From 2000 through 2008, initiatives proposing to ban same-sex marriage were on the ballot in 28 states. Although same-sex marriage opponents scored lopsided victories in most cases, voting outcomes varied substantially at the county level. This article examines sources of that variation and argues that opposition to same-sex marriage should be strong in communities characterized by the predominance of traditional gender roles and family structure. Perhaps more interestingly, the analysis also shows that the effects of traditional family structure and gender roles are especially strong in counties characterized by weak community cohesion, as indicated by residential instability, low rates of home ownership, and high crime rates.
This article examines how structural conditions and social movement frames interactto influence mobilization and political consequences 01 social movements.Mobilization efforts benefit when movement framing is congruent with localstructural conditions. This mobilization, in turn, produces politicalleverage for the movement through its capacity to deliver support of its members and adherents. Its political advantage may be offtet, however, if another of its key framing activities, the construction ofcollective identity boundaries, alienates the broader populatton and stimulates a backlash. Such backlash is also intimately connected to structural conditions because its potential is a function of the characteristics of the local population -specifically, the proportion of the population alienated by the movement's boundary construction. We apply these arguments to the case of the Indiana Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and show that while the Klan's diagnostic and prognostic framing may have resonated structurally and facilitated the Klan's mobilization efforts, its exclusionary boundaries frustrated its attempts to secure broader political gains.
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