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The purpose of this paper was to examine the robustness of the findings on educational advantage among sexual minority men.

Using nationally representative data (AddHealth) and controlling for other predictors of academic attainment, we examine the educational attainment of sexual minority males by using hierarchical regression and logistical regression for two measures of sexual identity.

We find robust differences in educational attainment across analyses and sexual orientation constructs. Our results show sexual minority identity predicts up to a year more of education for male respondents and consistently reporting male homosexuals have an even greater advantage, more than one and a half years, compared to inconsistent responders.

Our results extend previous research on educational outcomes for nonheterosexual adolescents, suggesting there are sustained differences in long-term educational outcomes for nonheterosexual adults and supporting earlier analyses of the AddHealth survey data. This study contributes to the existing literature by examining educational attainment as measured by continuous years and cut-points, using two measures of sexual orientation, providing estimates for all Wave 4 sexual minority identities (i.e., not collapsing any sexual minority category), and controlling for adolescent school geography and type. Moreover, we find early identification of sexual orientation and stability of sexual orientation may be an important source of variation in identifying LGBTQ adolescents who are at greater academic risk or who may benefit from increased social support.

Homosexual activity in the military has long been dealt with harshly in the military by superiors and peers, yet officially at least, homosexuals seem to be largely ignored in the ROC army, almost as much are they are genuinely accepted by Taiwan society. Thus this dimension can be assessed as being in the realm of the postmodern military. Taiwan is a traditional Confucian-influenced society, and yet it recently became the first Asian nation to recognize same-sex marriage. The military, moreover, is a very conservative, risk-averse institution within society, and the way in which homosexuals are treated is illustrative of civil–military relations. The issue of homosexuals serving in the ROC military has not received the frank discussion that it deserves, neither in the academic literature nor in wider society. The vast majority (58.5 percent) of respondents in the current research expressed a preference for what essentially amounts to a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy as had been practiced in the United States military until the turn of the century. An impressive 30.8 percent expressed the belief that homosexuals should be allowed to serve openly, while just 10.7 percent said they believed that homosexuals should be kicked out of the military. Overall, these results confirm what has already been observed and paint Taiwan as a nation that is remarkably tolerant of homosexuality – especially in comparison with its East Asian neighbors. By connecting with the media, popular culture, and postmodernism, gay/lesbian/queer movements on the island have succeeded in presenting their community as avant-garde, trendy, and most progressive on the cultural front.

In this paper I want to look at just one of the many contemporary legal narratives of homophobia – the phenomenon of the “Homosexual Advance Defence” (H.A.D.). While I agree with the analysis of one American commentator, who indicts the H.A.D. as a “judicial institutionalization of homophobia” (Mison, 1992, p. 136), I maintain that it is important to extend analyses which take as their main target the entrenchment of bigoted judicial views or which employ as their main critical tool a liberal framework of equality and discrimination (for example, see Potter, 2001). Just as Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick urges us not to view homophobia as simple ignorance or bigotry (see Howe, 2000, pp. 85–87), I argue that there is much more at stake with the H.A.D., and consequently much more required of us, than mere questions of ignorance, discrimination and (re-)education. While it is important to identify and condemn at every turn the various legal and social manifestations of homophobia, of which the H.A.D. is clearly one, it is just as important (if not more so) to interrogate the discursive and epistemological foundations, or legitimations, of these very beliefs.

Departing from Turkish national debates around Islam, national belonging, and homosexuality during 2008–2011, this paper shows how “LGBT rights” discourses ultimately worked to position Muslim headscarf activists as against LGBT activists by rendering complex positions that do not follow easy “for vs. against” LGBT rights political formulas as “homophobic.” In return, this foreclosed potential solidarities differently injured citizens could have formed against increasing neoliberal state violence. I show that the multitude of Muslim women’s positions on the issue of LGBT rights complicates easy religious/secular binaries and illuminates how it is not only human rights discourses but also their “Western” critiques that travel transnationally. This story also contributes to current debates on postsecularism by illustrating how the same national context can house both liberal rights frameworks that can be used against pious Muslim subjects, and a monopolization of a definition of Islam for state power. Finally, I offer “politics of cruelty” and “right to sin” as alternative frameworks for imagining social justice outside of liberal rights-based politics.

The rise of the Internet has facilitated net activism among many virtual gay communities in Taiwan. The communication role that the Internet plays is in particular vital, because homosexuality is still considered a taboo in Taiwan's society. Cyberspace created by the Internet forms a unique “space” where local homosexuals can share their experience of being gays with each other. The purposes of this chapter are intended to examine how the Internet facilitated the formation, promotion, and success of gay rights movements among homosexual communities in Taiwan. This chapter uses the Chang-Der Street Police Harassment Incident as a case study to elaborate the Internet's communication role in mobilizing local gay populations to pursue their gay rights. It also investigates the Internet's strategic role as a communication medium in gay rights movements. The case analysis and in-depth interviews help identify several key functions that the Internet can play: to exchange and share information, to organize and coordinate gay rights movements, to record and store historical information, and to lead social and value changes in the future. This chapter explores the potential of the Internet in online community mobilization, an early look at virtual community and net activism.

This study is aimed at assessing the ROC military using the PMMM according to the perceptions of the citizens of Taiwan. The patterns that can be detected in Taiwan’s military show that it paradoxically spans three distinct stages: the modern, late modern, and postmodern. Taiwan’s is a modern military in terms of perceived threat, force structure, major mission definition, and civilian employees. It can be regarded as more of a late-modern model in the dimensions of dominant military professional, public attitude, and women’s role. Lastly, it achieves a postmodern designation as regards the role of spouses, homosexuals, conscientious objection, and media relations. In all, this paints a picture of a fractured military culture: one between two worlds. This should not be surprising: to many in Taiwan, Taiwan itself is a fractured culture, seeking to define its identity, and find its place in the world, and in history. In the dimensions in which Taiwan rates as a modern military, we can see this is driven by external factors. The geopolitical scenario in which the nation finds itself, that is, under threat of invasion by a numerically and technologically superior foe, is very much a pre-Cold War scenario. It exhibits a late-modern model in the dimensions of public attitude and women’s role, and a postmodern model when it comes to the role of spouses, homosexuals, conscientious objection, and media relations – all factors that are related primarily to how the military interacts with the society it protects. Thus, we have a bifurcated profile. The ROC military must, as it does, focus on a modern-era threat perception, just as it must, as it does, focus on a postmodern-era approach to women and homosexuals in the military.

This article presents a theoretical and empirical discussion of the way in which computer technologies (the internet) influence the production of sexuality, sexual fantasies, and specific sexual behaviors. This discussion is based on the case study of an Israeli website for sexual encounters, which its users say has brought out (or enabled) a specific sexuality that would not have emerged were it not for the new technology. This article focuses on a particular population from among the sites users: married men who surf the site to find men with whom to have one-off sexual encounters, and who report a positive experience of “life in the closet.” A total of 34 men were interviewed, 6 face-to-face and 28 in online interviews. The findings include three main accounts: (1) most of the interviewees said that the new technology (the website) enabled them to invent a new existential category, that of “married straight men who sometimes have sexual encounters with other men.” This category is seen as enabling a new sexuality, or a sexuality that would not have been enacted were it not for the internet; (2) the interviewees spoke of how “life in the closet,” and in particular entering and exiting it (which was called a “zigzag sexuality” or the “revolving doors of the closet”), creates an experience of a vital sexuality that fits in with their marriage to a woman and their life as a “straight” man; (3) many interviewees explained how the technology enabled them to keep their sexuality secret, where the secrecy itself was said to create a unique sexual desire. The discussion section shows how the new technology enables individuals to invent a new sexuality, to enact unique sexual fantasies, and to maintain an alternative self, or alternative components of their concept of self.

The evolution of military profession in Latin American countries has not been the subject of research as compared to civil–military relationships because of the political intervention of the latter. Since the 1980s, with the restoration of democracy in countries of the Southern Cone, the design and management of defense is no more a monopoly of the armed forces, and they are now exposed to a wide range of influences. On the basis of the framework proposed by Moskos, Williams, and Segal in their book: The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces after the Cold War, where they argue the case of the United States of America as a paradigm of the military profession changes because of the postmodernism in industrialized countries, we pretend to make a comparative analysis of the changes or modernizations experienced by the military profession in Southern Cone's countries, mainly Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.

This chapter provides evidence that the Stonewall Inn riots were the foundation for a legacy of empowerment and improvements in the civil and political rights of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community in the United States. Increased protections in the United States and globally are needed to fully integrate LGBT individuals into society. The next phase of this work will examine how the failure to extend equitable civil and political rights to LGBT individuals has led to continued stigma and discrimination which, in turn, is associated with a host of LGBT health disparities ranging from HIV to suicide to substance use. Future research will also identify ways to reduce these inequities.