In August of 2009, the American Psychological Association adopted the report of its Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation and urged mental health professionals to avoid telling their patients that sexual orientation can be changed (APA 2009a). The report examined the efficacy of “conversion therapies”—also called “reparative therapies”—wherein the patient and therapist attempt to change the sexual orientation of the patient from gay or lesbian to heterosexual. The report is over 160 pages and examines over 80 peer-reviewed, published studies spanning five decades of research. Despite the heft of the report, the findings are briefly and well summarized by the chair of the task force, Judith M. Glassgold, Psy.D.: “Contrary to the claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation” (APA 2009b). Of course, this conclusion is a given among all but minor fringe elements in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) community or among this community's friends and affiliates. While sexuality collectively seems to present itself along a scale, it seems for individuals to become fixed at some point along that scale. The APA report provides a useful framework for considering the role of sexuality in political science and raises several important questions for political science as both an endeavor and a discipline.

The APA report gives scholarly support to the notion that sexual orientation is an innate characteristic. If sexual identity is a choice, then it can be changed. If it cannot be changed, it cannot be chosen. The world of psychology is apparently more progressive in this area than the world of political science. Whether sexuality is a choice and whether anything other than heterosexuality is an acceptable choice continue to be political topics that are taken seriously by much of the country, if not entirely seriously by the discipline of political science. The self-described social conservatives of the political world may genuinely believe that sexual identity is chosen. The argument may also simply represent an embrace of the only avenue available to accomplish the desired policy outcome of depriving the LGBT community of recognition or rights. Whatever the motivation of the advocates of second-class citizenship for LGBT people in the political sphere may be, political science should frame its inquiries with a consideration of sexual identity as an innate characteristic. The framing of sexuality as an innate characteristic is all the more critical in light of the awkward manner in which sexuality is addressed in the scholarly political science literature. Specifically, despite an absence of empirical support for a bimodal model, political science treats sexuality as if there are only two categories: straight and not-straight. That is, in practice, discussion of the LGBT community in political science research categorizes people as either “heterosexual” or “not heterosexual.” The “LGBT” designation includes two categories—bisexuals and transgendered people—who are rarely the subject of political discourse or scholarly research in political science. Bisexuality as a variable in political science is either entirely absent from the dialogue or completely collapsed into the “gay and lesbian” grouping. Likewise, in political science scholarship, transgendered individuals all too often exist only as an add-in to the gay and lesbian world. Those who identify as inter-sex are completely invisible. Political science frames the world as straight or gay, heterosexual or not, a 1 or a 0, and the nuance of sexuality is essentially lost in the analysis of the predominantly hetero-normative lens through which research is projected to the world. Such simplification may sometimes arise out of analytic necessity, convenience, oversight, or even normative disapproval. Regardless of the intent, the fact is that scholarly work in political science presents a heterosexual world that occasionally peeks around the corner at the perceived monolith of “the others.” In most of the political science literature, anyone who is not heterosexual is simply “gay.”

This concept of a bimodal analysis of sexuality leads to an initial observation about the study on conversion therapy: the study is only a “one-tailed” analysis. That is, “conversion therapy,” now discredited by the APA report, only seeks to turn people from gay to straight. Apparently, no concerted effort has been undertaken by mental health professionals to convert people who are afraid they might be heterosexual to a same-sex attraction framework. In this conversion therapy world, bisexuals and the transgendered are simply identified as “gay.” This approach is a useful analogue for the treatment of LGBT issues by the field of political science. Political science as a discipline often operates under an assumption of heterosexuality that frames any consideration of LGBT issues as either aberrant or trivial. Thus, the LGBT community is marginalized individually and collectively. Individually, all members of the LGBT community are categorized as “not-straight,” while scholarly work on LGBT issues often has been, until very recently, categorized as “not-serious.”

