Homosexuals and the Ku Klux Klan: a Contextual Analysis of Political Tolerance

• Published date: 01 September 1987
• DOI: 10.1177/106591298704000305
• Author: James L. Gibson
• Date: 01 September 1987
• Subject Matter: Articles

HOMOSEXUALS AND THE KU KLUX
KLAN: A CONTEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF
POLITICAL TOLERANCE
JAMES L. GIBSON
University of Houston
N
SATURDAY,
June 9, 1984, 55 members of the Ku Klux Klan
~
marched down Westheimer Street in the Montrose Area of Houston
in protest of homosexuality. The Klansmen were escorted and pro-
tected by 800 members of the Houston Police Department. Though most
members of the gay community purposely boycotted the demonstration,
the Klansmen were jeered by roughly 2,000 counterdemonstrators. Pro-
tection for the Klansmen cost the City of Houston $60,000, but the authori-
ties were successful both at preventing any violence and in protecting the
civil liberties of the members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Civil liberties disputes such as this are fairly common. Unpopular po-
litical minorities have often met intense resistance from the majority when
they have sought to assert the rights of citizens of democratic polities (e. g. ,
Goldstein 1978). For instance, when members of the American Nazi Party
sought permission to demonstrate in Skokie, Illinois, in the late 1970s, the
response of the village was repressive (Gibson and Bingham 1985). The
political culture of the United States is not overwhelmingly tolerant so civil
liberties issues frequently become quite contentious.
A considerable body of macro-level theory has been generated to ac-
count for the allocation of liberty in the United States (see for a summary
Bachrach 1967; see also Gibson and Bingham 1984). Disputes such as that
between the KKK
and the gay community can serve, however, another
important, micro-level, theoretical purpose. Rather than being forced to
investigate political tolerance through hypothetical survey items, actual civil
liberties disputes provide an illuminating context for studying applied po-
litical tolerance. There are at least three major advantages of being able
to test hypotheses concerning political tolerance within an actual civil liberties
context.
Received: January 15, 1986
1 st Revision Received: July 22, 1986
2nd Revision Received: December 2, 1986
Accepted for Publication: December 4, 1986
NOTE: I would like to acknowledge the partial support for this project provided by the Cen-
ter for Public Policy at the University of Houston. Several of my students made signifi-
cant contributions to the research, including Richard J. Zook, James P. Wenzel, Timothy
Newcomb, Nancy Frey, Fred R. Frey, Christopher Emeharole, and Imran Mirza. I
would also like to acknowledge the very helpful and incisive comments and suggestions
of the referees for the Western Political Quarterly. This is a revision of a paper delivered
at the 1985 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, San Diego, Califor-
nia, June 6-9, 1985.

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First, there is growing concern among those who use surveys to study
political tolerance that the responses generated by typical survey items are
less than ideal. Some (e.g., Mueller 1984) have argued that survey responses
are little more than &dquo;non-attitudes. &dquo; Because civil liberties concerns are
not on the minds of most ordinary citizens, responses to tolerance ques-
tions may be randomly generated at the point of the interview. More likely,
absent a contextual specification of relevant constraints on political toler-
ance, there is a strong tendency for respondents to give socially desirable
-
and essentially meaningless - responses.’ Because typical measures of
tolerance are so devoid of content (e.g., &dquo;should a communist be allowed
to make a speech in your community&dquo;), the items may be evoking simple
responses to the group stimulus, not the civil liberties issues. The threat
and conflict so commonly a part of actual civil liberties disputes are not
easily recreated in items of this sort. This problem can be resolved when
tolerance is studied in context.
Second, the &dquo;abstract-applied&dquo; problem has long worried tolerance
researchers. Some of the earliest survey research on political tolerance found
that, while nearly everyone agrees with basic principles of democracy and
civil liberties when abstractly formulated, there is widespread disagreement
when the principles are &dquo;applied&dquo; (Prothro and Grigg 1960; see also Sul-
livan, Piereson, and Marcus 1982). General and abstract support for im-
portant civil liberties (e.g., the freedoms of speech and assembly) frequently
provides little guidance within specific civil liberties disputes (e. g. , Nazis
demonstrating in a Jewish community). The gap between abstract attitudes
and applied opinions is great even when &dquo;applied&dquo; opinions are measured
using questions posing hypothetical contexts. By examining &dquo;real&dquo; civil
liberties disputes, a richer understanding of the role of contextual factors
in opinion formation is possible.
A
final advantage of focusing on a real controversy is that actual politi-
cal behavior can be analyzed. There is no opportunity to behave within
a survey context using hypothetical questions, so it is not possible to inves-
tigate the linkages between attitudes and behaviors.2 Unless political toler-
ance is studied within actual civil liberties disputes, the critical question
of whether tolerance attitudes &dquo;matter&dquo; cannot be answered. If we are to
understand the dynamics of tolerance insofar as it relates to the actual allo-
cation of liberty in society -
the important question for political analysis
-
then it is essential that tolerance be studied in context.
1
Jackman (1972) argues that the social desirability effect is education based. Because better
educated people are more cognizant of the expected norms of society, they are more
likely to give a tolerant response. People with relatively low education are unaware of
societal norms.
2

