Work and Sexuality in the Sunbelt: Homophobic workplace discrimination in the US South and Southwest, 1970 to the present Joshua Hollands PhD, Institute of the Americas, University College London Supervisors: Jonathan Bell and Nick Witham 1! I, Joshua Hollands, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. _________________________ 2! Abstract In recent years, following the achievement of marriage equality in federal United States law, employment rights have become a key battleground for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists. Indeed, most southern states provide no protection for sexual minorities against being fired at work. As such, many workers across the South and Southwest can be married to someone of the same sex on a Sunday but be legally fired on a Monday for being gay. This thesis uses six case studies to understand how this situation of uneven workplace protections came into being. In doing so it focuses upon the Sunbelt, an area that has been economically and politically significant over the past half-century. I am concerned with how LGBT activist strategies for equal protections and workplace rights in the South have diverged from the national trajectory due to the limited power of unions and the ascendency of Christian morality that has reshaped free-market politics in the region. Chapters focused on individual organisations such as Apple Computer, Cracker Barrel, Duke University and ExxonMobil shed light on mainstream LGBT strategies for equality within corporations, as well as the extent to which victories at these companies impacted wider rights for sexual minorities in southern cities. Similarly, case studies on organisations of business elites in Sunbelt cities including Houston and Williamson County, Texas, demonstrate how battles over workplace rights in both the private and public sectors informed conservative rhetoric in opposition to, and in some cases, acceptance of LGBT rights during the closing decades of the twentieth-century. Through examining these case studies my thesis expands our understanding of how sexual minorities reshaped the corporate workplace in the neoliberal era to the extent that most major companies now prohibit discrimination and openly campaign for equality. 3! Impact Statement This thesis has implications both within and outside the academy. It provides evidence and in-depth analysis of the impact that workplace discrimination and a lack of employment rights have historically had upon sexual minorities. It contributes to a burgeoning field of scholarship that examines the centrality of the workplace to the contestation of rights for sexual minorities. In doing so it refocuses attention to the Sunbelt region of the South and Southwest United States, an area sorely overlooked in previous studies. It traces the extent to which rights of sexual minorities have remained tenuous for most workers in the United States who are not protected by their employer or the state. In doing so it has implications for public policy in the form of legislation that is currently being considered at local, federal and judicial levels in the US. A number of challenges to the lack of employment protections for sexual minorities are being considered by the Supreme Court of the United States. Justices are currently considering whether to accept an expanded definition of the term “sex” in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act 1964. Historians working in cognate areas to me, including one I worked with during my dissertation research, have helped to draw up amicus curiae briefs for these cases, demonstrating the vital public role scholars of workplace rights play in the current moment. Additionally, the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Equality Act which could also affirm non-discrimination protections for sexual minorities. This thesis demonstrates effectively the need for such protections, but also examines why they may still not be forthcoming for the foreseeable future given the partisan nature of US politics. It also provides important evidence and instruction for social and political movements that seek draw public attention to the second-class citizenship experienced by many LGBT people in the US. This thesis contributes to multiple and intersecting political, social and cultural discourses as to the role of sexuality in public life, but especially within the workplace. Any 4! future publication of the material presented here can be utilised by legal professionals, activists, and other scholars alongside historians who seek to understand the intersections of sexuality and labour in the US Sunbelt and beyond. My research has already brought me into conversation with union activists at the forefront for LGBT equality in the workplace at a symposium I organised at UCL earlier this year, and I intend to build these links with organised labour as I take my project to the next stage and develop a second (oral history) project on workplace politics in the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain. In conclusion, this research will foster better understanding of the second-class citizenship that LGBT people continue to experience even with the achievement of marriage equality. My dissertation also considers together fields of scholarship that have heretofore largely been considered separately. 5! Table of Contents Acknowledgements 7 List of Illustrations 8 Introduction 9 Part One: Nondiscrimination and the Structures of the Sunbelt Chapter One: Schools, Sodomy and the Sunbelt 37 Chapter Two: Homophobic Booster Activism in Houston 78 Chapter Three: AIDS Discrimination, Cracker Barrel and Corporate Activism into the 1990s 110 Part Two: Queering the Sunbelt Corporation Chapter Four: Apple’s Domestic Partner Benefits Under Attack in Williamson County, 1993 151 Chapter Five: Employment Rights on the Sunbelt Campus 183 Chapter Six: ExxonMobil and the persistence of the Corporate Closet 225 Epilogue: Sexuality and Workplace Rights from Obama to Trump 266 Bibliography 293 6! Acknowledgements I am grateful to the Wolfson Foundation for their generous support of this project. The extensive archival research upon which this thesis is based would have been impossible without a Wolfson Foundation Scholarship in the Humanities. I also thank UCL Institute of the Americas, the Historians of the Twentieth Century United States (HOTCUS), the Southern Labor Studies Association (SLSA), and the Organization of American Historians (OAH), who awarded prizes and travel grants which enabled me to discuss my ideas with other scholars internationally, as well as conduct further research. I also benefited from extensive feedback on a chapter and the wider project at two annual Boston-California-London Collaborative Conferences initiated by Bruce Schulman and colleagues at UCL for which I am also grateful. This project would not have been possible without the support of numerous archivists and activists across the United States who took time to guide me through collections, and to explain the local context of LGBT life and activism. I especially thank Laura Micham at Duke University, Tina Wright at UNC Charlotte, and Paul Fasana at the Stonewall National Museum and Archives. I have benefited from a strong interdisciplinary research culture at UCL Institute of the Americas. I thank my fellow graduate students and staff for reading chapter drafts and discussing ideas. Additionally, I thank the participants of the UCL Americas Research Network. Special thanks go to Zoe Hyman, Jaskiran Kaur Chohan, Kate Quinn, and Katherine Saunders-Hastings for various forms of collegial support and feedback. I could not have asked for a more encouraging and supportive supervision team. Nick Witham provided much needed editorial guidance and encouraged my other academic endeavours in teaching. Jonathan Bell has treated me as a colleague since our first meeting. He has supported not only this project but also my development in all aspects of scholarly and academic life. I finally found my focus — thank you! Thanks to Xanthe Whittaker and Pfizer for their support (and for some of their distractions). And to Alan Kenny for his love and patience. Finally, I thank my parents, Sandra and Tim Hollands, and my sister, Laura McDowell for their unwavering love and support. 7! List of Illustrations NB: These illustrations have been removed from this open access version. Please consult a physical copy of the thesis. Figure 1 (p. 10): “Major Cities in the Sunbelt” map from Sean P. Cunningham, American Politics in the Postwar Sunbelt: Conservative Growth in a Battleground Region (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p.6. Figure 2 (p. 37): Cartoon of cowboys, unknown illustrator, “A hard look: Anti-gay forces fear macho Houston will be ‘another S.F.’”, San Francisco Examiner, unknown illustrator, January 19, 1985. Figure 3 (p. 90): “Houston can’t risk becoming the next major battleground for gay political power”, Political advertisement paid for by the Committee for Repeal, 1985 in Box 144, Sears Papers-Duke. Figure 4 (p. 126): “Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Separate Notice to Cheryl Summerville”, in Folder 5, Box 6, Office of Lesbian/ Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Life records, Emory University Archives, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. Figure 5 (p. 152): Image of Cracker Barrel Shareholders, Carl Owens Collection, Archives for Research on Women and Gender, Georgia State University Library.