A new study from the State University of Stony Brook suggests that we on the reformist American Left may be missing the point when we think of anti-gay sentiment in political terms. Surely, the GOP has used ballot measures and anti-gay rhetoric for political advantage, but they are channeling a decidedly non-partisan set of beliefs that exists within this country.
In other words, they aren't snookering potential Democratic voters into becoming Republican. They're just snookering Democratic voters into voting for Republicans, on the pretext of beliefs that these Democratic voters already had.
What are these beliefs? Well, they can be boiled down into three basic statements, which is what the study in the latest issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin did.
Details below fold.
Haslam and Levy (of the University of Melbourne and SUNY Stony Brook, respectively) whittled down statements of belief about homosexuals into three basic categories:
A) Homosexuality is discrete. You are or are not homosexual. There is no spectrum, and bisexuality is for the really confused or sick.
B) Homosexuality is mutable. You could become heterosexual if you want.
C) Homosexuality only exists in certain cultures, and not all of them.
In tandem, someone who agrees with these three statements believes that sexual orientation is an appetite of choice and that like diet, it can be changed and is not biologically determined.
The study sampled undergraduates at Stony Brook, to see how these beliefs tracked with political beliefs and other factors.
First, they found that their data best supported a model where the three beliefs were discrete and only loosed correlated. You might believe that homosexuality occurs in all cultures, but that it is a choice that can be changed by the individual. Or you might believe in homosexuality as immutable, but discrete from being heterosexual, with no middle point on the sexual preference scale.
Interestingly, it occurs to me that someone who takes issue with or refuses to accept priniciples of modern biology is susceptible to also embracing all three kinds of ideas (Homosexuality is not universal to all cultures, and is the only discretely binary alternative to absolute heterosexuality, but it is a mutable choice and not innate).
The authors also found that men tended to believe in the discreteness of homosexuality more often than women did, and that African-Americans were more likely to believe that you could "stop being a homosexual." But did this mean that African-Americans or men, especially those that subscribed to the non-biological beliefs about homosexuality, were more likely to dislike or discriminate against gays?
Using a survey to gauge attitudes towards gay men and lesbians, the authors tried to link this scale to the three categories of belief. They found that subjects who believed that homosexuals couldn't alter their sexual preferences and that homosexuality was universal to all cultures tended to have more positive attitudes to gays. On the flip side, those who believed that you were "either gay or not" tended to have more negative attitudes.
Here's where things get really interesting. The authors replicated the previously known finding that men tend to have bias against gay men more than women do, but that there is no significant gender difference in bias against lesbians. But, the authors were able to determine from their survey data that the difference was largely accounted for by the greater prevalence of the belief in sexuality discreteness among men. Men tend to believe in a binary sexual preference model rather than a spectrum, and this belief is linked to bias against gays: "You're something I am not, and therefore I oppose you."
A very different result occurred when the authors attempted to analyze ethnic differences in anti-gay attitudes. African-Americans were more likely to have anti-gay attitudes than whites, but this was not linked to belief in discrete sexual orientations. It was much better explained by the greater number of non-whites (African-American and otherwise) who believed that only certain cultures had homosexuals. In addition, anti-gay attitudes among non-whites were moderately linked to belief that sexual preference was mutable.
The study also found that subjects who identified themselves as more religious tended to have stronger bias against gays. We've been accusing the right wing in this country of capitalizing on this scenario for a while. But even this finding was not as DKos might expect. The link between religiosity and bias against gay men was tied to the degree of belief in homosexuality as mutable and non-universal; not only a "sin," but a cultural choice. The link between religiosity and bias against gay women was also dependent upon belief in non-universality and mutability of lesbianism, as well as the belief in the discreteness of lesbianism from female heterosexuality. In this way, we see that the more "male" form of anti-gay bias is similar to the religious dislike of lesbians, whereas the "minority ethnic" form of anti-gay bias is more similar to the religious dislike of gay men.
So, what is the real reason that gay men are often depicted by the GOP as the prop villains in ballot initiatives? Well, because they tick off bigoted men more, and they are more likely to draw the ire of religious non-whites. Because of the way beliefs about gays and lesbians track with anti-gay biases within particular population subgroups, the GOP can use images of gay men to subvert the Democratic base. Not even in large numbers, mind you, but enough. Yes, they are also bringing out their base with these issues, but they are muddying the waters of the middle (and even among our base) as well.
The real proof of this last point was provided by the final block of the study, where subjects were scored on scales meant to assess their belief in authoritarianism (culture needs strong controls), social dominance (culture needs a strong hierarchy), and political conservatism (as defined by some other issues of the day on a left vs. right scale).
Subscribing to strong social dominance was not predictive of anti-gay bias. If you think about it, although modern right-wing americans tend to believe in strong social dominance, this doesn't define them exclusively. There are a lot of highly educated leftists who believe in meritocracy, which is another form of social dominance. In fact, the GOP goes to great pains to downplay its social dominance message in most arenas, by painting its plutocrats as average joes.
Political conservatism on other issues did not predict anti-gay bias accurately either. Thus, Andrew Sullivan is not a hypocrite. He's predictable.
It's authoritarianism that predicts anti-gay bias. The need for strict order, present among many average Americans in an unsure world full of insecure job prospects and confusing information, leads to or is strongly associated with bias against homosexuals.
Authoritarianism even trumps the belief in mutability, non-universality, and discreteness when it comes to anti-gay bias. It can predict anti-gay bias with 43% accuracy as a singular factor independent from other beliefs.
The need for a single way, for the imposition of ORDER ... that is how we get wildly successful anti-gay ballots sweeping GOP pols into office. After authoritarianism, it is the belief that gays are discrete from heterosexuals, and that they COULD be heterosexual if they wanted to ... that's how people come to hold anti-gay biases. And among minority ethnic groups in this country, it is the belief that OTHER cultures have gays (with the implication that their culture does not) that leads to anti-gay bias.
It all boils down to: "Stop being different than me. You're adding to the complexity of the world around me, and I need simplicity. You could join the rest of us if you want, but you don't, and so I don't need to defend your right to make my world confusing. If you insist on being OTHER, we'll treat you as an OTHER." This is very different than ethnic bias or gender bias, even though those of us who hold more biologically based ideas about homosexuality don't see it that way. To us, your orientation is like your gender or ethnic group, immutable. To an overwhelming number of the biased population, it is like religion.
If we remember that anti-gay bigotry is much more like religious bigotry, then we will be able to combat it much more effectively. That, and promoting biologically-based thinking in this country again.