“Don't Say Gay”: The influence of state political factors

Abstract

AbstractRecently, several states have introduced legislation designed to limit discussion around sexual orientation and gender identification. These types of legislation have been widely referred to as “Don't Say Gay” bills. Three state political characteristics: political culture, interparty competition, and general policy liberalism, which are deeply rooted in the political science literature, were used to examine a state's tendency to introduce or pass “Don't Say Gay” legislation. By using these variables, the state was not viewed in the Democratic/Republican dichotomy but rather by aspects enshrined in the state's political system. Using correlation analysis, the results from this study show that all three state political variables are correlated with introducing or passing a “Don't Say Gay” bill, while binary logistic regression results show that only political culture and interparty competition are statistically significant predictors of a state introducing or passing a “Don't Say Gay” bill.