The Shifting Foundations of Public Opinion

about Gay Rights

The Journal of Politics

Volume 65, Issue 4
(November 2003)

Disclaimer: This document is the final version of the manuscript, submitted by the
corresponding author to The Journal of Politics Editorial Office. Readers should note that it will
not reflect any corrections or revisions that may occur during the copyediting process. But, any
such changes will be relatively minor. Therefore, this draft should be identical in all important
respects to the version that will appear in print, in JOP 65:4.

Paul R. Brewer
The George Washington University
 The Shifting Foundations of Public Opinion about Gay Rights

ABSTRACT

This study tests two explanations for the recent increase in support among the American public

for gay rights policies. One possibility is that shifts in the aggregate levels of predispositions

such as egalitarianism, moral traditionalism, feelings toward gays and lesbians, partisanship, and

ideology produced changes in policy opinions. Another possibility is that shifts in the underlying

structure of opinion--that is, shifts in the how citizens used these predispositions to think about

the issue--produced changes in support for gay rights. An analysis of data from the 1992, 1996,

and 2000 National Election Studies showed that both types of shifts explained why Americans

became increasingly favorable toward gay rights policies over this span.

I would like to thank Rory Austin, Steve Balla, Lee Sigelman, and three anonymous reviewers

for their helpful comments.

Brewer

The Shifting Foundations of Public Opinion about Gay Rights

Disputes over gay rights policies have occupied a prominent place on the American

public agenda in recent years. Political institutions ranging from the U.S. Congress to city

councils have been drawn into the fray (Brewer, Kaib, and O’Connor 2000; Button, Reinzo, and

Wald 1997, 2000; Campbell and Davidson 2000; Haider-Markel 2000), as have candidates for

office at almost every level of government. In 2000, for example, presidential and vice-

presidential candidates fielded debate questions about gay rights, Vermont state legislators faced

re-election challenges based on the issue, and the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a high-

profile decision on the subject (Boy Scouts of America v. Dale). Moreover, the issue of gay

rights seems likely to remain on the agenda for some time to come.

Given all of this, it is important that we understand public opinion about gay rights and

particularly important that we understand its dynamics. One point is already clear: public

attitudes about homosexuality changed dramatically over the course of the 1990s. As Figure 1

shows, the percentage of General Social Survey respondents stating that “sexual relations

between two adults of the same sex” is “always wrong” was fairly stable from 1973 to 1988; if

anything, there was a small increase in hostility toward homosexuality during this period. From

1992 onward, however, such hostility decreased rapidly (see also Wilcox and Wolpert 2000;

Wilcox and Norrander 2002). In 1992, 71% of the GSS respondents chose the “always wrong”

option; in 1994, 63% did; by 1998, only 54% did. A similar shift took place in public opinion

about key gay rights policies such as allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the armed forces and

protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination in employment. During the 1990s, support for

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these two policies grew by double-digit margins (Haeberle 1999; Lewis and Rogers 1999; Strand

1998; Wilcox and Norrander 2002; Yang 1997).

[Figure 1 about here]

What lies beneath the transformation in mass opinion about gay rights? I argue that not

only did shifts in the public’s fundamental predispositions contribute to an increase in mass

support for gay rights policies during the 1990s, but so did substantial, even dramatic, changes in

how Americans thought about gay rights. To provide evidence for my claims, I compared the

structure of opinion about gay rights policies in 1992, 1996, and 2000.

Explaining Shifts in Public Opinion about Gay Rights

The “opinion ingredients” that shape mass opinion about political issues typically include

“commitments to the political principles that the policy seems to honor or repudiate,”

“sympathies and resentments that citizens feel toward those social groups implicated in the

dispute, especially those groups that the policy appears to benefit,” and ideological orientations

or partisan loyalties implicated in the debate over the policy (Kinder and Sanders 1996, 44; see

also Feldman 1988; Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991; Zaller 1992; Nelson and Kinder

1996). In the case of gay rights, one might expect ingredients from all of these categories to

shape mass opinion. An obvious place to begin is with beliefs about equality, one of the core

values in American political culture (McClosky and Zaller 1984). Previous research has found

that egalitarianism produces support for gay rights policies (Wilcox and Wolpert 1996, 2000).

