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 Court's Marriage Opinion Cites Psychology Research
Posted by: Gregory Herek
Title/Position: Professor
School/Organization: University of California, Davis
Sent to listserv of: SESP, SPSSI
Date posted: September 6th, 2014


On September 4, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Wisconsin and Indiana laws prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying.

The written opinion by Judge Richard Posner -- which was widely characterized as skewering both states’ arguments against marriage equality -- relied in part on evidence from psychological science concerning the nature and immutability of sexual orientation.

Judge Posner’s cited sources included educational materials and reports from the American Psychological Association and the Association for Psychological Science, as well as a study by UC Davis social psychologist Gregory Herek.

The Herek et al. paper – the first published report of data from a nationally representative U.S. sample of self-described lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults – was cited for its finding that the 95% of gay men and 84% of lesbians perceive they had little or no choice about their sexual orientation.

The paper, published in Sexuality Research and Social Policy, is available online:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2927737/

The Court's opinion is available at:

http://media.ca7.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/rssExec.pl?Submit=Display&Path=Y2014/D09-04/C:14-2386:J:Posner:aut:T:fnOp:N:1412336:S:0

More information about Professor Herek’s research can be found on his website and blog:

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/faculty_sites/herek/
http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/

His Twitter handle is @DrGregoryHerek.

Attachment: 7th_Circuit_Posner_opinion.pdf



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