In research with 942 nonclinical adult participants, gay men and lesbian women reported a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than did heterosexual men and women. Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation. Twenty-two percent of lesbian women in contrast to 1% of heterosexual women reported homosexual molestat...

Research on sexual orientation and substance use has established that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals are more likely to smoke than heterosexuals. This analysis furthers the examination of smoking behaviors across sexual orientation groups by describing how same- and opposite-sex romantic attraction, and changes in romantic attraction, are associated with distinct six-year developm...

While sexual minorities have produced large and efficacious social movements in many countries, there are few systematic studies on why gays and lesbians join these movements. To address this void, this study created a unique sample of activist and nonactivist listservs to identify some factors that inspired greater involvement in protests for gay and lesbian equality (n = 285). Through the use...

Gary Gates The weekly adventures of gay couple Mitchell and Cameron and their baby on the popular television program Modern Family highlight a common contemporary media image of gay parenting: wealthy, urban, and White gay men raising an adopted child. An analysis of broadcast media by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (2007) found that this demographic dominates media images of t...

Vowel production in gay, lesbian, bisexual ~GLB!, and heterosexual speakers was examined. Differences in the acoustic characteristics of vowels were found as a function of sexual orientation. Lesbian and bisexual women produced less fronted /u/ and /Ä/ than heterosexual women. Gay men produced a more expanded vowel space than heterosexual men. However, the vowels of GLB speakers were not genera...

Siblings play a key, supportive role in the lives of many lesbian and gay adults. Yet siblings are rarely considered in the literature regarding the coming-out process (D'Augelli et al., 1998; Hilton & Szymanski, 2011; LaSala, 2010; Savin-Williams & Dubé, 1998). To fill this gap in the research literature, we carried out a comparative case study in the country of Belgium between two sets of sib...

Little research has examined the transition to parenthood among couples who adopt through the child welfare system. The current qualitative study of 84 individuals within 42 couples (17 lesbian, 13 gay, and 12 heterosexual), who were placed with a child via foster care three months earlier, examined perceived changes in their intimate relationship. Findings indicated that, like heterosexual bio...