Citizens could also use their beliefs about morality to evaluate gay rights policies. Americans

who favor traditional moral standards may see gay rights policies as threats to those standards,

whereas those who favor changing moral standards may take the opposite view (Lewis and

Rogers 1999; Wilcox and Wolpert 1996, 2000). Given that gay rights policies are perceived to

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target gays and lesbians, one would expect feelings toward gays and lesbians to influence

responses to such policies. Compared to citizens with negative feelings toward gays and lesbians,

citizens who hold positive feelings toward this group should be more supportive of policies

designed to benefit its members (Strand 1998; Wilcox and Wolpert 2000). Finally, partisanship

and ideology may influence opinion about gay rights. In American politics, support for gay rights

has typically been associated with liberalism and the Democratic party, whereas opposition to

gay rights has typically been associated with conservatism and the GOP. Thus liberals and

Democratic partisans among the public may be more likely to favor gay rights policies than

conservatives and Republican partisans (Haeberle 1999; Lewis and Rogers 1999; Wilcox and

Norrander 2002).

Assuming that some or all of these “opinion ingredients” shape public opinion about gay

rights policies, one potential explanation behind the recent shift in opinion toward such policies

is that the ingredients themselves underwent shifts. For example, a shift toward greater positivity

in the public’s feelings toward gays and lesbians could have produced an increase in support for

gay rights policies (Wilcox and Wolpert 2000; Wilcox and Norrander 2002). By the same logic,

changes in beliefs about equality, beliefs about morality, ideology, and partisanship among the

mass public could have contributed to the trend in policy opinions.

Alternatively (or additionally), the shift in mass opinion about gay rights could have

reflected changes in the recipes that citizens used to determine the proportions of these opinion

ingredients. Previous research shows that a variety of factors can alter the effects of fundamental

predispositions on issue opinions. For example, major media events--“critical moments”--can

lead citizens to reconsider the connections between their predispositions and an issue (Pollock

1994). One potential “critical moment” in the history of gay rights was the murder of Matthew

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Shepherd. In 1998 Shepherd, a gay student at the University of Wyoming, was kidnapped,

beaten, and left tied to a fence for eighteen hours. The circumstances of his death received

extensive media coverage. Perhaps they also provoked citizens into questioning the legitimacy of

beliefs about morality and emotional responses to gays and lesbians as bases on which to form

opinions about gay rights. By the same token, citizens may have responded to the event by

assigning greater importance to the principle of equality in the context of gay rights.

Changes in the nature of elite signals regarding an issue can also produce changes in the

structure of public opinion regarding that issue (Zaller 1992; Kinder and Sanders 1996; Nelson,

Clawson, and Oxley 1997). In the case of gay rights, the signals from longtime opponents of gay

rights appeared to soften over the course of the 1990s. In the early part of the decade, prominent

“family values” advocates and Republicans led high-profile offensives against gay rights. For

example, Pat Buchanan delivered a widely-noted speech to the 1992 Republican National

Convention in which he inveighed against the “amoral idea” of “homosexual rights” and

proclaimed that there was a “war going on in this country for the soul of America.” In that war,

Buchanan signaled, he and the GOP were on one side and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton was

on the other (see Haeberle 1999). Eight years later, however, standard-bearers for the

traditionally anti-gay rights camps were sending different messages. For example, Republican

vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney (whose daughter, the media reported, was a lesbian)

answered a question about same-sex unions in a nationally televised debate by saying that, "I

think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of

relationships people want to enter into.” Citizens who received this signal and others like it could

have responded by reducing the weight they attached to moral beliefs, feelings toward gays and

lesbians, or partisan loyalties in evaluating gay rights policies.

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New information about homosexuality may have altered the way that Americans thought

about gay rights, as well. In particular, Wilcox and Norrander (2002, 139; see also Wilcox and

Wolpert 1996) suggest that widening dissemination of the idea that homosexuality is fixed at

birth may have had such an effect. “Gallup polls reveal that in 1977 only 13 percent thought that

sexual orientation was fixed at birth,” they note, “but by 2001 that figure had risen to more than

40 percent.” The authors argue that Americans who came to accept that gays and lesbians cannot

change their sexual orientation may have felt “bound to employ their equality values even if they

[did] not approve of homosexuality. If sexual orientation is fixed at birth, then it is difficult to

justify denying gays and lesbians jobs.” Similarly, a new understanding of homosexuality may

have led some citizens to de-emphasize moral beliefs or feelings about gays and lesbians in

forming opinions about gay rights.