Still, even crude tools that lack the ability to measure the nuance of the actual world can provide insight and prove to be useful in understanding a more complex reality. Accordingly, at least in some ways, the monolithic grouping of everyone in the LGBT community as “not-straight” may not be as objectionable as it appears at first blush. Heterosexuals are an overwhelming majority of the population. Heterosexuals make and implement policy. The heterosexual electorate chooses elected officials. In most ways, heterosexuals define the political world with which the LGBT community must engage. Furthermore, other than not being “straight,” members of the LGBT community do not have a unifying dimension that cuts across other cleavages. That is, because gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people are all normally distributed throughout the population, the commonality of the community is bounded by and inextricably linked through the “other” designation conferred by the straight world. For the LGBT community, economic circumstances, race, gender, religiosity, ethnic identity, regional affiliation, and literally every other dimension of existence mirrors the straight world. In short, it may be that political science can make meaningful contributions to our understanding of sexuality in the political world even in the absence of nuance about sexual identity. Recent scholarship supports this possibility. Moreover, there can no longer be any doubt about whether the study of LGBT issues constitutes legitimate political science.

Multiple streams of scholarship have used gay and lesbian issues to illustrate or expand broader theoretical points. Lax and Phillips (Reference Lax and Phillips2009a) consider competing methodologies for estimating state-level public opinion. They compare disaggregation by state of national surveys to a simulated, multilevel model of individual opinion and post-stratification by population share. Their article sheds light on the techniques that should be used to estimate state-level public opinion. That gay rights issues are the focus of analysis is irrelevant to the larger finding, but the work itself is squarely LGBT-oriented. Lax and Phillips (Reference Lax and Phillips2009b) also consider the connection between public opinion and policy responsiveness. The analysis reveals that, at least with respect to gay rights, there is a troubling dimension of politics for democratic theory. The preferences of a minority are overrepresented and imposed over the preferences of the majority.

The concept of gay and lesbian Americans as a voting bloc has been used as a vehicle to examine the consequences and implications of the absence of party competition in a two-party system (Smith Reference Smith2007). Smith argues that the Republican Party actively demonizes the group, and that as a result, gays and lesbians vote by large margins for Democrats. Therefore, the Democratic Party consistently fails to deliver pro-gay policies because the party suffers no consequences for a failure to act. That is, gays and lesbians suffer from electoral capture.

Keck (Reference Keck2009) takes on the popular meme that courtroom victories by LGBT rights advocates have provoked a political backlash that harms the cause. Keck undermines the scholarly story that rights litigation is ineffective at best and often counter-productive through a close inspection of the sequence of both victories and defeats. In short, he argues the losses are given more attention than the substantial gains. In the end, Keck's piece is an optimistic assessment of the capacity to change the system through the available tools, including the courts. The rise of state constitutional ballot initiatives about same-sex marriage, along with other gay-oriented legislation and policy implementation and preferences, has spawned a great deal of research about gay issues and turn-out, voting, public opinion, and other questions regarding the impact of the initiatives (Campbell and Monson Reference Campbell and Monson2008; Lewis and Gossett Reference Lewis and Gossett2008; Egan and Sherrill Reference Egan and Sherrill2005; Hillygus and Shields Reference Hillygus and Shields2005; Haider-Markel, Joslyn, and Kniss Reference Haider-Markel, Joslyn and Kniss2000). These articles about political phenomena happen to engage issues of sexuality. The authors do not introduce sexuality into the politics they consider, but rather, sexuality is an extant and unavoidable dimension of the various topics.

Beyond the compelling content of these articles, one notable dimension of this research is the range of outlets in which the work appears. These referenced works are in no way exhaustive, but rather illustrate the variety of journals that welcome gay-themed research. That explicitly gay-themed research now regularly appears in elite general topic journals, as well as a variety of very strong subfield journals, suggests that the discipline as a whole has embraced the topic as a normal dimension of political science.

