Sexual Identities and Protesting Among College Students

Background

Protests and other social movement tactics are critical to advancing equity and inclusion for marginalized groups. Sexual minorities are more likely to support pro-LGBT policy initiatives (Swank et al., 2013); however, are they more likely to participate in political protests?  Theory and research suggests sexuality does matter, but little is known about its role among young people.

This study extends previous protest studies by using “political distinctiveness” theories to examine protesting tendencies of LGB college students (Egan, 2012).  “Political distinctiveness” theories suggest that greater LGB liberalism could be due to issues of essentialism (there is something intrinsically unique for people of different sexualities), selection (LGB identity and related characteristic also increases activism), embeddedness (involvement in the LGB community leads to greater activism), and conversion (the process of disclosing an LGB identity causes major changes in political outlooks and actions).

In this study, we ask: are LGB students more likely to engage in protest than heterosexuals; and, guided by political distinctiveness theory, do specific selection, embeddedness, and conversion variables account for this difference?

Methods

Secondary analysis was conducted of survey data from students attending a large Midwestern Research I university (heterosexual n=1785, sexual minority n=390). Students reported participation in protest/community rally in the past year (no/yes). Sexual minority status represents the measurement for essentialism. Selection factors included LGBT course content, educational attainment, and marital status.  LGB friendship and student group membership assessed embeddedness. Conversion variables included personal and ambient heterosexist discrimination, sexual prejudice attitudes, and political ideology.

Following bivariate analysis, we conducted logistic regressions to assess the relationship between sexuality and protesting when controlling separately for the selection, embeddedness, and conversion factors. Interaction variables were added to test whether the sexual identity-protesting link is moderated by any of the selection, embeddedness and conversion factors.

Results

Significantly more LGB students (32.1%) attended a protest/community rally compared to heterosexuals (11.8%, p<.001). When controlling for sexuality and independent variable interactions, the sexuality gap in protesting remained significant for the embeddedness variables.  However, significant direct links of sexualities to protesting disappeared after attending to selection and conversion factors.  Thus, we conclude that LGB students protest more than heterosexuals partially because they take more classes on heterosexism (selection factor), experience more discrimination and have more liberal political identities than heterosexuals (conversion factors). No significant interactions emerged.

Implications

Our findings suggest that sexual identity is relevant to college students’ participation in protests. Though sexual identity was significant when controlling for selection, embeddenness, and conversation factors, it did not moderate the relationship between these factors and protest participation. Providing students with LGBT course content and opportunities to participate in social and political groups also proved to influence protesting behaviors. Implications for research and social movement theory and practice will be highlighted.