same-sex marriage

New & Noteworthy

• Diverse Gender Beliefs Amongst Muslim Americans by Francesca Bernardino highlights new research on how Muslim Americans construct gender ideologies amid Islamophobic stereotypes. The study finds that negative views of Islam as patriarchal shape how Muslim men and women navigate and express beliefs about gender. Based on interviews with 80 participants, the researchers identify two main positions—one defends Islamic doctrine as respectful of natural gender differences, while the other critiques patriarchal practices in Muslim communities and looks to Western norms as more egalitarian.

From the Archives

• The wage gap continues to grow. This piece from CCF by Tania Cabello-Hutt covers how even when men and women follow similar work patterns over their lives, women still earn less—revealing that steady employment alone won’t close the gender wage gap.

• The birth rate in many countries also continues to steadily decrease, which may have many consequences in coming decades. This piece by Mahala Miller covers how economic downturns like the Great Recession led to lower birth rates, more young adults living with parents, and increased family strain—trends that have only deepened in recent years as rising costs, housing shortages, and pandemic fallout continue to reshape family life.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

• Letter from the Editors: Spring 2025 by Amin Ghaziani and Seth Abrutyn highlights the Spring 2025 issue, with anti-trans policies and the broader “war on woke” are fueling erasure—from Stonewall to statehouses—making the call to “protect the dolls” more urgent than ever. The issue responds with research on DEI, queer identities, healthcare debt, and more, showing what’s at stake when inclusion is under attack.

First Publics

• Social Theory Re-Wired offers a fresh take on teaching classical and contemporary theory by using technology as both theme and metaphor. In this interview, authors Wesley Longhofer and Daniel Winchester share how their book encourages students to see theory as a living conversation—one they’re already part of, and one with deep public roots.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies

• Learning Together, Teaching Forward reflects on a recent two-day educator workshop hosted by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies in partnership with Yahad–In Unum. Aga Fine highlights how Yahad’s global work uncovering mass violence and amplifying survivor voices deepened participants’ understanding of genocide—and offered new tools for teaching these histories with care and urgency.

Council on Contemporary Families

• Growing Up Godless explores how non-religious children in England develop rich moral worlds, playful beliefs, and meaningful rituals outside of religion. In this interview, co-authors Anna Strhan and Rachael Shillitoe discuss how families and schools shape a secular humanist culture that emphasizes autonomy, equality, and wonder.
• Queer Women and the Question of Marriage in the United States: Desire, Ambivalence, and Resistance explores how queer women navigate desire, ambivalence, and resistance toward marriage in a post-legalization era. Sarah Adeyinka-Skold reveals that while many view marriage as a path to legitimacy or a space for queering tradition, others remain wary of its inequalities, class dynamics, and uncertain legal future.

New & Noteworthy

This week’s Clippings includes: Robert Putnam discussed the link between social isolation and populism on PBS News Hour, highlighting how civic engagement can drive moral revival. Florence Becot appeared on The FarmHouse podcast to examine the invisible labor of women in agriculture, including the expectation of raising children while performing farm work. Battle for Tibet, a new FRONTLINE documentary, features Tibetan sociologist Gyal Lo’s research on Chinese boarding schools and their role in reshaping Tibetan identity. Meanwhile, Willam Robinson spoke at Peoples’ Platform Europe 2025 about the deepening crisis of global capitalism, warning of economic stagnation, rising authoritarianism, and environmental collapse in Medya News.

Crowdfunding Gaps for Female Gun Violence Victims by Dylan DiGiacomo-Stumm writes up research by Catherine Burgess and Jennifer Carlson. They found in their study of 535 GoFundMe campaigns that race and gender shape how victims are portrayed and the financial support their families receive, with white women and girls raising significantly more money than Black and Latinx victims.