Of course, gay-themed political science is not limited to journal articles. The discipline also has a long, vibrant, and robust catalogue of books about politics and gay issues. Cynthia Burack's Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Antigay Rhetoric and the Christian Right (Reference Burack2008) is a groundbreaking exploration of the dynamics of the modern culture wars. Burack sheds light on the current discourse over gay rights and religiosity and the oppression of out-groups. Daniel R. Pinello's America's Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage (Reference Pinello2006) artfully chronicles the legal, social, and political path that same-sex marriage has followed after the 2003 Goodridge case. In A Theory of Liberty (Reference Hirsch1992), Harry Hirsch's analysis of Bowers vs. Hardwick serves as a blueprint for the Supreme Court's later opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. Ellen Anderson's Out of the Closet and into the Courts: Legal Opportunity Structure and Gay Rights Litigation (Reference Anderson2005) presents a comprehensive consideration of gay rights litigation strategy and outlines a roadmap for future rights-based litigation in general. Gary Mucciaroni's Same Sex, Different Politics: Success and Failure in the Struggles over Gay Rights (Reference Mucciaroni2008) explores the different aspects of institutional design that lead to relative success or failure of contestation over gay rights. Robert Bailey's Gay Politics, Urban Politics (Reference Bailey1999) led the LGBT Caucus of the APSA to name its paper prize after him.

Like the journal articles mentioned above, these few books are merely representative of the rich and diverse scholarly treatments of gay rights issues that exist today, and the fact that these books appear at top university and trade presses is indicative of the extent to which LGBT issues are part and parcel of modern political science. The discipline seems to recognize what perhaps eludes some individuals: LGBT topics now engage and are engaged by mainstream political science in virtually every type of publishing outlet.

This modest demonstration of the saliency and presence of LGBT political science throughout the discipline leads me to my next observation. LGBT political science is post-Perestroikan. By this, I mean that the methodological and approach-oriented cleavages that bedeviled the discipline for some time—and continue as hot debates in some quarters—have been bridged by LGBT political science and political scientists concerned with LGBT issues. The Perestroika movement's demand for openness in content and form and the rational choice/behaviorist movement's demand for specific scientific approaches and methods are both met in abundance by LGBT research. The ubiquitous nature of sexuality in politics, combined with the recognition that LGBT issues are among the most contested of rights-based movements, dictates that no good work will be excluded from the discipline simply because of its methodology or subject matter. Scholars who usually use numbers only for pagination are finding much to enjoy in the emerging econometric and survey work in the field. Scholars who use multivariate regressions to create their grocery lists are beginning to ground their work in the rich expanse of LGBT normative, theoretical, and qualitative work. LGBT-oriented work is also helping to lead the current wave of multi-method research—another way in which LGBT political science stands at the cutting edge of the discipline.

A quick glance at the APSA program for the 2009 meeting reveals over 60 papers and posters explicitly engaging LGBT issues. The methodologies used in this work are as diverse as the scholars who use them and include complex econometrics, network analysis, content analysis, opinion polling, historical institutionalism, feminist theory, and queer theory. Until recently, LGBT-oriented work also signaled—whether intentional or not, whether correct or not—that the scholar was a member of the LGBT community. Now, LGBT topics are researched by heterosexual scholars without hesitation. Straight scholars can write about LGBT issues without the concern that they will not be taken seriously, or that their work will be discounted because of subject matter. In almost every quarter, the opportunity to expand research to encompass LGBT topics has been met with enthusiasm and integrated into the normal processes of social science research.

Still, while LGBT political science may now be more respected, secure, and mainstreamed in the discipline, the status of LGBT political scientists is not so clear. The debate over locating the APSA annual meeting in New Orleans in 2012 revealed the slight regard that some of our heterosexual colleagues have for members of the LGBT community. Briefly, in 2003, the APSA selected New Orleans as the site of its 2012 annual meeting. Then, in the 2004 election, the voters of Louisiana overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the state constitution that reads as follows:

This amendment passed with 78% of the statewide vote and a strong 54% of the vote in the New Orleans parish. Some members of the APSA began to voice concerns to the leadership that the conference would be held in New Orleans despite the state's unambiguous abridgement of the civil rights of LGBT members by the passage of an amendment that not only bans same-sex marriage but any form of partnership recognition. Then, in 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Region. The siting issue suddenly became complicated. Although New Orleans was not originally chosen with the goal of helping the devastated city (the decision was, after all, made two years before the hurricane), the political questions that the anemic government response to Katrina brought to the forefront of discourse charged the relocation debate with new dimensions and nuance. Vigorous debate ensued over the propriety of holding the conference under the shadow of oppression that this amendment represents for LGBT members. Roundtables, committees, petitions, letters, blogs, and special sections of the APSA website were set up, appointed, disseminated, and discussed.

