This special issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry explores the mediated political and cultural battle over equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) individuals. I chose this topic in part because of the many recent and ongoing developments in LGBTQ rights, including but not limited to the high-profile issue of marriage equality. I also chose it in part for the potential fecundity for critical scholarship. The comparison has often been made between the current struggle for LGBTQ equality and the Civil Rights and Feminist fights for equality as they existed in and around the 1960s. But in the academy at that time (especially in the U.S. tradition of mass communication research), critical scholarship was in something of an infancy. Today journalism and mass communication academics who are interested in LGBTQ issues have decades of critical cultural work to draw upon while observing first hand a period of significant legal and cultural change. So it was an honor and a pleasure as editor, with the full support of the JCI team, to provide a space to showcase some of the work being done in this area.
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