Yet another possibility is that the public’s increasing awareness of gays and lesbians

triggered changes in the structure of Americans’ opinions about gay rights policies. Wilcox and

Norrander (2002) report a dramatic increase in the percentage of Americans saying that they

know someone who is openly gay. A similar trend in the visibility of gays and lesbians occurred

in television. In 1997, the title character of the television show Ellen (played by the openly

lesbian Ellen Degeneres) revealed to the other characters on the show, and thus to the public, that

she was a lesbian. Although the show was eventually canceled, it paved the way for other prime-

time gay protagonists, both real (e.g., Richard Hatch from Survivor) and fictional (e.g., Will

from Will and Grace). As scholars have observed, this increased exposure to openly gay and

lesbian peers and media figures may have produced more favorable attitudes toward gays and

lesbians as a group (Wilcox and Norrander 2002; Wilcox and Wolpert 2000). But such

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experiences could also have dampened the effects of abstract principles and feelings about gays

and lesbians as a group on public opinion about gay rights.

In short, many forces at work in the 1990s could have altered the structure of opinion

about gay rights, although at present there is no direct evidence that they actually did so. The

contribution of this study is to demonstrate that there were indeed changes in how citizens

thought about gay rights during this period, as well as changes in underlying predispositions that

shaped support for gay rights. To this end, I analyzed opinion about two topics around which

much of the recent debate over gay rights has revolved: military service and protection from

discrimination in employment. The former was at the center of the 1993 political controversy

that brought much new attention to the issue of gay rights (see Haeberle 1999). The latter was the

focus for a variety of state- and city-level initiative battles during the 1990s, as well as the debate

in Congress over the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act of 1996.

Data and Measures

My data set consisted of three pooled cross-sectional surveys, the 1992, 1996, and 2000

National Election Studies.1 The samples were independently drawn. Respondents in each survey

answered two questions about gay rights: “Do you favor or oppose laws to protect homosexuals

against job discrimination?” and “Do you think homosexuals should be allowed to serve in the

United States Armed Forces, or don’t you think so?”2 Follow-up questions assessed the strength

of support or opposition. Table 1 reports the distributions of responses to the items in each year.

Over the eight year span, the percentage of respondents strongly favoring an anti-discrimination

law rose eight points, whereas the percentage strongly opposed fell eleven points. The shift on

military service was even more pronounced: strong support rose twenty points and strong

opposition declined twenty-seven points. Moreover, these shifts cut across the public. They took

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place among men and among women. They took place among those with a college degree and

among those without one. They took place among Democrats, among Independents, and among

Republicans. They took place among those who rejected literal interpretation of the Bible and

among those who endorsed it; they took place among those who rejected the label of “born

again” and among those who embraced it.

[Table 1 about here]

I used the responses described above to construct a seven-point index of support for gay

rights, ranging from -1 (maximum opposition to gay rights) to 1 (maximum support).3 I

employed the index, rather than the individual items, in the subsequent analysis in order to

reduce the effects of measurement error. Responses to the two items were correlated at .47 (p <

.01), yielding a reliability coefficient of .64. The mean for the index was .09 in 1992, .24 in

1996, and .40 in 2000. The .14 difference between the 1992 and 1996 means was significant at

the .01 level, as was the .16 difference between the 1996 and 2000 means.

To measure egalitarianism and moral traditionalism, I constructed additive indices

ranging from -1 to 1, with 1 indicating maximum support for the value (see the Appendix for

details). I used a feeling thermometer score to tap feelings toward gays and lesbians, scaled so

that -1 indicated coldest feelings and 1 indicated warmest feelings. I used the traditional seven-

point scales to measure ideology and partisanship (coded so that -1 indicated extremely

conservative or strongly Republican and 1 indicated extremely liberal or strongly Democratic).

I included these measures in a model of support for gay rights. To capture whether their

effects differed from 1992 to 1996, I included a dummy variable for year (where 1996 = 1) and

its interactions with egalitarianism, moral traditionalism, feelings toward gays and lesbians,

ideology, and partisanship. Similarly, to capture whether the effects of the key independent

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variables differed from 1992 to 2000, I included a second dummy variable for year (where 2000

= 1) and its interactions with these variables. Significant coefficients for these interactions would

indicate shifts in the underlying structure of public opinion. I also included a set of demographic

controls: gender (coded so that male = 0 and female = 1), age (in years/100), income (in

dollars/100,000), and education (a seven-point scale ranging from 0 to 1 where highest education

= 1). Finally, I included controls ranging from 0 to 1 for religious belief (a two-item measure

based on self-identification as “born again” and endorsement of the doctrine that the Bible

should be interpreted literally) and devotional religious practice (another two-item measure

based on self-reports of frequency of prayer and reading the Bible) because previous research

indicates that religiosity shapes attitudes about gay rights (Guth and Green 1993; Leege, Wald,

and Kellstedt 1993; Wilcox and Wolpert 1996). In the model I present below, the effects of the

controls remained fixed across years. When I relaxed this assumption and included year x control

interactions, none of these interactions attained statistical significance; nor did their inclusion

affect the results that I report.

Results

I estimated the model using OLS regression and ordered probit. Given that the results did

not differ across estimation method, I present the OLS results because they are simpler to

interpret. As Table 2 shows, egalitarianism, moral traditionalism, and feelings toward gays and

lesbians all had statistically significant effects on support for gay rights (p < .01 for each).4

Consistent with expectations, egalitarianism and positive feelings toward gays and lesbians

produced support whereas moral traditionalism produced opposition.5 Partisanship exerted a

relatively small positive effect in each year; ideology had little impact in any of the three years.

[Table 2 about here]

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What factors accounted for the increase in support for gay rights? There were changes in

the levels of the three ingredients that had the largest effects on support for gay rights:

egalitarianism, moral traditionalism, and feelings toward gays.6 The most dramatic shift was in

feelings toward gays and lesbians: Whereas the typical 1992 respondent felt rather negatively

toward this group (mean = -.25), the typical 2000 respondent was almost neutral (mean = -.05).

There was a small shift toward warm feelings from 1992 to 1996 (.04, significant at p < .05),

followed by a larger shift in the same direction from 1996 to 2000 (.16, p < .01).7 In contrast, the

shifts in egalitarianism and moral traditionalism were inconsistent. The average 1996 respondent

was less egalitarian (mean = .12) and more morally traditionalistic (mean = .25) than the average

1992 respondent (with means of .28 and .19, respectively; p < .01 for both differences). Then

again, the average 2000 respondent was more egalitarian (mean = .21) and less morally

traditionalistic (mean = .21) than the average 1996 respondent (p < .01 for both differences).

The effect of egalitarianism varied little from 1992 (.23) to 1996 (.24) to 2000 (.23).8 But

as Table 2 shows, the effects of two major opinion ingredients changed substantially between

1992 and 2000. To begin with, 1996 respondents were less likely than 1992 respondents to base

their opinions about gay rights on their feelings toward gays and lesbians (difference in effects

significant at p < .05). The 2000 respondents, in turn, were even less likely to base their opinions

on their feelings toward gays and lesbians (difference in effects significant at p < .01). The

magnitude of this variable’s effect diminished from .57 in 1992 to .47 in 1996 and then to .29 in

2000. In addition, 2000 respondents were less likely than 1992 respondents (or, for that matter,

1996 respondents) to base their opinions about gay rights on their moral beliefs. The coefficient

for moral traditionalism shrank from -.23 in 1992 and -.24 in 1996 to less than half that (-.10) in

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2000--a difference that was significant at p < .05. In short, both ingredients were smaller parts of

the recipe for opinion in 2000 than they had been previously.

I calculated level important statistics for each key independent variable by multiplying

the variable’s mean in a given year by its coefficient in that year.9 These statistics captured the

net contribution of the variable to the level of support for gay rights in each year (see Achen

1982). In all three years, citizens tended to endorse egalitarianism; thus this variable consistently

produced support for gay rights in the aggregate. Its level importance was .06 in 1992, .03 in

1996, and .05 in 1996. In all three years, citizens also tended to endorse moral traditionalism; as

a result, this variable consistently produced opposition to gay rights in aggregate. Its level

importance was -.04 in 1992 and -.06 in 1996 but only -.02 in 2000. Thus the shifts in the mean

and the coefficient of moral traditionalism from 1996 to 2000 produced a net increase of .04 in

support for gay rights over the same period. The level importance of feelings toward gays and

lesbians was negative in all three years because citizens tended to hold negative feelings toward

gays and lesbians, but it declined from -.14 in 1992 to -.09 in 1996 and then -.01 in 2000. All in

all, the shifts in the mean and coefficient of this variable produced a net increase of .13 in

support for gay rights from 1992 to 2000. Indeed, the decline in the importance of feelings about

gays and lesbians would have been even greater if the changes in the mean of this variable had

not attenuated the impact of the changes in its effects, and vice versa.

Conclusion

The foundations of public opinion about gay rights shifted in two ways between 1992 and

2000. One of the fundamental predispositions that shaped opinion in this domain, feelings

toward gays and lesbians, underwent shifts that produced greater support for gay rights policies.

At the same time, shifts in the effects of beliefs about morality and feelings toward gays and

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lesbians also contributed to the increase in support for gay rights that took place during the

1990s. Beneath the change in what Americans thought about the issue were changes in how they

thought about it.

This finding, in turn, raises a new question: To what extend did each of the suspects from

my list forces contribute to the changes that I observed in the structure of public opinion about

gay rights? Although the results do not allow me to disentangle fully the causal mechanisms

behind those changes, they do provide useful starting points for examining the problem. One

implication of the results is that the transformation in how citizens thought about the issue was

partly the result of a sustained process, lasting from at least 1992 to 2000, that worked to reduce

the impact of feelings about gays and lesbians on opinion about gay rights. Two particularly

promising suspects here are the shifts in mass information about homosexuality and awareness of

gays and lesbians, both of which spanned (or even preceded) the period and both of which may

also help account for broader patterns in mass opinion about homosexuality (e.g., the trend

illustrated in Figure 1; see also Wilcox and Norrander 2002).

Then again, the most dramatic changes in the structure of opinion--the larger decline in

the impact of feelings about gays and lesbians, as well as the decline in the effect of moral

traditionalism--took place between 1996 and 2000. This pattern suggests that the transformation

in how citizens thought about the issue was also in part the product of forces specific to this four-

year span. One such force could have been a critical moment: The murder of Matthew Shepherd.

Another could have been a shift in the nature of the public debate over gay rights. Recent

research indicates that a news frame (or story line) linking traditional morality and opposition to

gay rights frequently appeared within media coverage from 1990 to 1997; moreover,

experimental participants who read a newspaper article containing this frame were more likely to

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engage in moralistic reasoning about gay rights than participants who did not read such an article

(Brewer 2002). Perhaps the prominence of the frame declined after 1997. Such a change in

framing would help account for the findings regarding the impact of moral beliefs.

Of course, the causal processes at work here may have been complex. For example, the

Matthew Shepherd event could have triggered changes in elite signals about gay rights, which in

turn could have shaped the content of media coverage. More generally, shifts in the political and

social landscape may have influenced the strategies of politicians and interest groups and thus

the nature of the information that they introduced into public debate. There is good reason to

expect the actors in the contest over gay rights to respond in strategic ways to the “political

opportunity structures” that the environment provides (Gamson 1975; Green, Guth, and Hill

1993). Thus when retired professional football player and ordained minister Reggie White

received widespread criticism in 1998 for his comments about homosexuality to the Wisconsin

state legislature, or when Jerry Falwell became the subject of public mockery in 1999 for

referring to a children’s television icon (“Tinky Winky” from Teletubbies) as a “gay role

model,” some politicians and activists who had previously criticized homosexuality and gay

rights may have decided to avoid spending further political capital on such messages. Hence a

useful next step might be to study more closely how the political debate over gay rights has

evolved, on the one hand, and how citizens respond to messages in that debate, on the other.

APPENDIX: MEASURES OF EGALITARIANISM AND MORAL TRADITIONALISM

All indicators are Likert items. An asterisk indicates a reverse-coded item.

Egalitarianism (Reliability = .71)

Our society should do whatever is necessary to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity

to succeed; we have gone too far in pushing equal rights in this country (*); this country would

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be better off if we worried less about how equal people are (*); it is not really that big a problem

if some people have more of a chance in life than others (*); if people were treated more equally

in this country we would have many fewer problems; one of the big problems in this country is

that we don’t give everyone an equal chance.

Moral traditionalism (Reliability = .64)

The newer lifestyles are contributing to the breakdown of society; the world is changing and we

should adjust our view of moral behavior to those changes (*); we should be more tolerant of

people who choose to live according to their own moral standards even if they are very different

from our own (*); this country would have fewer problems if there were more emphasis on

traditional family ties.

NOTES

1. I found the same patterns of results when I analyzed the pooled 1992/1996 data and the

pooled 1996/2000 data. Similarly, analysis of the structure of opinion within each individual

year supported the conclusions presented below.

