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Purpose – In this paper, we contribute to the study of conservative, reactive mobilization through a study of the ex-gay movement in the United States.

Design/methodology/approach – Using state-level event history analyses over 25 years, we examine the role of threat, resources, and political opportunity in the formation of the first ex-gay organization in each state.

Findings – Our results demonstrate the importance of threat, particularly perceived challenges to traditional definitions of morality, in the formation of ex-gay groups. We find little support for either resource mobilization or political opportunity.

Research limitations/implications – This study indicates a need for further research on sociocultural threat and the ex-gay movement.

Originality/value – It expands scholarship on countermovement emergence, conservative and reactive countermovements, and the role of threat (especially sociocultural threat) in movements.

LGBT educators have historically experienced various challenges in their schools, while school leaders have needed to balance the rights and needs of LGBT educators with sometimes unwelcoming community norms. The three iterations of this study that spanned across a decade aimed to gain an understanding of the ongoing climate for LGBT educators so that administrators utilize best practices related to policy enactment, advocacy, and enforcement – and in this chapter, relating specifically to creating an LGBT-inclusive climate in schools. Overall, the school climate for many LGBT educators continues to vary. In some respects, it has not changed dramatically from 2007 to 2017. Many participants over the three studies easily described positive and negative consequences of being out. Additionally, LGBT educators working with younger students consistently feel most unsafe being out to students to any degree, and they are experiencing an intense dichotomy of more policy and administrative support with more vehement opposition to being out as teachers. While there are still places for principals and other administrators to demonstrate stronger support for LGBT educators, these results show that their level of support is moving in the right direction.

Much ink has been spilled about the selectivity and quality of newspaper data (Earl, Martin, McCarthy, & Soule, 2004; Oliver & Maney, 2000; Ortiz, Myers, Walls, & Diaz, 2005) and we do not intend to rehearse those arguments here. Instead, this volume focuses on pushing research forward by (1) expanding the domains considered in scholarly work and (2) providing a better understanding of the dynamics of social movement media coverage.

Scholars who study humility tend to think of it in highly individualized terms, such as an absence of vanity or an accurate self-assessment. Individuating definitions can lead to such jarring concepts as the “humble white supremacist” (Roberts & Wood, 2007). Qualitative sociological research in the (predominantly North American) evangelical movement to accept and affirm lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) identities, same-sex marriage, and sex/gender transition reveals that humility is not simply the awareness that “I could be wrong.” That awareness is rooted in what we have found to be humility’s defining element, concern to foster relationship. These findings prompt us to define humility as a fundamentally social disposition, as concern to protect the kinds of intimate connection with others that can transform the self. Recognizing the social nature of humility reveals why humility is incompatible with injustice.

Purpose – This chapter considers the economic and political relationship between artificial intelligence tools such as facial recognition software and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) identity construction and identification. In doing so, the chapter considers the threats and opportunities to diverse LGBTQ identities from algorithmic governance.

Methodology/approach – The author analyzes public discourse on these issues and its relationship to agency for LGBTQ communities. The conceptual approach integrates research into surveillance capitalism and neuroliberalism with “digiqueer” criminology to map the relationship between digital media technologies, institutional legitimacy and negotiations for LGBTQ rights, recognition and resources.

Findings – The discussion shows that the surveillance capitalist principles of blurred consent and redistributed privacy are underpinned by geopolitical and technological forces that have undermined the legitimacy of governments and big tech companies. LGBTQ community resistance to harms perpetrated through digital media platforms is one positive consequence of the ambiguities of surveillance capitalism, but which also reflects the investment required by such communities to secure basic protections that the general population might take for granted.

Originality/value – Research into the relationship between recognition and redistribution through access to rights granted to different social groups on the basis of sexuality, sexual expression and identity is under-interrogated. This chapter responds to that gap with a focus on the role that digital media technologies can play in securing recognition and redistribution of resources for LGBTQ communities, or the significance of their absence and/or diminution in current contexts.

With its preference for small government and fiscal responsibility, the Tea Party movement claims to be conservative. Yet, their tactics and rhetoric belie this claim. The shrill attacks against Blacks, illegal immigrants, and gay rights are all consistent with conservatism, but suggesting that the president is a socialist bent on ruining the country, is beyond politics. This chapter shows that Richard Hofstadter's thesis about the “paranoid style” of American politics helps characterize the Tea Party's pseudo-conservatism. Through a comprehensive analysis of qualitative interviews, content analysis and public opinion data, we find that Tea Party sympathizers are not mainstream conservatives, but rather, they hold a strong sense of out-group anxiety and a concern over the social and demographic changes in America.

This chapter explores how long-distance truckers in the contemporary United States navigate work and family obligations. It examines how Christianity and constructions of masculinity are significant in the lives of these long-haul drivers and how truckers work to construct narratives of their lives as “good, moral” individuals in contrast to competing cultural narratives which suggest images of romantic, rule-free, renegade lives on the open road.

This study is based upon ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, observations of long-haul truckers, and participation in a trucking school for eight months in 2005–2006 and an additional four months in 2007–2008. Using feminist grounded theory, I highlight how Christian trucking provides avenues through which balance is struck between work and family and between masculinity and other identities.

Christian truckers draw upon older ideas about responsible, breadwinning fatherhood in their discourse about being good “fathers” while on the road. This discourse is in some conflict with the lived experiences of Christian truckers who simultaneously find themselves confronted by cultural narratives and expectations of what it means to be a good “worker” or a good “trucker.”

As these men navigate both work and social locations, gender expectations are challenged and strategies to ameliorate the work/family balance are essential.

The chapter contributes to discourse on gender studies as well as to the reshaping of ideology and practices of work and family in contemporary American culture.

Drawing on interviews with men and women gun carriers, this paper considers the intersection of femininity and guns. It argues that two sets of expectations shape the normative relationship between women and guns: First, armed women are a blind spot in feminist discourse, which tends to reproduce the “pacifist presumption” that women are nonviolent caretakers and peacemakers. Second, contemporary pro-gun discourse often bases women’s gun carry within their duties and obligations as mothers in a form of “martial maternalism.” Inflected with a post-feminist appropriation of rights and equality, this pro-gun discourse reproduces gender binaries through a discourse of gender inclusivity. Following previous analyses that emphasize the contradictory politics of gender in conservative spaces, my analysis emphasizes how the gendered politics of guns is sustained by multiple, though not necessarily shared, understandings of women’s guns by men and women within American gun culture.