Ford and Sides on Gay Marriage

This analysis suggests that attitudes towards gay marriage depend far more on attitudes towards gays themselves than on beliefs about gender roles.

In other breaking news, dog bites man. Film at 11.

My sense is that this statistical analysis is correct. While gays have gained high visibility in the media, entertainment industry, and popular literature, mainstream acceptance by the American public lags behind. The public face of gaydom is the wrong one, characterized by adjectives like “flaming” and the perception that promiscuity is commonplace. The gay people I have known — subdued in appearance and demeanor, in committed relationships — are below the surface. This is a shame because knowing such people changed my opinion over the years, and more exposure would undoubtedly change attitudes toward gay marriage. With regard to that, however, I wonder if the key issue isn’t just the word. Would the gay community be willing to forswear the word “marriage” for the sake of realizing the legal equivalent, universally recognized?

I haven’t access to the data, so perhaps you’ve already accounted for it, but don’t we need to know the relative proportions of each group in society? I’m not surprised that people who hate gays are opposed to gay marriage, and are more likely to oppose gay marriage than people who believe in traditional gender roles; if I hate a group, why would I want to give them a benefit? But if there are only few people who hate gays (as opposed to not particularly caring about gays as a group one way or the other–the situation I suppose I’m in, since while I have loads of gay loved ones, I’m no more favourably disposed, or infavourably disposed, towards gay peoeple as a group than I am towards Filipinos or bowlers), and a lot of people who believe in traditional gender roles, then traditional gender roles would swamp gay-hating among opponents of gay marriage, even though any individual gay hater is much more likely to oppose gay marriage than any one traditionalist.

HOWEVER, feelings towards gays have a much stronger effect on attitudes toward gay marriage.
When one shifts from strongly opposing equality for women to strongly supporting equality (i.e., the maximum possible shift on this scale), the probability of support for gay marriage increases by about .26. That is to say, the change that one will support gay marriage increases by 26%. When one shifts from strong aversion to gays/lesbians to strong affinity for gays/lesbians (i.e., the maximum possible shift on this scale), the probability of support for gay marriage increases by about .74.

This is a complete non sequitur.

Imagine that you have 1,000 people who oppose gay marriage. The question that Ford is asking is this: What are their reasons? Dislike of homosexuals? Or belief in gender roles?

Suppose that it’s the case that 900 of the 1,000 believe in gender roles, while the other 100 believe that way out of sheer dislike for homosexuals.

Ford would be correct in that circumstance, would he not?

Yet the point made here by Sides could also be correct. It could still be the case that for the 900 people who believe in gender roles, their likelihood of supporting gay marriage would increase by a mere 24% if they stopped believing in gender roles, and that the other 100 people would support gay marriage by a increased 76% margin if they started having wonderful feelings toward homosexuals.

In short, Sides’ point does zero to rebut Ford.

If you believe that advocacy of “traditional” marriage alone, unaccompanied by blatant homophobia, could provide the energy we see in the anti-gay-marriage movement, I have some lovely underwater waterfront property in Florida I’d like to sell you.

No, it crossed with yours- addressed somewhat to functional (#7), also somewhat just a general comment.

I wrote a diary about gay marriage on redstate.

The basic insight I had was that there are two kinds of Marriage:

1) In The Eyes Of God
2) In The Eyes Of The State

The majority of the anti-gay marriage forces mean banning the first when they talk about banning gay marriage.

Unfortunately, “Marriage In The Eyes Of God” is covered by the First Amendment.

So they’re stuck banning the second because they can’t ban the first.

I argue that gay marriage will eventually be accepted by society because, after a while, denying hospital visitation and inheritance rights to people who went to the Unitarians and had a Life Partnership Ceremony In The Eyes Of God will get depressing.

I think that if there is some sort of official pronouncement that you can’t sue the Catholics/Baptists/Mormons/Buddhists for denying the Marriage Ceremony to same-sex couples… even if they say “we don’t serve your kind here”… a good chunk of the anti-gay marriage sentiment will disappear.

Too many anti-civil unions people aren’t against civil unions because they don’t like gays, they just see civil unions as the nose of the camel. (I think that they’re right to, personally.) If they could get assurances that their right to deny marriage to same-sex couples in their church is covered by the First Amendment, I’d guess that a large amount (though maybe not a plurality) of the hostility to gay marriage will just evaporate.

Sorry, jaybird, that just doesn’t add up. These people are NOT worried that THEIR preacher will be forced to “bless” gay marriages. I’ve seen plenty of their propaganda (leading up to the passage of a state constitutional “defence of marriage” amendment in 2004) here in North AlabamaOhio and that just doesn’t feature at all. They don’t want the Unitarian minister down the street to be able to do it no matter how much she’d like to. That’s plain homophobia, no matter how you ty to slice it. (Also, not too many of them would be willing to tolerate civil unions, either.)

