LGBTQ Life in America: Examining the Facts (Contemporary Debates) - Softcover

Michelson, Melissa R.

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798216201694

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2025

Synopsis

"Given the current sociopolitical climate, this reference provides much-needed information on the challenges the LGBTQ community faces today." – Choice This indispensable book debunks common myths and misconceptions about the LGBTQ community while providing accurate information about LGBTQ people, their successes and shared history, and the current challenges they face in American society. This book provides readers with a clear and unbiased understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ in the United States in the 2020s. Beginning with the origins of LGBTQ identity and history, the book addresses the current status of the LGBTQ community; gender expectations and performance in American culture; transgender and non-binary identity; behaviors and outcomes associated with LGBTQ people; and, finally, diversity within the community. Utilizing authoritative sources and lay-friendly definitions and explanations, this work punctures myths, misconceptions, and incorrect assumptions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expectations and norms. In addition, it provides an illuminating record of the history of discrimination and mistreatment to which LGBTQ people have historically been subjected in America. At a time when information itself is increasingly fraught in American political discourse, this book provides facts and context for the most important questions facing LGBTQ Americans, past, present, and future.

About this title

About the Authors

Melissa R. Michelson,(PhD Yale University, 1994) is Dean of Arts & Sciences at Menlo College. She is past president of the American Political Science Association (APSA) Latino Caucus and of the APSA LGBT Caucus. She is the award-winning co-author of eight books, including Mobilizing Inclusion: Transforming the Electorate through Get-Out-the-Vote Campaigns; Party at the Ballot Box: Mobilizing Black Women Voters, and a popular textbook on California Politics. She lives in California with her husband, with whom she has four sons.

Brian F. Harrison (Ph.D. Northwestern University) is the founder and President of Voters for Equality, an organization promoting political engagement among LGBTQ people in the United States. An award-winning teacher and author, Brian’s interests are in American politics, political communication and political behavior, political psychology, public opinion, and LGBTQ rights. His prior affiliations include Carleton College, Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota, Yale, and Wesleyan Universities. He is the author of A Change is Gonna Come: How to Have Effective Political Conversations in a Divided America (Oxford University Press, 2020) and co-author of Transforming Prejudice: Identity, Fear, and Transgender Rights (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Listen, We Need to Talk: How to Change Attitudes about LGBT Rights (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798216201694
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 238