Experiences Related to the Debate Over Marriage Rights for Same-Sex Couples

This project proposes to take advantage of the current "marriage debates" to examine the perceptions of media messages on the sexual minority U.S. citizens and the associated effects on psychological health outcomes. While we are building the study around the Nov. 2006 elections, our findings will increase our knowledge of the psychosocial effects of prejudice and discrimination on sexual minorities. This proposal requests funding for participant stipends to retain a natior.ally-recruited sample for a baseline and short-term follow-up survey surrounding the November 2006 elections. We will also be seeking funding from other sources to retain the sample for a 3rc wave of data collection (Sept., 2007) for the purpose of examining the longer term psychosocial effects of marriage policies that deny rights to sexual minori ty citizens. While we hope that the findings from this study will be useful to practitioners in providing culturally competent services to their sexual minority clients, our larger goal is to address aspects of the sociopolitical environment that may constitute a psychosocial health hazard for our citizens.