I think the correct way to do this would just be statistical correlation (R2) – what’s the correlation between opposing gay marriage and hating gays, or opposing gay marriage and supporting traditional gender roles. This should tell you the fraction of “opposition to gay marriage” explained by either of these factors. Jane Galt’s criticism in #5 seems to hold water, as well.

I think some of the commenters need to step out of their coastal / academic environments into “Middle America”, where MOST PEOPLE I encounter exhibit homophobia that is at one and the same time virulent, and casual almost to the point of unconsciousness. I think that a lot of peple who are sheltered from this reality greatly underestimate its strength and prevalence.

I’ve always wondered why there is so much hatred for gays when I know many that are perfectly fine people, why traditional marriage has lasted so long, and why no one seems to have ever made non-traditional marriage work before. I mean, historically, long-lasting enough that it became tradition. I have this view:

Small change in birth rates translate into an enormous population and demographical difference over time. Any civilization that drops it’s birth rate to accomodate alternative (childless) lifestyles would have vanished inside a century, conquered, absorbed or marginalized by faster-growing neighbors.

Saying it’s okay to be childless was in some ways the same as saying “it’s okay if our children lose their country to invaders”. It doesn’t surprise me that a they would be scorned.

Thoughts on this idea?

Let me clarify, I don’t agree that it is RIGHT to scorn gays or others who differ from traditional values, I’m only saying that childbearing and survival are closely linked, and therefore breeds protectionist attitudes.

Responses to various posts:

1) Jane Galt and Functional raise an interesting question about the basic distribution of anti-gay sentiment and support for traditional gender roles.

On the gay/lesbian feeling thermometer, the mean score is 48.5, or just below the “neutral point.” The distribution of opinion suggests that roughly one-third of respondents rates gays below 50, one-third right at 50, and one-third above 50.

The distribution of support for traditional gender roles is quite different. On the seven-point scale, the majority of respondents (61%) select the endpoint of the scale corresponding to the strongest support for equal roles. An additional 22% select the two closest values on that spectrum. Thus, a total of 83% are on the “equality” side of the spectrum. That leaves 16% at the midpoint and 7% on the “traditional” end of that spectrum.

Of course, neither indicator is perfect, and so one mustn’t make too much of this simple analysis. But these results suggest that the fraction who feels “less-than-warmly” towards gays as a group outnumbers the fraction who professes to support traditional gender roles. Again, that conclusion is anything but iron-clad, but it does comport with my own intuition: that acceptance of some degree of gender equality is more widespread than positive feelings towards gays and lesbians.

(Jane Galt’s further point about the meaning of feeling thermometer scores toward large groups is well-taken. This is not an ideal measure of anti-gay sentiment.)

2) Alex Gregory asks whether people who respond coolly to gays do so because they believe gays violate traditional gender roles. Interestingly, the bivariate correlation between these two measures is .26, which is far from 0 but far from perfect as well. If you look at those who respond coolly to gays (less than 50 on the 0-100 scale), most (73%) are on the pro-equality side of the traditional gender roles scale (and 46% are at the pro-equality endpoint). So, in short, it appears that a significant number of people profess to support equal gender roles while simultaneously harboring less-than-warm feelings towards gays and lesbians.

3) Evan’s point is correct. I should have said 26 percentage points. My oversight.

4) Sam Chevre: Can you elaborate?

5) Saurabh: I computed the simple bivariate R2 that you propose. The answer is that feelings towards gays explains much more variance in attitudes towards gay marriage than does attitudes towards gender roles (21% vs. 7%).

In sum, it is not a simple question to say which of these two factors is more important in driving attitudes towards gay marriage. All of the results from this survey suggest that attitudes towards gays are more important, but this is far from the last word. I appreciate everyone’s thoughts. Incidentally, this is not a focus of my own research, only something I did in my “spare time” because I was curious about the empirical merits of Ford’s thesis.

Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.

John (#25),

I interpret Alex (#8) differently. It may not be that respondents are thinking that gays personally violate traditional gender roles, but that the gay rights movement is undermining them politically. In other words, the respondents may not be thinking “I don’t like gays because they are swishy” but “I don’t like gays because they are trying to redefine marriage.” If this is the case, then the analysis has it backwards and homophobia is not a cause, but an effect of opposition to gay marriage. I think that the relationship is probably endogenous (ie, causation goes both ways).
If I’m right, opinion polls should have picked up a feeling thermometer drop towards gays right after the Goodrich decision.

#27 – I take it you feel it’s wrong to try to understand opponents of gay marriage, because you think their behavior is then too easy to forgive. You make an excellent point. Imagine what might happen if more straight people tried to understand what life is like for gay and lesbian couples. Why, they might support gay marriage! And we can’t have that, can we?

Understanding has to go both ways. We can’t demand it of others and then refuse to give it back; why would they listen? It’s true many people are too prejudiced to change their views, but we’ll never win the people in the middle if we don’t try to understand them; only through understanding can we learn how to be convincing.

I’m sure you were very understanding of those fine upstanding Southron folk who just had, you know, a little problem with the “nigras”.

Functional: I agree that the ANES survey item is not the last word on how people perceive gender identities. But it was all I had to use. My larger question — I suppose it’s ultimately a question for Ford — is what “meaningful sex identities” means and how (echoing Uncle Kvetch here) it helps explain attitudes toward gay marriage. My own intuition (at least somewhat supported by the survey data) is that when people are asked about a policy change that benefits a particular group, their opinion of that policy will depend in large part on their attitude towards that group, not on something as abstract as “meaningful sex identities.”

James: The question about gay marriage refers to “same-sex couples.” The feeling thermometer item refers to “gay men and lesbians, that is, homosexuals” (a fact I neglected to mention in the original post). So it seems unlikely that question wording affected the results in the way you suggest.

Damn it, I got two paragraphs reversed. Don’t know how that happened:

My own intuition (at least somewhat supported by the survey data) is that when people are asked about a policy change that benefits a particular group, their opinion of that policy will depend in large part on their attitude towards that group, not on something as abstract as “meaningful sex identities.”

It wouldn’t necessarily occur in people’s minds as a reference to “meaningful sex identities.” It might occur in the form of a thought like this: “Two men marrying each other? Look, they can live their lives however they want, but that just doesn’t seem like the same thing as an actual ‘marriage.’ Who’s the husband and who’s the wife?”

What’s going on there is not “I hate/fear homosexuals,” but “I don’t think that what they’re doing is the same sort of thing.” And that latter belief could be described—abstractly—as about “meaningful sex identities.”

* * *

UK: I’ve been addressing the point that Ford made—i.e., that some people do seem to believe in “meaningful sex identities,” or however one wants to put it. You seem to think that I wanted to defend “meaningful sex identities” on the merits. You’re confused.

I’ve been addressing the point that Ford made—i.e., that some people do seem to believe in “meaningful sex identities,” or however one wants to put it. You seem to think that I wanted to defend “meaningful sex identities” on the merits. You’re confused.

Functional, I wasn’t suggesting that you were defending “meaningful sex identities.” But you do seem to be suggesting that there’s some kind of connection in these people’s minds–whether you think it’s justifiable is another matter–that leads from “two men getting married” to a weakening of those “meaningful sex identities.” But I almost never see opponents of SSM even attempt to get from Point A to Point B–it’s simply taken as a given. And Ford’s stab at establishing that connection is simply laughable: a mess of anecdotes (Thelma & Louise? WTF?), decontextualized factoids about opinion surveys, and pure speculation.

Now, you do (or did) seem to want to defend Ford against Sides’ critique, so I asked: whether you agree with them or not, how, in your opinion, do SSM opponents get from my marrying my partner to a weakening of “sex identities”? And for that matter, whose “sex identities” are we talking about here? Maybe they think that our relationship renders both of us somehow less than fully “male” (“who’s the bride and who’s the groom?”), but even that begs the question: how does our relationship affect them personally, or society as a whole?

In short, when people try to make the argument that maybe opponents of SSM aren’t motivated by antigay animus but by “something else,” but they can’t even make a reasonable explanation of what that “something else” might be, I’m inclined to call bullshit.

whether you agree with them or not, how, in your opinion, do SSM opponents get from my marrying my partner to a weakening of “sex identities”? And for that matter, whose “sex identities” are we talking about here? Maybe they think that our relationship renders both of us somehow less than fully “male” (“who’s the bride and who’s the groom?”), but even that begs the question: how does our relationship affect them personally, or society as a whole?

Some years ago, a friend of mine had a divorced colleague whose young son was visiting for the weekend. My friend said, “Oh, you should take him to the pride parade – that will be a lot of fun.” And the colleague said, “No, I don’t want him to be confused.”

When I heard this story, I wondered, confused by what? Now I think he didn’t want his son confused about “proper” masculine behavior. Gender roles are taught by example and are socially enforced. Since gay couples don’t conform to those perceived roles, children who see them may realize that the traditional roles aren’t a given. And of course their traditionally minded parents don’t want that to happen.