As Prothro and Grigg long ago observed, the relationship is not always very strong. They
reported that, while 42 percent of a sample of the residents of Tallahassee told them
that they agreed that "a Negro should not be allowed to run for mayor of this city,"
"a few months before the survey a Negro actually did conduct an active campaign for
that office without any efforts being made by the ’white’ people to obstruct his candidacy"
(Prothro and Grigg 1960: 294).

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429
Thus, this article focuses on tolerance within the context of an actual
dispute over the rights of the Ku Klux Klan to demonstrate against homosex-
uals and homosexuality. Before turning to the theoretical framework used
to explain contextual and behavioral tolerance, a more careful look at the
participants in the dispute is warranted.
THE HOUSTON GAY POLITICAL CAUCUS
The Klan demonstration was one of many dramatic events that have
focused attention on Houston’s large and influential gay community. Within
two months of the KKK
demonstration, gays were again the center of a
political maelstrom over employment discrimination by the City of Hous-
ton. In the summer, the City Council passed an ordinance prohibiting dis-
crimination in public employment on the basis of sexual orientation. Within
a month, opponents had organized and successfully completed a petition
drive to call a referendum to repeal the ordinance. The vote on this meas-
ure was held in January 1985, with the result that repeal was favored by
4 to 1 (see Gibson and Tedin 1986). The gay rights issue also had major
repercussions in the Houston mayoral race in the Fall of 1985. The poli-
tics of homosexuality is an increasingly salient part of Houston City politics.
The Gay Political Caucus (GPC) is the dominant political organiza-
tion in the gay community in Houston. The GPC was heavily involved
in the Ku Klux Klan controversy, and its leadership generally urged a toler-
ant reaction from the community. Specifically, the GPC recommended that
the demonstration be allowed, but that it be completely boycotted. The
hope was that by not reacting to the incitement of the Klan, there would
be little opportunity for violence or other harm to Montrose, and that the
Klan would be denied a &dquo;media event&dquo; that would generate desirable pub-
licity for it. The leaders of the GPC were in frequent contact with city offi-
cials and they assisted the police in making preparations to protect the
Klansmen. Thus, the leaders of the GPC sought to protect the rights of
an unpopular political minority to assert its civil liberties.
The leaders, members, and supporters of the Gay Political Caucus were
surveyed to determine their levels of tolerance for the Ku Klux Klan.3 These
subjects provided a useful population for testing hypotheses about contex-
tual and behavioral tolerance due to the salience of the issue to them. More-
over, this research design allows the examination of political tolerance under
conditions of considerable threat and stress. There can be little doubt that
the attitudes expressed by these respondents are not &dquo;non-attitudes. &dquo;
These GPC activists are interesting for two additional reasons. First,
they are political activists and, even though there is a great deal of confi-
dence in the research findings showing that activists are more tolerant than
3
We sent approximately 700 questionnaires to a random sample of the mailing list of the
Gay Political Caucus. The response rate was 35.6 percent. Further details on the re-
search design, and an analysis of the representativesness of the sample, are available
from the author. See also Gibson 1986 for further details.

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430
masses, the research literature reveals very few empirical studies of the toler-
ance...