Issue Framing and Identity Politics in the Log Cabin Republican

This dissertation examines the role of the Log Cabin Republicans, the largest conservative gay and lesbian organization in the United States, and their participation in the American political system. As the central goal of this project, I examine how conservative gay and lesbian interest groups frame specific issues, such as same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian access to public accommodations, and gay and lesbian participation in the military. The Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) emphasizes five frames: conservatism, individualism, family, equality, and inclusion in their discussion of these issues. The frames impact strategic development within the organization, which in turn shape the organization's approaches and tactics to solving public policy problems. The LCR works toward inclusion and equality on a range of contemporary gay and lesbian issues such as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, marriage and family equality, inclusive military policies, and immigration reform.;One central tension in this project emerges from the perceived incompatibility between gay and conservative identities. Agenda setting within the LCR is directly impacted by the position of the organization as doubly marginalized: marginalized by mainstream gay and lesbian politics and marginalized by the Republican Party. Yet through careful issue framing, the LCR works to reconcile the tension and advance its organizational and public policy goals. Therefore, the theoretical contribution of this dissertation is to advance an understanding of dual marginalization in order to ground the theory of intersectionality, which highlights how the role of marginalized and privileged identities impact how the organization frames issues. In order to explain how identity impacts the process of framing issues strategically, I discuss theories of marginalized interest group politics alongside theories of pluralism, interest group liberalism, and identity politics. Marginalized interest group theory explains the important role of adopting assimilation approaches from the margins. Assimilationist interest group strategies translate into tactics that work to influence legislative decisions and public policy.;The first chapter introduces the Log Cabin Republicans, offers historical background to show how the LCR fits into contemporary gay and lesbian social movement, and describes the current positions held by the organization. The second chapter outlines the theoretical framework for the dissertation, bridging the literatures on pluralism and intersectionality. The second chapter also discusses the mechanisms of assimilation, the conceptual framework in the project, used by the Log Cabin Republicans, including silence, homonationalism, framing, and elite networking. These mechanisms of assimilation describe the types of strategies the organization employs to enact change within the existing political system. The third chapter offers a description of the methods used in the dissertation: discourse analysis of LCR framing and elite interviews.;Then, I examine three case studies. The first case study, which I discuss in chapter four, explores the rise in religious freedom and reformation acts (RFRA), state-level legislation aimed at protecting religious freedoms for businesses to establish and act upon sincerely held religious beliefs. SB1062 was the religious freedom reformation act proposed and passed through the Arizona state legislature, ultimately vetoed by former-governor Jan Brewer. I discuss the Log Cabin Republicans' role in working against the Arizona RFRA. I focus on the national same-sex marriage debate and Supreme Court, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) in the fifth chapter. The LCR filed an amicus curare brief during the case, which emphasized the need for sex-sex marriage equality on the grounds of political contributions. Chapter six investigates the LCR's ongoing support of military inclusion for gays and lesbians, their challenges against "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," and current debates of transgender inclusion in the military.;The studies draw from qualitative discourse analysis of press releases and amicus briefs filed by the organization and supplemental elite interviews with LCR organizational leaders. These documents demonstrate how the LCR develops and situates frames into organizational strategies. A combination of case studies and elite interviews illuminates how marginalized interest group theory operates in the development of assimilationist organizational strategies.;Close examination of these case studies illuminates the effectiveness of frames and the resulting strategies. I argue that in all three cases, the Log Cabin Republicans were effective in identifying a specific problem, developing issue framing to bridge multiple identities in the way the organization discusses the problem, and employing creative and meaningful strategies to address the problem associated with each case.