You might think that’s a stretch, but visible role models have a powerful influence over the choices kids make. Once most girls didn’t even consider becoming a doctor because they didn’t see women inhabiting that role. Now we have many women doctors, lawyers, scientists, etc. Once women in those roles were scary examples of unfeminine behavior. Now they’re normal.

I think any two people in a loving relationship provide a good example for others, so to me it only seems natural that young people would be influenced by seeing a happy gay couple. Do you disagree?

Here’s a thought that often interferes with y willingness to condone condone childless marriage.

Those who do not contribute children to the next generation still expect to benefit from them, don’t they? To be protected, to be cared for. A strong economy, a good military and tax-supported institutions don’t just happen, they have to be supported, and that takes work.

If it’s your right to withhold contributing to the next generation, that can be fine and good, but to each their due, isn’t that fair? Why should childless men and women, who don’t make the sacrifice of childrearing, share equally in the benefits of their output?

Which is more wrong? For society to pressure people to contribute children in exchange for an equal share, or for people to oblige society to provide them with an equal share whether they contribute or not?

It should be noted that if we reach a point in our scientific development where all labor is done by machines my objection will vanish, because literally nothing you can do will affect anything, but PRESENTLY, we still need people to do work for us.

I guess we childless people don’t pay property taxes to support schools, or state income taxes to support schools, or donate to school programs, or work with Big Brother/Big Sister or with Junior Achievement.

No, we don’t contribute in any way to the wellbeing of children. We are sterile plants in the garden of civilisation!

Your contribution is recognized however, I don’t think it equals the value created in the lifetime experience of a new human being. Not by any stretch.

If Generation B requires X amount of labor to properly care for Generation A, then reducing B’s membership by 20% requires us to either A) diminish A’s support by 20%, B) increase B’s output by 25%, or let those in A who didn’t contribute to B fend for themselves. Which option do you think is fairest?

If Generation B requires X amount of labor to properly care for Generation A…

You raise a good question with regard to how a large group of retired adults can be supported by a smaller group of working adults, but I don’t see what that has to do with gay marriage. If, for instance, I chose option C – to let members of the older generation who hadn’t had offspring pay for their own retirment – that would certainly mean a lot of folks, gay and straight, would lose out on Social Security benefits, but I don’t see why that would necessarily affect their marital status.

Commentators have theorized that gay men may lead to population decline or other darwinian catastrophes. Yet recent research shows that mothers modify their male fetuses toward homosexuality after several male babies have been born. Canadian researchers have consistently documented a “big-brother effect,” finding that the chances of a boy being gay increase with each additional older brother he has. If this trait has survived in evolution, perhaps having a gay uncle is what every kid needs.

If the thread insists I’ll provide the Boston.com cite.

#51 Commentators have theorized that gay men may lead to population decline or other darwinian catastrophes.

Gay men do not lead to population decline. Gay men do not lead to Darwinian catastrophes. Childless unions lead to population decline, and a civilization that adopts the idea that the members of one generation do not have a duty to create and rear the next leads to Darwinian catastrophes, in my view.

Coming back to the stats, and assuming for simplicity that the “traditional values” question is one that divides the population equally, the best way to test would be to look at the answers on the “warmth” scale that correspond to the 25th and 75th percentiles. On the stated assumption, moving from one answer to the other on values is, on average the same as moving from the 25th to the 75th percentile.

I am carefully considering everything I say Steve. I’m saying nothing that hasn’t been handed down as wisdom in every prior civilization since the dawn of man. If childless marriages had successful precedent in history I would consider them in my arguments as well.

I’m genuinely sorry you are offended, but unless you feel children have ‘zero net value’ I fail to see why you think parents should not be honored.

Steve – children in intensively resource-consuming (and carbon-emitting) societies like the US may well be a negative net value.

So should we fine you Steve? As a parent you’re apparently guilty of environmental misconduct.

You’re possibly a little too close this. Thousands of generations of traditional marriage to zero generations of childless marriage and you’re certain it’s society that has a problem.

I have one child, below replacement level. So my fine will be commuted. ;)

What exactly, by the way, is “traditional marriage”? The 1950s nuclear family for which contemporary US conservaives are so nostalgic? That sure as hell doesn’t go back “thousands of generations”. I think you need to do a little research on the history and comparative anthropology of the family.

– Steve: I have one child, below replacement level. So my fine will be commuted. ;)

Good for you :) See? If everyone did that our population would plummet.

– Steve: What exactly, by the way, is “traditional marriage”?