Sociology in the News | Ep.8 | Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon’s Dating App “Revel” of our TSP Podcast produced by Forrest Lovette includes TSP Board members Jordyn Wald, Emma Goldstein, Mason Jones discussing Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon‘s recent coverage in The Pulse on “Revel“, a dating app for students at the University of Michigan that doubles as a research tool to uncover college dating patterns.

From the Archives

SNL just celebrated 50 years of comedy, including decades of political satire. From presidential impressions to Weekend Update, the show has shaped how audiences engage with politics. But humor isn’t just entertainment—it reflects and shapes social norms. Learn more about how comedy and politics intersect in this TSP Roundtable.

Recently, the IRS cut 6,000 jobs as we come up on tax season. This NPR article suggests these job cuts mean that American taxpayers will have a harder time getting information about taxes this year. This Discovery from 2019 covers how some policies place the burden of taxation unfairly on the socioeconomically disadvantaged, while perceptions of the fairness of tax heavily depend upon whether people view the government as competent.

Earlier this week, Trump called Ukrainian president Zelenskyy a “dictator”, accused him of corruption and misuse of foreign aid, and blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia. A piece published by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 emphasizes the importance of upholding and remembering truths about past violence. Additionally, this Sociological Images piece written right before Trump’s first presidency discusses similarities between the leadership and rhetorical styles of Trump and Putin, and is interesting to return to over eight years later.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

• winter 2025 table of contents is available free for limited time!
• letter from the editors: winter 2025 by Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani on their final year as Contexts editors, Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani reflect on heartbreak and hope.

Council on Contemporary Families

• 3 Qs with Abigail Ocobock Marriage Material: How and Enduring Institution is Changing Same-Sex Relationships by Alicia M. Walker covers Abigail Ocobock’s research on how legal same-sex marriage reshapes LGBTQ+ relationships, blending resistance to heteronormativity with new pressures, constraints, and evolving expectations of commitment.

First Publics

• Teaching the Sociological Multiverse by Jonathan Wynn explores the “sociological multiverse,” emphasizing the importance of teaching multiple theoretical perspectives to foster critical thinking, resist one-dimensional explanations, and challenge assumptions in an increasingly polarized world.

New & Noteworthy

Richie Zweigenhaft published a new TSP Special on the race and gender of people holding fortune corporate board seats. Comparing 2011 to 2023, Zweigenhaft found that white men have gone from about 2/3 majority to slightly less than 1/2 minority. Read the special here, and the full article here.

This week’s TSP clippings includes Eric Klinenberg on MSNBC’s Why Is This Happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast and in The New Yorker to discuss his new book 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed, Elizabeth Wrigley-Field in the StarTribune following new research by Wrigley-Field and colleagues that suggests ‘excess deaths’ (the number of deaths over the average expected deaths in a time period), Emine Fidan Elcioglu was interviewed by The Trace about her research examining a southwest border militia group that supplied information on migration routes to the U.S. Border Patrol, and Surinder S. Jodhka in IndiaSpend on India’s caste system fueling social exclusion.

From the Archives

Justice Alito made some controversial statements about same-sex marriage. Read our ‘There’s Research on That’ by Caity Curry and Allison Nobles to learn about some of the complexities surrounding LGBT parents.

Less than a week ago there was a Neo-Nazi rally in downtown Nashville. Learn about some similarities between 1930s Germany and the U.S. today by reading this piece from the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts Latest pieces include:

• Sophie X. Liu on some of the financial and social complexities of the legalization of cannabis in California.
• Katie Mercer and Stefanie Mollborn on the class differences of distancing during COVID-19 and affluent communities’ perceptions of their moral superiority through privilege.

Council on Contemporary Families has several new pieces including:

• Bethany Everett writes on some of the State-Level protections for infant and maternal health of the LGBT community.
• Marcus Maloney and Kate Babin cover some of the implications of Andrew Tate and the appeal of the manosphere.
• Lauren E. Harris covers her research on older adult dating during COVID-19 and interviews with 100 single adults ages 60-83.

