Special Issue on Gender Identity and Expression and Sexual Orientation (LGBTQ+) in the Public and Nonprofit Contexts

Abstract

When I was a graduate student, in the early 2000s, a well-meaning senior faculty member urged me not to write a dissertation related to “gay rights.” He convinced me that a dissertation on environmental policy would be more marketable and that I would have more outlets for my research. I struggled for almost a year to develop a prospectus on environmental policy. Luckily, another faculty member—who had read my previous work on lesbian and gay employment discrimination—volunteered to lead my committee. Eventually, I completed an LGBT policy-focused dissertation, joining a handful of other public administration scholars focused on this area of research. Fast-forward twenty years, and the state of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression research has blossomed. Today, we have numerous scholars advancing our body of knowledge about a wide range of public administration and policy issues that were previously thought to be beyond the scope of the field. This is best evidenced through this special issue on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression. The original charge for this special issue was to bring a theoretical and contextual understanding to the observable changes in public administration—and society more broadly—as related to sexual minorities. The authors in this symposium exceeded expectations by advancing theoretical and practical knowledge on contemporary issues as well as starting dialogs about issues on the horizon of public administration and policy. It is an honor to present six peer-reviewed articles that focus on various aspects of public administration and LGBTQI communities, including: women, queer identity and expression, nonbinary gender status, and of course, sexual orientation. The first three articles in the symposium relate to institutions (i.e., the police and the academy), the second three articles critically analyze broader laws and policies. In addition to the theoretical lens underpinning each article, another emergent connector is intersectionality. Scholars in the field recognize that sexual identities can only be understood in the context