rural masculinity in the modernizing Midwest / Andy Oler -- 4. A classroom in the barnyard: reproducing heterosexuality in interwar American 4-H / Gabriel N. Rosenberg -- Part II. The rural turn: considering cartographies of race and class -- 5. The waiting arms of Gold Street: Manuel Munoz's 'Faith healer of Olive Avenue' and the problem of the scaffold imaginary / Mary Pat Brady -- 6. Snorting the powder of life: transgender migration in the land of 'Oz' / Lucas Crawford -- 7. Outside forces: black southern sexuality / LaToya E. Eaves -- Part III. Back and forth: rural queer life in circulation and transition -- 8. "We are here for you": the it gets better project, queering rural space, and cultivating queer media literacy / Mark Hain -- 9. Queer interstates: cultural geography and social contact in 'Kansas City Trucking Co.' and 'El Paso Wrecking Corp.' / Ryan Powell -- 10. Epistemology of the bunkhouse: lusty lumberjacks and the sexual pedagogy of the woods / Peter Hobbs -- 11. Rethinking the closet: queer life in rural geographies / Katherine Schweighofer -- 12. In plain(s) sight: rural LGBTQ women and the politics of visibility / Carly Thomsen -- Part IV. Bodies of evidence: methodologies and their discontents -- 13. (Dis)locating queer citizenship: imaging rurality in Matthew Shepard's memory / E. Cram -- 14. Queering the American frontier: finding queerness and sexual difference in late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Colorado / Robin Henry -- 15. Digital oral history and the limits of gay sex / John Howard -- 16. Queer rurality and the materiality of time / Stina Soderling.

The most sensible reconciliation of the tension between religious liberty and public accommodations law, in the recent cases involving merchants with religious objections to same-sex marriage, would permit business owners to present their views to the world, but forbid them either to threaten to discriminate or to treat any individual customer worse than others. Even if such businesses have no statutory right to refuse to facilitate ceremonies they regard as immoral, they are unlikely to be asked to participate in those ceremonies. This solution may, however, be forbidden by the law of hostile environment harassment. That raises a severe free speech problem, but the Supreme Court has left the pertinent doctrine in a state of confusion. I offer a better account of free speech law, one that depends on some neglected free speech values—the protection of religious disagreement, the promotion of mutual transparency among persons, and the positive valuation of ethical confrontation. I conclude that, under familiar rules of constitutional avoidance, state antidiscrimination laws should be construed to allow this kind of speech.

"Do the United States and France, both post-industrial democracies, differ in their views and laws concerning discrimination? Marie Mercat-Bruns, a Franco-American scholar, examines the differences in how the two countries approach discrimination. Bringing together prominent legal scholars--including Robert Post, Linda Krieger, Martha Minow, Reva Siegel, Susan Sturm, Richard Ford, and others--Mercat-Bruns demonstrates how the two nations have adopted divergent strategies. The United States continues, with mixed success at "colorblind" policies, to deal with issues of diversity in university enrollment, class action sex-discrimination lawsuits, and rampant police violence against African American men and women. In France, the country has banned the full-face veil while making efforts to present itself as a secular republic. Young men and women whose parents and grandparents came from sub-Sahara and North Africa are stuck coping with a society that fails to take into account the barriers to employment and education they face. Discrimination at Work provides an incisive comparative analysis of how the nature of discrimination in both countries has changed, now often hidden, or steeped in deep unconscious bias. While it is rare for employers in both countries to openly discriminate, deep systemic discrimination exists, rooted in structural and environmental causes and the ways each state has dealt with difference in general. Invigorating and incisive, the book examines hot-button issues of sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and equality for LGBT individuals, delivering comparisons meant to further social equality and fundamental human rights across borders"--Provided by publisher.

"Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization"Mass media convey deep divisions among citizens despite scant evidence for such ideological polarization. Do ordinary citizens perceive themselves to be more extreme and divided than they actually are? If so, what are the ramifications of such misperception? A representative sample from California provides evidence that voters from both sides of the state's political divide perceive both their liberal and conservative peers' positions as more extreme than they actually are, implying inaccurate beliefs about polarization. A second study again demonstrates this finding with an online sample and presents evidence that misperception of mass-level extremity can affect individuals' own policy opinions. Experimental participants randomly assigned to learn the actual average policy-related predispositions of liberal and conservative Americans later report opinions that are 8-13% more moderate, on average. Thus, citizens appear to consider peers' positions within public debate when forming their own opinions and adopt slightly more extreme positions as a consequence."The Parties in Our Heads: Misperceptions About Party Composition and Their Consequences" (co-authored with Gaurav Sood)We document a consequential and heretofore unnoted perceptual phenomenon in American politics and public opinion: people considerably overestimate the share of party-stereotypical groups in the mass-level parties. For instance, people think that 32% of Democratic sup- porters are LGBT (6% in reality) and 38% of Republican supporters earn over $250,000 per year (2%). We demonstrate that these perceptions are genuine and party-specific, not artifacts of expressive responding, innumeracy, or ignorance of base rates. These misperceptions are relatively universal across partisanship and positively associated with political interest. With experimental and observational evidence, we document consequences of this perceptual bias: misperceptions are associated with partisan affect and attitudinal polarization, and when provided information about the actual share of various party-stereotypical groups in the out-party, partisans see supporters of the out-party as less extreme and feel less socially distant from them. Thus, people's skewed mental images of the parties appear to fuel intense partisanship."Irresponsible Partisanship and Democratic Accountability: How Citizens Understand Party Conflict"American citizens resent contemporary party conflict largely for its "process consequences." These include incivility, gridlock, and government dysfunction. This is puzzling because political science generally concludes that such "irresponsible partisanship" is strategic. That is, Democratic and Republican politicians manipulate and intensify conflict as an electoral and messaging strategy. I evaluate potential resolutions for this puzzle, namely that citizens perceive party conflict as affectively-driven rather than strategic—and, importantly, that their tendency to see their own party as motivated by in-group love and the out-party by out- group hate impedes their ability to hold elites accountable for its process consequences. With data from the 2015 IGS-California Poll, I find citizens see both parties as significantly more motivated by strategy than emotion, especially when conflict is presented in less abstract, more policy-related terms. However, I also show that citizens generally oppose or lack strong attitudes toward reforms that could potentially curb process consequences. This suggests that blindness to institutional externalities, rather than to elite strategy, sustains irresponsible partisanship.

