on queer politics in political science textbooks

I just came across this interesting article from 2007, reviewing 17 leading political science textbooks. The invisibility of bisexuals, trans people, and AIDS, along with the heavy visual focus on white men, marriage, and legal equality is entirely consistent with the conservative politics dominating the gay movement today. Below is a summary from the article; bolding added.

To summarize, all of the texts we re- viewed note lesbians and gay men, almost universally in discussions of civil rights and/or equality. These discussions generally frame lesbians and gay men as “another” structurally disempowered group, often grouped with the disabled and listed after longer substantive sections on race and gender. Bisexuals are almost universally invisible and the transgendered are nowhere to be found.

Substantial portions of the discussions focus on court cases. Every text discusses Bowers v. Hardwick, the 1986 case in which the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s criminal ban on sodomy, and Romer v. Evans, the 1996 ruling applying equal protection to invalidate Colorado’s Amendment Two, which sought to bar the passage of local ordinances protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation. Depending on the edition, some texts do not yet incorporate a discussion of Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court case that overturned Bowers v. Hardwick in 2003. Many texts also use the fight over same-sex marriage to illustrate full faith and credit issues. There is virtually no discussion of AIDS in these texts. Some discuss public opinion toward lesbians and gay men and some address LGBT rights as a social movement.

Most of these texts generally incorporate a lot of visuals. Only a few texts had photographs of named LGBT individuals, and three of the photos were of James Dale. [a white man - ed.] There were very few photographs of named lesbians. The most prevalent image of LGBT individuals was various versions of same-sex couples exchanging vows or rings or waiting to do so. [vomit - ed.]

On the topic of terminology, most of the texts used “homosexual” and “gay/lesbian” interchangeably. Some tended to lump everyone under “gay.” [see SURVEY FINDS DIFFERENT LEVELS OF ACCEPTANCE FOR “GAYS” VERSUS “HOMOSEXUALS” - ed.]

For a good article on the gender and sexuality politics of biology textbooks, see Emily Martin's "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles".