Jonathan Coley

After Bostock: conservative judges, LGBTQ rights, and the conservative movement After the groundbreaking LGBTQ rights decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), federal judges across the ideological spectrum used the decision to protect the rights of transgender plaintiffs....

📢 How are conservative judges reshaping LGBTQ rights after Bostock? Pierceson finds that while Bostock v. Clayton County expanded protections for transgender plaintiffs, some conservative judges now use Dobbs and past rulings to narrow those rights.

🔗 Read more: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Help shape a dynamic and impactful program of sociology research at ASA 2026 Annual Meeting in NYC, August 7-11! The online portal is open for submissions until Feb. 25. https://bit.ly/ASA26portal

Interesting new paper from @ajalvero.bsky.social & colleagues about the use of Generative AI in sociology.

Power Companies Are Using AI To Build Nuclear Power Plants Tech companies are betting big on nuclear energy to meet AIs massive power demands and they're using that AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants.

Problem: AI needs massive amounts of power to thrive. Nuclear makes lots of power. Nuclear takes a long long time to do safely.

Proposed solution that I'm sure will have no unpleasant consequences: Use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear plants.

ONLINE FIRST

Focusing on the case of Stormfront, a prominent white nationalist forum, Jesse Callahan Bryant (@jcallahanbryant.bsky.social) investigates how visual and textual practices together sustain collective identity in contemporary movements.

Read more at bit.ly/49tayCg

Who protects transgender rights in congress? An analysis of gender identity inclusive policy entrepreneurship The quality and strength of a democracy can be measured by how minority rights are protected against the interests of the majority. In the US, the rights of transgender people, a numerically small,...

📢 Who protects transgender rights in Congress? Angevine and Mendez Garcia analyze who sponsors gender identity inclusive legislation in the US House and find that LGB, liberal, and minority lawmakers lead efforts to advance equality and inclusion.

Read more: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Book cover with the title "The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby: Inside a Billionaire Family's Quest to Craft a Christian Nation" by Michael Blanding. The cover image shows a parking lot with a Hobby Lobby store in the bottom right corner, and a dark sky stretching upwards.

A description of the book, starting, "A revelatory account of how the family behind Hobby Lobby rose to political prominence and used their influence—and fortune—to push a radical religious agenda"

Further description of the book, ending, "Captivating and disturbing, The Gospel According to Hobby Lobby exposes the pivotal role the Green family has played in funding and empowering America’s dangerous, ascendant Christian nationalist movement."

COVER REVEAL! Proud to officially announce my next book, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO HOBBY LOBBY: Inside a Billionaire Family’s Quest to Craft a Christian Nation, to be published by PublicAffairs on July 14, 2026. #ChristianNationalism #Bible #Politics #Religion #ReligiousFreedom #AntiquitiesTrafficking

The Sociological Quarterly Queer Nightlife. Volume 66, Issue 4 of The Sociological Quarterly

QUEER NIGHTLIFE

Have you read the new issue of TSQ on queer nightlife, edited by @aminghaziani.bsky.social?

The entire issue is currently FREE TO READ! Check it out now at tandfonline.com/toc/utsq20/6...

We met up with @sssreligion.bsky.social recently in Minneapolis, Minnesota to ask "What Are You Working On?" Meet emerging scholars and familiar faces working on all things religious scholarship!

Coming June 2026 from the University of North Carolina Press: LGBTQ Religious Activism: Rethinking Identity, Faith, and Social Change, edited by myself and Golshan Golriz!

Pre-order the book now at bit.ly/48ZUAiL & receive 40% off when you use the discount code 01DAH40.

Exclamation marks! Why do women use them three times as much as men? It’s the punctuation that can make you seem warmer and more agreeable – but also much more compliant and lacking in analytical thinking

It’s easy to dismiss the humble exclamation mark as harmless enthusiasm — but new research suggests it says a lot about gender, communication, & power.

🔗 tinyurl.com/bdd994dy

TLDR 👇

#langsky #linguistics #appliedlinguistics #language #languageandgender #languageandpower #punctuation

Coming June 2026 from the University of North Carolina Press: LGBTQ Religious Activism: Rethinking Identity, Faith, and Social Change, edited by myself and Golshan Golriz!

Pre-order the book now at bit.ly/48ZUAiL & receive 40% off when you use the discount code 01DAH40.

Greg Prieto Headshot

We’re deeply saddened by the passing of Greg Prieto, longtime SSN member & former San Diego Chapter Leader.
In this tribute, colleagues & friends Brian Adams, Stacey Livingstone, John Skrentny & @abigailandrews.bsky.social share Greg’s legacy of compassion & justice.
🔗 scholars.org/features/tri...

