The role of religion in explaining the relationship between sexual prejudice and the rejection of marriage equality

ABSTRACT

Support for marriage equality (i.e. extending the privilege of marriage beyond heterosexual couples) is gaining global momentum as evidenced by the increase of countries introducing related legislation, yet little research has attempted to understand factors predicting the rejection of marriage equality. In this paper, we explore the multi-faceted role of religion in explaining the relationship between sexual prejudice and the rejection of marriage equality. Specifically, we explored the role of religious affiliation (i.e. religious-group membership; Study 1: n= 81) and multiple forms of religiosity (i.e. trait-like conceptualisations; Study 2: n= 168) in explaining the rejection of marriage equality beyond variance accounted for by simple sexual prejudice. As expected, negative attitudes towards marriage equality were related to being higher in sexual prejudice and religious fundamentalism, being lower in Quest, and being Christian (vs. non-religious). In addition, both religious fundamentalism and intrinsic religiosity moderated the marriage equality rejection-sexual prejudice relationship. Importantly, in multiple regression analyses, religious affiliation did not predict the rejection of marriage equality, and religious fundamentalism was the only significant religiosity predictor. Taken together, religiosity emerged as a more useful quantification of religion than religious affiliation in the context of explaining the rejection of marriage equality.

KEYWORDS:

• Marriage equality
• same-sex marriage
• sexual prejudice
• religiosity
• religious fundamentalism
• religious orientation
• religion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In this paper, Anderson and colleagues reported findings based on having a religious affiliation (vs a non-religious affiliation). It is worth noting that the religious portion of the sample was comprised mainly by Christians (sample composition: Christian: 50.4%; Jewish: 1.5%; Hindu: 1.5%; Muslim: 1.5%; Atheist: 21.9%; agnostic: 13.1%; ‘do not believe’: 8.8%).

2. It is worth highlighting that most of the research on religion and prejudice has been conducted in the United States, and on Christian samples.

3. Given that political affiliation was related to scores for Christian, but not non-religious, participants we also ran this analysis when including political orientation in the model as a covariate. There were no meaningful differences, so in an effort to conserve statistical power we reported the analysis without this covariate.

4. Effect size for multiple regressions in this paper were calculated from the observed R² using software by Soper (2021) based on the work of Cohen (1988).

5. We omitted one item when calculating the average scores for the extrinsic ROS (corrected item-total correlation = −.037). When using the full 12 items, the α = .837. The excluded item was ‘It does not matter so much what I believe so long as I lead a moral life’.

6. The residuals of the ATHS scale produced some heteroscedastic variance concerns. These were anticipated because of the nature of the construct and its relationship with the dependent variable; however, following the protocol of Anderson and Koc (2015), further transformation of the raw data, and robust regression techniques were used to explore this violation (Wilcox, 2005).

7. Effect size for multiple regressions in this paper were calculated from the observed R2 using software by Soper (2015) based on the work of Cohen (1988).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joel R. Anderson

Joel R. Anderson, PhD is a Lecturer at Australian Catholic University and a Research Fellow at the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University. His research is focused on intergroup processes and group relations, with a focus on the impact of the minority group.

Linda J. Ashford

Linda J. Ashford is a PhD candidate is Swinburne University of Technology, in Melbourne Australia. Her research is based in the Centre for Forensic Behavioural Science. Her main research interest is cross-cultural measurement and variance in offenders in custody, with a focus on notions of cross-cultural fairness.

Prashnitha Prakash

Prashnitha Prakash is an independent researcher and the chief operations officer and a senior psychologist at a major psychometrics firm in Melbourne Australia.

Adam Gerace

Adam Gerace, PhD is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Course – Positive Psychology at Central Queensland University. His research specifically focuses on the process of perspective taking and the strategies used to understand another person’s point of view.