Every culture I have ever looked into has been anchored by strong customs of pairing men with women for the purpose of procreation. The particulars of the union vary from culture to culture, but as you travel away from the basic mom, pop and baby format it becomes increasingly infrequent. No culture that I know of has ever considered the act of cohabitation to require binding vows like marriage, and I happen to agree that they are separate categories of relationship, not to be confused with one another.

By ‘binding vows’ I mean that when you make them, society will enforce them as law. Parents with children need this kind of societal oversight to help them stay together in hard times, but two adults? There is no reason why society needs to enforce interdependent relationships between consenting adults.

No.29:
“I interpret Alex (#8) differently. […] the analysis has it backwards and homophobia is not a cause, but an effect of opposition to gay marriage.”

Yes, this is indeed what I intended. Mere correlation does not tell us which way the causation goes.

I’m against redefining marriage to regard childless couples as equal to childbearing couples.

Marriage is already defined in this way, chriss. Childless married couples, whether childless by choice or by circumstances beyond their control, are completely equal to married couples with children under the law.

It’s clear that you find this objectionable, but the fact is that it has virtually nothing to do with same-sex marriage.

A quick reply to Alex Gregory (#65) and ghr (#29):

First, apologies for missing ghr’s point the first time around. The question is whether attitudes toward gay marriage is a cause or consequence of feelings about gays in general. My off-the-cuff answer is that, for most people alive today, their feelings about gays were “formed” before their feeling about gay marriage, given how recently gay marriage has become a salient issue. So my intuition is that the causality is generally running from feelings toward gays to attitudes about gay marriage.

However, it is possible that the salience of a relatively unpopular issue, gay marriage, made some people feel more negatively toward gays in general. GHR asks whether the feeling thermometer score dropped after the Goodridge decision in Massachussetts. That decision was announced on November 18, 2003. So, one might ask whether the feeling thermometer score dropped between the 2002 National Election Study and the 2004 NES (which I used to produce the analysis in the original post). (To be sure, comparing 2002 and 2004 is pretty rough, since the surveys don’t precisely bracket the Goodridge decision.) Below is the mean on the 0-100 thermometer for every year the question was asked. As you can see, there has been a substantial increase since 1984, which parallels numerous other trends in public opinion towards gays and lesbians. Between 2002 and 2004, the evidence suggest a small increase rather than a decrease in the feeling thermometer:

1984- 29.9
1988- 28.5
1992- 37.7
1994- 35.5
1996- 39.8
1998- 45.4
2000- 47.3
2002- 46.4
2004- 48.5

So there is no evidence here that feelings towards gays in general grew less favorable as a result of the debate.

I did a little searching in some polling databases to see if I could find questions that (1) measured general feelings towards gays and lesbians and (2) were asked relatively close to the Goodridge decision (both before and after). I didn’t see anything that fit the bill, though my search probably wasn’t exhaustive.

Hope that is helpful.

‘Wedlock’ is a good word. Dammit.

This Pew survey asked people why they oppose same-sex marriage. It doesn’t really address the question at issue in this thread, but I thought it might be interesting to folks nonetheless.

#73, I don’t oppose any SSM’s that include children. I don’t think friends, sex partners, roommates or soulmates need marriage, I think families need it.

Or putting it another way, I don’t so much mind marriages without children as I mind children without marriages. Allowing one seems to allow the other. See 70, 74 for why I consider it a bad idea.

#52 chris s – Your assertion that “Any legal protection they want is either already covered under our civil law, and anything else (like wills, disposition of joint assets) can be handled by contract,” is absoLUTEly UNTRUE! What research did you do to arrive at this conclusion? It seems to me that you just sat around and thought really really really hard.

Under United States federal laws, according to a 2003 GAO report, there are 1,138 laws relating to the rights, privileges, and obligations of marriage. Google “gao gay marriage report” to find it.

A marriage license costs, what, 40 bucks? My same-sex partner and I spent $2500 for wills, powers of attorney, medical powers of attorney, and living together agreements. Let’s see, 1,138 minus 4 = 1,134. At $625/document (actually 2, one for each of us per line item) times 1,134 . . . that’s $708,750 we would have to shell out! Wow! What a bargin! Thanks for opening our eyes to the beauty of contracts!

But wait, reading through the GAO’s report, I see a few interesting items which have nothing to do with couples who have children: the right not to be compelled to testify against one another in a court of law, the right to claim a deceased spouse’s body (as well as to determine burial), the ability to sue on a spouse’s behalf were the spouse gravely injured at work, etc., etc., etc.

Unmarried same-sex partners CANNOT contract for these and “anything else” as you so blithely phrase it. Get real.