The Friends and Family Plan: Assessing the Impact of Knowing Someone Gay on Support for Gay Rights

I estimate the impact of knowing someone gay on acceptance of homosexuality and support for gay rights. Method: Logit analyses on individual-level data from 27 national surveys control for demographic and political variables that predict both acquaintance with lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGBs) and support for gay rights. Findings: Knowing LGBs affects beliefs on the morality of homosexual relations, employment discrimination, gays in the military, sodomy laws, and same-sex marriage. Conclusion: Coming out remains an important strategy in the battle for gay rights. Working Paper 08-1

Personal Relationships and Support for Gay Rights

Since the early days of the gay liberation movement, activists have argued that coming out to heterosexuals would increase acceptance of homosexuality and support for gay rights. Though the empirical research has generally supported this hypothesis, it has not adequately controlled for reciprocal causation: having positive attitudes toward homosexuality increases the probability that a gay, lesbian, or bisexual person (LGB) will come out to you. This paper re-estimates the effect of knowing LGBs on support for gay rights using individual-level data from 27 surveys of the national population conducted since 1983. I first assess whether the same characteristics predict both attitudes and acquaintance. I next examine the effect of knowing LGBs on acceptance of homosexuality and support for gay rights in three ways: using logit models that control for the demographic and political variables used in step one, using propensity score matching to restrict comparisons of those who know LGBs to others who are as similar as possible, and using logit models for support for gay rights that also control for acceptance of homosexuality. Findings confirm that knowing LGBs affects beliefs on the morality of homosexual relations, employment discrimination, gays in the military, sodomy laws, and samesex marriage. Working Paper 07-1

The Demographics of Georgia III: Lesbian and Gay Couples - Brief

Using 2000 Census data, this report compares the residential patterns, household incomes, house values, property taxes, and parenting patterns of Georgia's same-sex and different-sex couples. FRC Brief 12

Spreading Speed, Traveling Waves, and Minimal Domain Size in\ud Impulsive Reaction-diffusion Models

How growth, mortality, and dispersal in a species affect the species’ spread and persistence constitutes a central problem in spatial ecology. We propose impulsive reaction-diffusion equation models for species with distinct reproductive and dispersal stages. These models can describe a seasonal birth pulse plus nonlinear mortality and dispersal throughout the year. Alternatively they can describe seasonal harvesting, plus nonlinear birth and mortality as well as dispersal throughout the year. The population dynamics in the seasonal pulse is described by a discrete map that gives the density of the populationat the end stage as a possibly nonmonotone function of the density of the population at the beginning of the stage. The dynamics in the dispersal stage is governed by a nonlinear reaction-diffusion equation in a bounded or unbounded domain. We develop a spatially explicit theoretical framework that links species vital rates (mortality or fecundity) and dispersal characteristics with species’ spreading speeds, traveling wave speeds, as well as and minimal domain size for species persistence. We provide an explicit formula for the spreading speed in terms of model parameters, and show that the spreading speed can be characterized as the slowest speed of a class of traveling wave solutions. We also determine an explicit formula for the minimal domain size using model parameters. Our results show how the diffusion coefficient, and the combination of discrete- and continuous-time growth and mortality determine the spread and persistence dynamics of the population in a wide variety of ecological scenarios. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the theoretical results

Understanding State Government Appropriations For the Arts: 1976-1999

Using panel data analysis, we examine the relative importance of citizen and government characteristics on a highly discretionary and volatile budget item: state appropriations to arts agencies. Despite the unimportance of arts spending to most citizens, changes in arts spending appear to reflect citizen desires. Spending rises with per capita income, state revenues, and citizen political and social liberalism, but characteristics of state legislatures do not significantly affect spending.Department of Economics and W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations Working Paper 07-0

A renewed search for water maser emission from Mira variables

There is an approximately 60% detection rate for 1612 MHz masers in association with red, color-selected IRAS sources, though few are detected from the bluer circumstellar shells of Mira variables. On the other hand and complementarily, past, pre-IRAS 22 GHz surveys detected many water masers in association with Mira variables. This paper reports on a 22 GHz survey of blue, color-selected Miras at Haystack, wherein 18 new detections are found from 238 searched objects.Comment: submitted to Astronomical J., 18 pages, 3 figs, 2 table

Acoustical transducer calibrating system and apparatus

An acoustical transducer calibrating system includes a differential pressure actuating device having an inner chamber for applying differential pressures to the transducer, and an outer chamber for vacuum sealing. Mounted within the inner chamber is an electrostatic actuator for exciting the transducer at selected frequencies so that its sensitivity can be determined for different operating ambient pressures

Representation of Lesbian and Gay Men in Federal, State, and Local Bureaucracies

Americans increasingly view lesbians and gay men as a legitimate minority, entitled to equal employment opportunities and perhaps to adequate representation in government. Scholars of public administration have extensively studied whether women and racial minorities receive fair representation and pay in the public sector, but we have generally ignored lesbians and gay men, largely because we lack data on the sexual orientation of government employees. Using a 5 percent sample of the 2000 Census, this paper provides new insights into one group of lesbian and gay employees: full-time workers with same-sex unmarried partners. It first determines whether they are as likely to hold jobs in the public and nonprofit sectors as workers who are married, have different-sex unmarried partners, or have never been married. Second, it explores whether lesbians' and gay men's representation is concentrated in particular occupations. It then examines whether workers with same-sex partners earn as much as other workers, and whether any disparities can be explained by race, gender, education, age, occupation, and location. Working Paper 08-2