In the end, the status quo prevailed: the meeting was not moved. Those opposed to meeting in New Orleans have given up trying to move the location and are now working on damage control strategies and contingency plans for those members boycotting the meeting. These response efforts range from planning symbolic protests during the conference in New Orleans to organizing a shadow conference—perhaps a virtual one—to showcase what was lost by going to New Orleans. Some younger scholars are even discussing what they call the “exodus”—discontinuing their APSA memberships or affiliation in 2012. So although the APSA leadership has closed the question of New Orleans, at least some of the membership continues to be concerned. The point here is not to re-argue the siting issue. Rather, the debate is important because it sheds light on the attitudes of some members of the APSA toward their LGBT colleagues. Anyone involved in the discussions witnessed an abundance of good-faith debate between reasonable people who simply disagreed about a difficult topic. Indeed, there seemed to be as many different opinions and approaches among the LGBT community as among the straight community. However, the flashes of homophobia, sneering or dismissive disregard for the LGBT community, and even, on occasion, bold hostility frequently dominated the debates. Regardless of where one stands on the siting issue, the debate revealed many reasons to be concerned about the status of LGBT political scientists in the profession, even while revealing the many LGBT allies among the straight contingent of the APSA.

The tone and nuance of the private debates were perhaps the most shocking. One LGBT member of the APSA who served on a special committee about the siting issue related to me that a straight member suggested that the LGBT member should not serve on the committee because of his or her “stake in the outcome.” That is, the argument was that an LGBT member of the APSA should not be involved in resolving a controversial issue involving LGBT members. Another member of the APSA who is often assumed to be “straight” relayed that he was astonished and disappointed by the frequent gay slurs that were used in discussions of the controversy with him, uttered under an assumption of shared heterosexuality. One woman expressed her horror that she felt she was being taken for a racist because she opposed going to New Orleans. It seems clear that LGBT political science has been broadly accepted while more work lies ahead for LGBT political scientists.

History suggests that people who advocate second-class citizenship for members of the LGBT community will soon be almost universally compared to those who advocated second-class citizenship for women, African Americans, or other previously excluded groups that are now invited into full, formal citizenship. Advocacy of inclusion may initially beget marginalization for the advocate. Society has a long way to go, of course, before equality is realized or even accepted as a dimension of the desiderata of government. Would Bill Clinton have survived the impeachment effort if his indiscretions were with Mike Lewinsky instead of Monica? Would Barack Obama have been the candidate or the victor if he was not heterosexual? Would David Vitter still be a senator from Louisiana if he had visited male prostitutes instead of female prostitutes when he was a congressman? For now, we might say that political science is gay, straight, and questioning. Sexuality is ubiquitous in politics, inherent in political science, and is even a characteristic of political scientists. Political science as a discipline has already achieved a comfort level with sexuality; neither political scientists nor the political world have yet reached this point.

Finally, to co-opt a phrase, a storm is rising. Ritch Savin-Williams, professor and chair of the human development department at Cornell University, presented some of his ongoing research at the APA in Toronto. Among other findings, he identified a troubling problem for researchers: who is gay and who is not is no longer clearly defined among young people (Savin-Williams Reference Savin-Williams2005). Teens today might categorize themselves as “mostly heterosexual” or perhaps “hetero-flexible” (Jayson Reference Jayson2009). It will certainly be a predicament if political science finally comes completely out of the closet only to find that the people have redefined sexuality more broadly. It may be that by the time political science gets sexuality right, at a societal level, we will no longer be overly concerned about discrete designations of sexuality.