UC Riverside

Situational contexts vary substantially across the country. This variation provides conditions

where a subset of the American public may be exposed to situations that others are

not. How do contexts affect the politics of minority groups? In this dissertation, I examine

how the politics of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people are situated by differing contexts

across the United States. I examine how LGB presence aects and conditions the approval

of the mass public. I examine the mechanism this influence bears on representative behavior in Congress. I finally examine how varying contexts uniquely affects some LGBs over others. In total, I find that varying contexts situate the political positions of LGB people

differently. This results in unique conditions where LGB people are politically in

influentialand cohesive.