Herek (1990) distinguished between cultural and psychological heterosexism. Cultural heterosexism is manifested in systemic discrimination in political, economic, educational, legal, medical, social services, religious and cultural institutions (e.g., legal prohibitions against same-sex marriage and the insurance industry’s exclusion of sexual reassignment services from coverage),and cultural norms, standards, and values that devalue, stigmatize, or render invisible people of diverse sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions (e.g., the invisibility of same-sex couples in mainstream cultural images of long-term relationships). Psychological heterosexism, comprising stereotypes and negative attitudes, is the individual expression of cultural heterosexism (e.g., prejudices, fears, stereotypes, hostility, disgust, name-calling, and acts of violence) (Herek, 1990).

PSYCHOLOGICAL HETEROSEXISM

Despite growing support for an end to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation (Herek, 2002; Yang, 1997), the majority of Americans still hold negative attitudes toward homosexual behavior (Herek & Capitanio, 1996; Yang, 1997) and gay and lesbian individuals (Herek, 1994). People endorsing heterosexist attitudes are more likely than people with positive attitudes to support traditional gender roles, perceive similar attitudes among their peers, report less personal contact with gay men and lesbians, hold strong religious beliefs, be older and less well educated, and live in geographic locales where negative attitudes predominate (Herek, 1995). Research suggests that attitudes toward gay men are more negative than attitudes toward lesbians, particularly among heteroasexual men (Herek & Capitanio, 1996). Little is known about people’s attitudes toward bisexual (Fox, 2000) or transgender people. Many heterosexual adults persist in equating homosexuality or bisexuality with AIDS, an association that is positively related to higher levels of sexual prejudice (Herek & Capitanio, 1999). However, existing research demonstrates that personal contact with gay men or lesbians is the most effective way to reduce heterosexist attitudes and behaviors (Herek & Glunt, 1993).

Psychological heterosexism exercised at the voting booth can have far-reaching consequences on the lives of gay men and lesbians. Public initiatives and referendums in the 1990s overturned Maine’s nondiscrimination legislation (Donovan, OPPRESSION, PREJUDICE, AND DISCRIMINATION 55 Wenzel, & Bowler, 2000) and secured a constitutional amendment allowing the Hawaii legislature to restrict marriage to heterosexual couples (Lewis & Edelson, 2000). Colorado’s Amendment 2 passed in 1992, but it was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court. Its purpose was to amend the state constitution to ban any governmental agency from prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. This measure would have eliminated all local nondiscrimination ordinances and barred future civil rights protections for gay, lesbian, and bisexual people (Donovan et al., 2000).

CULTURAL HETEROSEXISM

Cultural heterosexism (Herek, 1995) permeates every sector of society, limiting the life chances of people inclined toward same-sex love or gender-variant expression. Because of the structural nature of oppression, members of dominant social groups benefit from the oppression of others, regardless of their own personal intentions or belief systems. In her classic essay on white privilege, McIntosh (1990) delineated the multiple ways in which white people benefit and gain real advantages from racism, what she called “the invisible package of unearned assets” (p. 31). Heterosexual privilege bestows unearned rewards and opportunities upon heterosexual people.

Same-sex couples, for example, are excluded from certain provisions under the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA). The FMLA requires businesses with more than fifty employees to provide up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave to certain eligible workers for the birth of a child or the placement of a child through adoption or foster care; to care for dependents, spouses, or aged parents with a serious health condition; or for their own health condition (Trzcinski, 1994). People in same-sex relationships are not eligible for leave to care for their partner, or for their partner’s child or aged parent.

The legal prohibition on same-sex marriage denies same-sex couples access to benefits, rights, privileges, and obligations granted on the basis of marital status in more than one thousand federal laws (General Accounting Office, 1997). Benefits and protections granted to married couples but denied to same-sex couples involve medical decision making and hospital visitation, security for children, employee benefits for families, income and estate tax benefits, Social Security and disability benefits, inheritance, and immigration (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders [GLAD], 2001).

MAJOR EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL HETEROSEXISM Cultural heterosexism is most evident in the denial of equal protection under the law, sodomy statutes, family law and benefits, and child custody, adoption, and foster parenting. Although detailed discussions of these issues are found elsewhere in this book, they warrant mention in this chapter on oppression.

Denial of Equal Protection Under the Law Although tremendous achievements in legal protections for GLBT people distinguish the post-Stonewall era from the pre-Stonewall years, GLBT people are excluded from basic civil rights protections embodied in most federal and state laws. Not yet considered a “suspect class” warranting heightened scrutiny for equal protection claims under the U.S. Constitution, GLBT people are excluded from federal civil rights legislation (Donovan et al., 2000) and thus lack recourse when they suffer discrimination because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Further, with no federal protection, civil rights protections granted at the state and local levels can be overturned through citizen initiatives and referendums (Donovan et al., 2000).