In the global society, different cities accommodate the same agendas of urban actions and movements often travel. In the post-Soviet urban life, for example, one could notice the formation of some new traditions reflecting human rights movement, as the LGBT parades became important events in Vilnius over the past six years. Yet the dominant theoretical frameworks aimed at social movements and urban protest tradition do not always help to understand the new public indignation caused by the austerity policies triggered by global financial crisis. This paper, therefore, looks at the specific characteristics of the Lithuanian post-austerity situation and analyses the dynamics of local political fears. The article analyses how urban events get interpreted in the Lithuanian media by politicians, experts, media representatives, activists, and public intellectuals. The rhetoric of a riot threat here is associated not so much with the intentions of protest organisers but with the external political tensions. Famous politicians, journalists and other public speakers hold some beliefs about the events in the city, which are shaped by the administrative laws as well as the general geopolitical orientation of the country (influenced by the new Russian aggression). A violent event in Vilnius (riots near the Lithuanian Parliament in 2009 January 16) is chosen as a symbolic point of departure for the discussion about the interpretation of the subsequent events that became seen in the local media with rising suspicion, suggesting the possible "foreign meddling". In the beginning, the article shows the new understanding of some public intellectuals that the Lithuanian domestic politics is becoming "authoritarian again" (ostensibly similar to the Soviet state). The greater activity of civil society and Western integration also caused some troubles for the authorities (approximately since 2010), since it became harder to coordinate various new types of public events in Vilnius (such as numerous marches, commemorating gatherings and protests). Later, by singling out some public speculations in the media about the possible riot threat, the article discusses legal and symbolic boundaries of some events. The conclusion is made that in contemporary Lithuanian media, social demands are interpreted in a rather contrasting way. Some politicians, but also famous journalists etc., see those demands and ensuing protests as a threat to a small country's social and political integrity or even national security. While other public speakers see the same demands and legitimate public protests as a desirable (although, unfortunately, wavering away) feature of a "normal" democratic society. ; Straipsnyje analizuojami urbanistinių akcijų interpretavimo būdai. Iš­puolių grėsmės retorika siejama ne tiek su organizatorių intencijomis, kiek su išorinėmis politinėmis įtampomis. Parodoma, jog emocijomis nuspalvintas garsių politikų, žurnalistų etc. nuostatas tam tikrų renginių atžvilgiu lemia ne vien administracinės taisyklės, bet ir bendra geopolitinė šalies orienta­cija, taip pat tarptautiniai neramumai, besisiejantys su vietinių politikų bai­mėmis. Kaip išeities tašką pasirenkant mikroatvejo perspektyvą (įsimintinas 2009 m. sausio 16 d. riaušes prie Lietuvos Respublikos Seimo), čia aptariami kai kurie legalumo ribų kvestionavimo atvejai Lietuvos žiniasklaidos erdvė­je, pabrėžiami skirtingi politikų, viešųjų intelektualų, pareigūnų, ekspertų, žurnalistų, aktyvistų ir kitų viešosios erdvės dalyvių pasisakymai pagrindi­niuose žinių portaluose. Pradžioje atskleidžiama, kaip nuostatas susibūri­mų (ir administracinių bei politinių reikalavimų) atžvilgiu keičia pirmuoju XXI a. dešimtmečiu ryškėjęs Lietuvos politinės situacijos nusakymas kaip (vėl) autoritarinės; parodoma, kad naujas konfliktines situacijas lėmė nau­jo tipo akcijų ir jų teisėtumo suderinamumo klausimas. Vėliau minimos kai kurios viešųjų autoritetų reakcijos į socialinius reikalavimus keliančius pro­testus Vilniuje. Daroma išvada, jog šiandienos žiniasklaidoje tokie reikalavi­mai interpretuojami gana kontrastingai – viena vertus, kaip grėsmė nedidelės šalies ir jos visuomenės integralumui ar net saugumui, kita vertus – kaip geistinas (deja, realybėje vis nutolstantis) normalios demokratinės visuome­nės atributas.