Etiology and Attitudes: Beliefs About the Origins of Homosexuality and Their Implications for Public Policy

Abstract

Using survey data from the 2008 election cycle, this article updates and extends analysis of public attitudes regarding various aspects of homosexuality. Continued expansion of public belief in a biological root to homosexuality is found, and variations in such opinions are explored. Public attitudes toward the emerging issue of gay adoption is also examined, finding both similarities with and important differences from attitudes toward same-sex civil unions, although both are profoundly influenced by underlying attitudes regarding the causes of homosexuality.

Keywords:

• adoption
• heritability
• marriage

Notes

1. As noted later, the survey question on which this analysis is based equates civil unions with same-sex marriage, and throughout the article, I use the terms interchangeably. Although some will object to this equivalence, as the Human Rights Campaign has noted, the two are, in fact, legally comparable because civil unions give “same-sex couples access to the state-level rights and responsibilities of marriage” (see http://www.harc.org/issues/pages/civil_unions.asp).

2. The lines of causality in this relation have been questioned, including recently by Lewis (2009), whose meta-analysis of American public opinion surveys between 1977 and 2005 concluded that “people may choose their attributions to validate their value judgments” (p. 670). This issue has been debated in the psychology literature (e.g., for competing arguments and evidence, see Haslam & Levy, 2006; Hegerty & Golden, 2008), although both sides of the dispute acknowledge the limitations of the data accumulated so far and the necessity for considerably more research before drawing definitive conclusions. As it bears more on the utility of stressing biological traits “as a policy tool for shifting opinion on LGB [lesbian, gay, and bisexual] rights” (Lewis, 2009, p. 690) than it does on my analysis, I do not focus on the dispute here.

3. As the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Lesbian and Gay Rights Project put it: “In the end, we cannot force America to accept marriage for same-sex couples with lawsuits. But we can persuade America to do that. We already know that we can win over a majority of Americans if we show them that same-sex couples have committed relationships and suffer tragically when society treats them as strangers… . To change the thinking of America, national organizations like the ACLU, HRC [Human Rights Campaign], NGLTF [National Gay and Lesbian Task Force], GLAAD [Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation], and others have to find stories of committed couples, show how society mistreats them as strangers, and get those stories out” (aclu.org/lgbt/relationships/12423res20041201.html, para. 26–27).

4. The Florida law was struck by a state court in 2008, but the state is currently appealing and continues to enforce the prohibition. Florida does, however, permit gays and lesbians to serve as foster parents, which is evidence of the inconsistencies of the law in this area.

5. Indeed, recently surveying the situation, Rayside (2008) was struck by the far greater ease of gay adoptions in the United States than in Europe, concluding that the “spread of parenting rights [in the United States] is remarkable, especially in the face of mounting conservative pressure to bar such rights” (p. 292).

6. In doing so, I present far more complete multivariate models than found in the existing literature—most notably, Schwartz (2010). Due to data limitations, Schwartz's analysis excludes a number of potentially interesting independent variables including race, partisanship, marital status, income, and personal contact with gays and lesbians, in addition to the etiology and personality indicator variables.

7. Mucciaroni (2008) made a similar argument regarding the impact that concerns for child welfare among social workers and family court judges have had on the expansion of gay adoptions.

8. Respondents were also asked if “over the past few years” their “beliefs about the cause of homosexuality stayed the same or changed.” Those who indicated change were queried as to whether they had “come to believe that homosexuality is determined more by biological make-up or to believe that homosexuality is more of a lifestyle choice?”

9. The survey did not offer respondents a third option—that homosexuality is “because of the way people are brought up” (see Haider-Markel & Joslyn, 2008). Because Haider-Markel and Joslyn (2008, p. 295) collapsed the upbringing and personal choice responses to form a single non-biological basis category, the analysis here is very compatible.

10. In actuality, gay adoption is a far more complicated issue than the relatively simple question wording used here can capture. There are at least three different categories recognized in the law: adoption by a gay individual, joint adoption by a same-sex couple, and adoption of a partner's biological child by a same-sex partner. I assume, but cannot verify, that most respondents envisioned the context of adoption by same-sex couples when answering this question.

11. The exact wording of the question was, “And what about the kinds of people you tend to see, talk to, or interact with on a typical day? Do you often see or interact with people you know to be gay or lesbian?” The likely endogeneity of answers to this question relative to attitudes toward gays and lesbians is well known (see Overby & Barth, 2002) because there is evidence of considerable selective disclosure, with gays and lesbians more likely to “out” themselves to those they suspect have warmer preexisting attitudes toward homosexuals (see Wells & Kline, 1987). Because I use it only as a control variable and have little immediate interest in its causal importance, endogeneity is of little concern. Also, because this question was asked of only a relatively small number of respondents who were queried about same-sex adoption, along with a question regarding political interest, it is a principal culprit in lowering sample sizes in the analyses reported later. Where appropriate, therefore, I present results of models both including and excluding these variables, and note that other studies have also utilized relatively small samples (e.g., see Becker & Scheufele, 2009; Wood & Bartkowski, 2004).

12. The Ten Item Personality Index (TIPI) has been used in a number of academic studies, some of which are listed on Gosling, Rentfrow, and Swann's (2003) Websitehttp://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/scales_we.htm For further discussion of the use of TIPI in political science research, see Gerber, Huber, Raso, and Ha (n.d.).

13. These are age, gender, gay contact, religiosity (which they measure using self-reported church attendance and I measure with the importance of religion question), Protestantism, status as a born-again Christian, ideology, race, and marital status. They also included a variable for having children (which was marginally significant in the attribution model), which I exclude because it was not asked in the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project survey.

14. Income also emerges as a significant predictor in this model, although—contra Haider-Markel and Joslyn (2008)—I continue to find no effect for education. It is possible that what they took to be an educational effect is actually an upshot of income because perhaps it is not formal education per se that contributes to belief in biological attribution, but the broader range of experiences and opportunities that are associated with elevated economic status.

15. In bivariate analysis, religious importance and attitudes toward gay adoption correlate at 0.28, whereas the correlation between religion and civil unions is 0.37. Similarly, testing the marginal effect of religious importance across all four equations for the adoption and civil unions models show significantly larger impacts for civil unions (.06 and .07, respectively) than for adoption (.04 and .02, respectively).

16. Similarly, Becker and Scheufele (2009, p. 206; Schwartz, 2010) recently suggested “from a strategic perspective” the wisdom of gay rights advocates “highlighting the various religious groups that have come to accept gay clergy and embrace gay congregants.”

17. This strong relation is visible in bivariate analysis, too. Among those who believe that homosexuality is rooted in biology, 69% supported Obama, compared to 16% for McCain. Among those who believe that homosexuality represents a choice, the opposite is true: 70% favored McCain, whereas < 18% preferred Obama.