Sodomy Statutes Sodomy laws originally proscribed nonprocreative sex and applied to sexual acts between opposite-sex and same-sex partners (D’Emilio & Freedman, 1988). During the 1900s, sodomy as a social construct became increasingly associated with same-sex sexual liaisons (Bernstein, 2001), to the point that eight states decriminalized sodomy between opposite-sex partners while continuing to criminalize same-sex sexual acts (Bernstein, 2001). The U.S. Supreme Court legitimated sodomy laws in 1986 when it upheld a state’s right to prosecute adults for engaging in consensual same-sex sexual acts in the privacy of their homes (Bowers v. Hardwick, 1986). Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court revisited and overturned that ruling on June 26, 2003, in the landmark Lawrence and Garner v. Texas decision, striking down the sodomy statutes in the thirteen states that still retained them. Although rarely enforced, sodomy laws provided gay, lesbian, and bisexual people with a constant reminder of their marginalized status, encapsulated by Mohr’s (1987) statement. that “unenforced sodomy laws are the chief systematic way that society as a whole tells gays they are scum” (p. 13). Sodomy statutes were frequently invoked to deny child custody and visitation rights to gay and lesbian parents, to prohibit gay-lesbian adoptions (Polikoff, 2000), and to justify employment discrimination (Vaid, 1995). Oklahoma used the state’s sodomy law as recently as 1998 in an attempt to ban gay men and lesbians from teaching in the public schools (Haider-Markel, 2000).

Family Law and Benefits Perhaps nowhere are heterosexist attitudes more intransigent, and institutionalized oppression of GLBT people more evident, than in cultural definitions of family and matters related to family benefits and family law. Federal public policy marginalizes GLBT family structures by defining a family as two or more people residing together who are related by birth, marriage, or adoption (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). By representing GLBT people as threats to children and traditional family values, as if GLBT people did not belong to families, social conservatives generate public opposition to GLBT visibility, social acceptance, and equal protection. Although most Americans oppose employment discrimination (Herek, 2002) and the military’s exclusionary policy (Yang, 1997), fewer support same-sex marriage (Herek, 2002; Yang, 1997) and gay/lesbian adoption (Yang, 1997). Heterosexual marriage remains the cultural norm denied to same-sex couples, with domestic partnership benefits and Vermont’s civil unions constituting a “separate but equal” system (Bernstein, 2001, p. 436). In the 1990s, the full force of government was harnessed to maintain heterosexual relationships as the only legally sanctioned mode of intimate relationships. When it appeared that Hawaii might legalize same-sex marriage, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996. DOMA denies federal recognition to same-sex marriages and permits states to refuse to recognize legally sanctioned same-sex marriages performed in other states (Polikoff, 2000). By 2001, thirty-four states had passed laws banning same-sex marriages (National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2001).

Recently, significant victories on behalf of same-sex marriage guarantee that this issue will remain the focus of national debate, legislative initiatives, and court battles for years to come. On November 18, 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, declared unconstitutional any ban on same-sex marriage. The following February, the Supreme Judicial Court reaffirmed that only full marriage rights, as opposed to civil unions, would meet the equality guarantees of the state’s constitution. Thus, just after midnight on May 17, 2004, the day the ruling went into effect, the city clerk’s office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, started issuing marriage license applications to same-sex couples while hundreds of people celebrated in the streets (Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, 2004).

Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney made visible the interconnections between racism and heterosexism when he resurrected an archaic state law in an attempt to deny out-of-state same-sex couples the right to marry, using a system of white privilege to promote heterosexual privilege. Senate Bill 234, passed in 1913, barred nonresidents from marrying in Massachusetts if their marriage would be illegal in their home state, a law that many believe was originally aimed at interracial couples (Greenberger, 2004).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom directed city workers to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. A flurry of municipalities and counties across the country followed suit. Between February 12 and March 11, 2004, San Francisco issued more than 4,000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but the California Supreme Court invalidated those marriages on August 12. Multiple lawsuits challenging same-sex marriage bans are making their way through state courts across the country. As in the previous decade, a backlash is afoot. President George W. Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and voters in eleven states added same sex marriage bans to their state constitutions in the November 2004 elections (Belluck, 2004).

Child Custody, Adoption, and Foster Parenting Despite some successes in the courts and abundant research demonstrating that children raised by gay and lesbian parents develop as well psychosocially as the children of heterosexual parents (Patterson, 1995; Stacey & Biblarz, 2001), biases against gay men and lesbians as children’s caretakers persist. Judicial decisions on child custody, visitation, and adoption vary widely among the states, among jurisdictions within states, and from judge to judge (Stein, 1996). Gay men and lesbians are still unlikely to retain custody in many parts of the country. As Polikoff (2000) noted, neither the increased visibility of lesbian and gay families, nor the mental health research on the well-being of children raised by lesbian and gay parents, nor the successes in the areas of adoption and foster parenting have decreased the risks to a lesbian mother or gay father battling a heterosexual former spouse over custody or visitation.

Although adoption policies have become increasingly more inclusive over the past two decades, allowing for a more diverse array of adoptive parents, including gay men and lesbians (Sullivan, 1995), attacks against gay and lesbian adoption and foster parenting escalated during the mid-1990s, with several states waging legislative attempts to ban these practices (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001). For international adoptions, many countries now require written certification from agencies that the prospective adoptive parent is not gay or lesbian (Buell, 2001). When parental roles are not legally sanctioned, as in the case of same-sex couples, the rights of the nonbiological or second adopting parent are unprotected and at the whim of the court (Morton, 1998). Without protective legislation or supportive state higher court rulings, judicial jurisdictions favorable toward second- parent adoptions could easily become unsympathetic as judges are replaced (Dalton, 2001). The failure of the courts to legally recognize same-sex couples as co-parents denies children continuity in their attachments with significant adults and financial benefits available to the children of heterosexual couples (e.g., health insurance, property transfer, and Social Security should the second parent die) (Dalton, 2001).