UC Irvine

Through a comparative study of four sexual minority communities (nudists, polyamorists, furries, and BDSMers), I ask: (1) why do routine behaviors become seen as deviant and (2) how do individuals and groups respond to oppressive laws that were never meant to regulate them but nonetheless have a negative impact? My study analyzes how legal regimes are stretched to conform to the evolving habits of the moral crusaders and how marginalized groups assess possible risks and negotiate latent illegality from clusters of laws that are expanded to regulate new groups and individuals. This dissertation brings together scholarship on legal ambiguity, moral panics, organizational studies, and the burgeoning research on sexual minorities and the intersection of sexuality and the law (Smith et al 2022; Vogler 2016, 2021; Weinberg 2016). Sociologists of law and other sociolegal scholars have been increasingly interested in different forms of legal ambiguity, including legal process ambiguity and legal consciousness. This scholarship understands legal ambiguity as the wedge with which marginalized groups can use the court system to acquire new legal rights and protections (Gash and Raiskin 2018; Ewick and Sibley 1998). While much of the relevant literature stresses the limits of the law—its incapacity to regulate targeted activities—I reveal the negative side of legal ambiguity and how it is used to create new or expanded categories of illegality and deviance to conform to the moral preferences of power elites. My dissertation highlights the, at times, surprising reach of law and its capacity to regulate untargeted activities. Latent illegality, a concept I have developed to describe how a cluster of laws are weaponized to regulate new groups and behaviors, affects individuals and groups in ways that are not accounted for by legal ambiguity. I argue that different rhetorics for defining membership and levels of organizational flexibility affect the abilities of these groups to balance competing goals of inclusivity and risk mitigation. Drawing on more than 1,000 surveys, interviews with community leaders, and observational data, I offer a novel analysis of how marginalized groups, such as lesser studied sexual minorities, balance being welcoming and inclusive of non-members seeking support and community while protecting group members from legal and extralegal risks. In short, these groups strategically construct their community identities and the formal aspects of their organizations in ways that are both deeply resonant to their members while being immediately responsive to outside stigma, legal, and extralegal risks.