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Construction of Status Equality in Friendships between Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Students and Straight Students in College

Focusing on public and formal settings, symbolic interactionists have demonstrated how people produce and reproduce status inequality in social interactions. However, little is known about how people sustain a sense of equality in personal relationships, where people have strong motivations to do so. This study seeks to extend the literature by focusing on friendships between gay, lesbian, and bisexual (GLB) college students and straight college students and by examining how they manage a potential risk of inequality in these friendships—their sexual orientation difference. Analysis of in-depth interviews revealed that although both GLB and straight students generally viewed their friendships as equal, GLB students reported their straight friends’ potentially discriminatory behaviors. GLB students sustained a sense of equality by rationalizing these behaviors and by emphasizing other behaviors that signaled straight students’ acceptance of same-sex sexuality. These attempts to maintain equality created a greater burden on GLB students.