There was a somewhat funny, if stupid, comment below in regards to minority opposition to gay marriage:
This has to be one of most ignorant and race obsessed articles I have ever read. Since you are so blinded by race you decided to leave out the most determinative factors in ones opinion concerning sexuality. The fact of the matter is black people are products of being enslaved and socialized in the bible belt. Black people are actually more tolerant of homosexuality then there white counterparts from the same cultural/geographic areas. Compare black opinions on homosexuality to Scotts-Irish in Georgia, South Carolina, and Texas then we can have a conversation.
As I have pointed out before most of the black American opposition to gay is probably due to their propensity toward Christian fundamentalism, which is the most well developed of any American racial group (Asian Americans are the most secular).* In any case, is it true that blacks are actually more supportive than whites when you control for region? Let's look.
Again, the GSS variable MARHOMO measures opposition or support for gay marriage. I limit to the years 2006 and 2008 (there was very little change in the sample in terms of opinion). Additionally I select only whites and blacks, and break it down by Census Region. Finally I discarded all regions where the number of blacks surveyed was < 50. I added together those who "disagree" and "strongly disagree" with gay marriage into one category, and plot them on a graph where the X axis are the regions where the sample sizes for blacks are relatively large.
As you can see, the ignorant commenter was wrong. In all the regions with large sample sizes blacks oppose gay marriage more than whites do. But, regional culture obviously has an influence. It is important to recall that many northern blacks descend from those who emigrated from the South within the past 3-4 generations, so their cultural conservatism is probably a reflection of the South. But living in the North has shifted their viewpoints somewhat. So blacks who live in the northeast and Rust Belt oppose gay marriage a bit less than whites in some parts of the South. Also, I think that it is unfortunate that I had to discard the McCain Belt states, "East South Central," because of small sample sizes. This region of extreme cultural conservatism and racial polarization has exhibited relative black-white unanimity on social issues when I've poked around the GSS (other questions have larger sample sizes than MARHOMO).
* Religion does not explain all the difference. I suspect this is due to the very small size of the nonreligious among American blacks, so that their milieu is still strongly flavored by conservative Christianity.
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Who cares? Ignorance is not a valid point of view, and it makes very ugly line graphs. Eventually, our equal rights will be granted to us by the courts. With the exceptions of the civil rights era pioneers, the hypocritical religious zealots who are constipated over our equal protections have never had to do anything themselves for their equal protections.
Bigotry, ignorance, homophobia, sexism, and racism are social diseases that don't know any boundaries, and are reckless spirits that don't care which region they infect.
I'm gay, so excuse me if this sounds a little snarky, but where do black people get off? They have more out-of-wedlock births and cheat more on their spouses (thanks, Inductivist) than any other racial group!
Though to be fair, one could ask the same thing of gay men. We don't have kids out of wedlock of course, but nor are we known for our commitment to monogamy.
It looks like I now know the magic words to get someone else to hump more GSS variable work.
In addition to religion, there's resentment of gay males in the black community because they further reduce the 'marriageable' males, already in short supply.
It's racist to criticize blacks for being homophobic!
It's homophobic to criticize gays for being racist!
SO
Let's all smash the Mormons. YAY
The biggest gap seems to be Mid Atlantic (the Quaker homeland of Albion's Seeds). I guess Mid Atlantic whites are just so uncool that their black neighbors are unusually unlikely to imitate them.
What about a genetic reason? Young black males are more hyper-masculine and aggressive. This leads to both higher rates of violence and increased feelings of disgust towards gays.
What I want to know is why did you use a line graph to show your data?
Sorry, but by any chance does this graph come with error bars?
Are there any numbers for the MidWest at all? I'd be interested to see what the data is for around here (Iowa), particularly in light of the state's supreme court decision.
As for comment #2...a lot of the problems you cite are social issues relating to poverty.
and for comment #7...the hyper-masculine aspects are largely due to acculturation, much like the Latino "machismo" that's been cited as an excuse for all kinds of (equally) anti-social behaviours by Latino boys and men.
For both of you...what exactly does that have to do with the correlation of religiosity in the country's black communities as it relates to marriage rights and protections for gay couples?