Factors shaping Asian Americans’ attitudes toward homosexuality

ABSTRACT

Numerous studies explore racial differences in attitudes toward homosexuality in the United States, but relatively little research focuses on Asian Americans. Using the 2016 National Asian American Survey and the 2012 Pew Asian-American Survey, this study examines the factors shaping Asian Americans’ likelihood of supporting legal protections against sex-based discrimination and socially accepting homosexuality. It finds that second-generation Asians are much more likely to socially accept homosexuality and support legal protections for sex-based discrimination than the first generation, which hints at intergenerational acculturation. Among other factors, ethnicity, religion, and education all shape Asians’ attitudes, but their relative importance varied by immigrant generation and the dimension of attitudes. Taken together, the findings highlight the heterogeneity of Asian Americans and confirm the importance of accounting for the multidimensionality of attitudes toward homosexuality in research.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian Americans
• immigration
• ethnicity
• religion
• attitudes toward homosexuality
• LGBTQ

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Van Tran for his thoughtful guidance and encouragement throughout this project. I am also grateful to Amy Adamczyk, Thomas Chung, Maggie Fay, Isabel Gil Everaert, Yen-Chiao (Angel) Liao, Susie Tanenbaum, Sejung Sage Yim, Anna Zhelnina, and the anonymous reviewers at Ethnic and Racial Studies for many insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To date, Taiwan is the only country that has legalized same-sex marriage in Asia.

2 There is a small amount of missing data across the covariates except for income. See Table 1 for percent missing for each variable used in the analysis.

3 See Appendix 1 for unweighted counts broken down by ethnicity and immigrant generation.

4 Sensitivity analyses that treat 1.5 generation separately confirmed that their likelihood of supporting legal protections and socially accepting homosexuality falls in between those of the first and second generations.

5 Results not shown, but available upon request.