The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies posted Professor John Packer‘s annual Holocaust Remembrance Day Lecture, titled “Remembering, Learning, and Applying ‘Never Again’ as the Essential Lesson of the Holocaust.”

New & Noteworthy

This week we have a new Discovery from Mason Jones on Self-Help Books from work by Amber Gwynne. The research found that readers learned that the books were not a “quick fix” and they still needed “to do the heavy lifting”.

Valentine’s Day was this past week and we reposted some pieces from us and our partners to acknowledge the holiday. This includes recent coverage of some sociology by Lauren Harris on ABC’s The Golden Bachelor, Valentine’s Day in Japan, and more.

Our media report from this week includes Scott Schieman (Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto) in The Conversation on how accurate the ‘unhappy worker’ narrative is, coverage of Boris Kagarlitsky’s (prominent Russian sociologist and editor-in-chief of the Marxist online publication Rabkor) sentencing to five years in prison for his critical view of the war in Ukraine, Tina Fetner‘s (Professor of Sociology at McMaster University) new book, Sex in Canada: The Who, Why, When, and How of Getting Down Up North, in Brighter World and Vancouver is Awesome, and Christina Ciocca Eller in The Harvard Gazette on educational institutions rankings.

From the Archives

Orthodox Greece recently legalized gay marriage. Read Louisa L. Roberts‘s Special Feature on research of international attitudes toward same-sex marriage to learn more.

Russia has made advances in space-based nuclear weapons. Learn about some of the history of testing nuclear weapons from 1945-1998 from this Sociological Images piece by Gwen Sharp.

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Context’s Winter 2024 is out and ready to read! This issue includes pieces on eviction, “Green Card Soldiers”, race and drug addiction, Q&A with Malcolm Gladwell, and much more!

Council on Contemporary Families has two pieces to read. First, Richard Petts and Daniel L. Carlson write up some of their research on domestic labor in Society and Mental Health and how this work extends far beyond childcare. And second, Jennifer Randles and Megan Carroll write up their different research studies on the societal and cultural beliefs surrounding the role of fathers.

First Publics‘s latest includes Calvin John Smiley‘s work on building trust and using practical applications of sociological concepts in education to address the prison-industrial complex.

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This week on The Society Pages, we tackled drug addiction and harm reduction, body image and stigma, Twitter as a public forum for shaming, marriage equality and health, and the thin line between The Bachelor‘s Juan Pablo and Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson. Plus much more (as always)!

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Addendum to my post last week criticizing Scalia’s characterization of the state of sociological research on the question of the impact of gay and lesbian parents on child development:

Phil Cohen (and others, in both public comments and private communications) point out that Scalia didn’t just miss the ASA brief or make up his claim that there is “no clear answer” among sociologists on the matter.  Rather, it would appear that he got the line from reading another brief on parenting submitted by sociologist Mark Regenerus and his colleagues that explicitly and directly countered the organizational consensus account. (See Cohen’s account.)

So is Scalia off the hook? Not quite that easy. For one thing, Regenerus’s brief is based on a highly controversial paper published in the journal Social Science Research about a year ago. (To say that that study has been controversial is putting it mildly; just take a look at some of the reactions chronicled previously by Cohen). Setting aside the question of how this piece got published in the first place (a significant matter of speculation and consternation in the field), one wonders if Scalia read the paper, or subsequent commentary about it—much less really parsed through the research on both sides of the issue. And even if some of the findings hold more water than most sociologists will allow, there seems little ground to warrant the larger societal implications that Regenerus imputes.

I won’t get into the specifics further, except to paraphrase Cohen’s summary: So what we have here is one sociologist (or one sociologist and his collaborators) denying the scholarly consensus which Scalia takes to mean there is no consensus. “Just like with evolution and climate change,” as Cohen puts it. I guess there are folks scientists who still think the earth is flat or that gravity isn’t really real either.