Incurable Optimism about Getting What We Want: Anticipating Success in Everyday Requests When asking for something significant from another person, speakers not only set the tilt of the question toward the affirmative or negative but also display an optimistic or pessimistic stance tow...

When we ask for something big—time, effort, money—do we hedge against rejection or assume success? With @gio-rossi.bsky.social & Tanya Stivers, we find that people are incurably optimistic, even though big requests often meet resistance. Published open access in @socquarterly.bsky.social. #EMCA

FREE TO READ

Andrew Chalfoun, Giovanni Rossi, & Tanya Stivers show that everyday requests are made with an optimistic stance. Across seven language communities, people ask as if the answer will be “yes,” revealing a pervasive optimism bias in routine interaction.

Read more at bit.ly/4oKjWWs

Engaging research on occupational activism, this new article from Jessica Schachle-Gordon considers how some K-12 teachers persist in teaching about race, gender, and sexuality despite the passage of anti-DEI laws. doi.org/10.1111/soin...

What happens when public servants are asked to betray the values that brought them to service? New research traces how asylum officers under Trump navigated moral crisis and how their ability—or inability—to form with peers a shared aspiration for moral resolution determined who stayed or who left.

The Coming Battle Over Women’s Suffrage By Paul A. Djupe and Brooklyn Walker [Image credit. National Women’s History Museum.] Every election cycle, millions of women cast votes. For many of them, their right to vote seems uncontroversial…

We've seen religious elites and social media warriors call for the end of women’s suffrage. But we don’t have a sense of how everyday Americans feel about women’s political rights.

Until now.

We preview new survey results about repeal of the 19th Amendment and adoption of a household vote.

In memoriam of Sociology Professor Nancy Chodorow, a foundational feminist scholar - Berkeley News An esteemed sociologist, psychoanalyst and professor emerita at UC Berkeley, Chodorow passed away on Oct. 14.

We're sad to learn of the passing of Nancy Chodorow, a 1980-81 CASBS fellow whose work on gender and feminism bridged the fields of sociology and psychoanalysis

More @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social news:

news.berkeley.edu/2025/10/16/i...

Harvard sociology going gambling, apparently, to have 6 PhD slots in 2026, and 0 in 2027 (presumably hoping for something to change between now and then?). While we're sharing: At UMD we have decided not to offer any funded sociology slots for 2026: socy.umd.edu/landingtopic....

Here are some data to drive this point home in sociology. Over the last 10 years we saw a decline from 333 to 200 asst prof jobs posted to the ASA job board - and that's until 2024, which was widely seen as a better market year than 2025

Transmorphic organizations: racial segregation and discrimination against LGBTQ students at Christian colleges and universities1 Abstract. Do organizations that previously discriminated against one marginalized group go on to discriminate against other marginalized groups? If so, why

New in Social Forces: Innovating through the concept of “transmorphic organizations,” @jonathancoley.bsky.social and Gabby Gomez examine whether and why Christian colleges that were once racially segregated now discriminate against LGBTQ students. Read more below:

New article in Social Forces (@sfjournal.bsky.social)! Using the case of racial segregation & discrimination against LGBTQ students at Christian universities, Gabby Gomez & I consider whether & why some orgs discriminate against different groups over time.

Free to read at doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

The Sociological Quarterly Queer Nightlife. Volume 66, Issue 4 of The Sociological Quarterly

New publication by Amin Ghaziani (@aminghaziani.bsky.social) in (@socquarterly.bsky.social). “The Sociology of Queer Nightlife.” The Sociological Quarterly 66(4): 661-674. Available here: www.tandfonline.com/toc/utsq20/6....
The article provides a sociological perspective on queer nightlife.

Johns Hopkins political scientist Hahrie Han receives MacArthur genius grant Han, who studies political organizing and collective action and who has led the university's SNF Agora Institute since 2019, among 22 individuals to receive coveted MacArthur Foundation recognition

Totally, completely flabbergasted. #MacFellow

hub.jhu.edu/2025/10/08/h...

For the Children: Attitudes Toward Marriage and Divorce in the United States The deinstitutionalization of marriage suggests more support for divorce and the forgoing of marriage. In this study, we examine attitudes toward both marriage and divorce in the context of having ...

#MorningReads
Over half of U.S. adults (55%) support both divorce & forgoing marriage, even w/ children involved. These views are more common among women, LGBTQ+ people, and those cohabiting or divorced, & less common among older, religious, and conservative adults. w/ @gaylekaufman.bsky.social

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

Important new FREE study by Amy Brooke Grauley. Experiments show when Christian leaders warn Christians against Christian nationalism, they're less likely to identify with it, especially if they don't have strong views on it yet. Effects are weaker in the opposite direction.
doi.org/10.1007/s111...