Suchergebnisse

Outlines history of human rights abuses suffered by homosexuals, and examines impact of international gay and lesbian activism on international institutions, international law, and nongovernmental organizations.

This article examines a little studied aspect of southern politics: the emergence of gay rights activists as players in mainstream southern politics. The article examines state-by-state electoral successes of openly-gay candidates throughout the South as well as the impact of gays rights activists on public policy (at both the local & state level), hate crimes legislation, employment rights, higher education, & private business. The movement of homosexuals from the shadows of society to open participation in public life has been a major national trend during the past three decades, & the South has not been in the forefront of this development. However, significant evidence suggests that, as Dixie has accommodated to other social changes, it is adapting to gay liberation -- albeit more slowly than the rest of the nation. 4 Appendixes, 65 References. Adapted from the source document.

Examines the impact of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) community activism on Canadian AIDS policy, drawing on various print materials, but more substantially on interviews (N not specified) with activists & policymakers (mostly conducted 1990/1991) in Montreal (Quebec), Toronto (Ontario), Vancouver (British Columbia), & Ottawa (Ontario). It is argued that health policy is normally resistant to influence from groups outside of medically expert circles, & that the marginalization of the gay population most affected by AIDS created impediments to shifting public health authorities from their traditional top-down approach to the management of disease. The circumstances of this epidemic, though, & the characteristics of the gay male population most at risk, created unusual openings through which activists could influence public policy at all three levels of government. There are indications that officials are seeking to regain some of the initiative & some of the capacity to define the issues lost 1985-1990, but AIDS activism has dislodged state policy from a number of its traditional moorings. AA

Social movements frequently seek to shape knowledge-producing institutions, including those found within the sciences. This essay takes up and refines the concept of intellectual opportunity structure to describe factors that enable or constrain movement efficacy in these efforts. Based on interviews with key claimants, participant observation at conferences, and content analysis of media, scientific, and activist literature, this article explains how the ex-gay movement in the United States mobilized knowledge and protest to shape mainstream science. Since 1973, gay-affirmative policies in mainstream mental health institutions have increasingly blocked construction of scientific facts based on the pathologization of homosexuality. Yet, the ex-gay movement has more recently found limited success blending theological premises and science-based methodologies. Shifts in intellectual opportunities, including formal acknowledgement of religious diversity by psychologists, have led the American Psychological Association (APA) to incorporate some ex-gay movement ideas even as the APA maintains that sexual orientation, newly defined, cannot be therapeutically altered. Adapted from the source document.