2. Although the 1992 and 2000 surveys contained a question about adoption by gay and lesbian

couples (“Do you think gay or lesbian couples, in other words, homosexual couples, should

be legally permitted to adopt children?”), the 1996 survey did not, precluding the use of this

item in the analysis. A comparison of 1992 and 2000 responses indicates a sizable increase in

support for gay rights on the item: whereas only 28% of respondents favored adoption by

same-sex couples in 1992, 45% did so in 2000. On the other hand, the underlying structure of

opinion for the item appears to have been largely stable apart from a marginal decline in the

impact of feelings toward gays and lesbians. The correlations between responses to this item

and the other two gay rights items were relatively low, suggesting that citizens saw this

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dispute as distinct from the dispute over job discrimination and military service. Although the

adoption dispute did not occupy a particularly prominent place on the public agenda during

the 1990s, it might be useful to examine whether post-2000 events (e.g., Rosie O’Donnell’s

high-profile advocacy of adoption rights for gays and lesbians) have triggered changes in the

structure of opinion here.

3. To create the index, I coded responses to each item so that strong opposition = 0, opposition

= 1, support = 2, and strong support = 3. I then added the two values together, subtracted

three, and divided by three. When I used ordered probit to estimate the model presented

below for each item, I obtained results similar to the ones I report for the index. But the

results stand out most strongly in the model for the index, as one would expect given that this

is a more reliable measure than either individual item.

4. Supplementary analyses showed that the effect of each variable was significant in each year.

5. It may be that egalitarianism and moral traditionalism also influenced opinion toward gay

rights indirectly by shaping feelings toward gays and lesbians. When I estimated a model that

excluded feelings toward gays and lesbians and its interactions with the year dummies, the

effects of these two values were greater in magnitude--as was the interaction between moral

traditionalism and year = 2000.

6. The mean for partisanship did not differ significantly from one year to the other. The mean

for ideology varied significantly between 1992 and 1996 (though not between 1996 and

2000); given that the effect of ideology was slight, however, this change in its mean had a

negligible impact on the level of support for gay rights. Further details about changes in the

means of the variables in the model are available from the author upon request.

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7. The mean for this variable was -.22 among 1993 NES respondents, -.29 among 1994 NES

respondents, and -.09 among 1998 ANES respondents. Thus the trend appears to have

largely but not entirely monotonic.

8. Nor did the effects of partisanship or ideology vary significantly across year (see Table 2).

9. The level importance of ideology was -.002 in 1992, -.003 in 1996, and -.002 in 2000. The

level importance of partisanship was .01 in all three years.

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on Abortion and Gay Rights.” In Barbara Norrander and Clyde Wilcox (eds.),

Understanding Public Opinion, 2nd edition, pp. 121-48. Washington, DC: Congressional

Quarterly Press.

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Wilcox, Clyde, and Robin Wolpert. 1996. “President Clinton, Public Opinion, and Gays in the

Military.” In Craig A. Rimmerman (ed.), Gay Rights, Military Wrongs: Political

Perspectives on Lesbians and Gays in the Military, pp. 127-45. New York: Garland

Publishing.

Wilcox, Clyde, and Robin Wolpert. 2000. “Gay Rights in the Public Sphere: Public Opinion on

Gay and Lesbian Equality.” In Craig A. Rimmerman, Kenneth D. Wald, and Clyde

Wilcox (eds.), The Politics of Gay Rights, pp. 409-432. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press.

Yang, Alan S. 1997. “Trends: Attitudes toward Homosexuality.” Public Opinion Quarterly

61(3):477-507.

Zaller, John. 1992. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge University

Press.

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FIGURE 1

Percentage of respondents saying that "sexual relations between two

adults of the same sex" is "always wrong" (General Social Survey,
1973-2000)

80

75

70

65

60

55

50
'73 '74 '76 '77 '80 '82 '84 '85 '87 '88 '89 '90 '91 '93 '94 '96 '98 '00

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Brewer

TABLE 1

Responses to National Election Studies Gay Rights Policy Questions

“Do you favor or oppose laws to “Do you think homosexuals should
protect homosexuals against job be allowed to serve in the United
discrimination?” States Armed forces or don’t you
think so?”
1992 1996 2000 1992 1996 2000

Favor, strongly 33% 40% 41% 32% 44% 52%

Favor, not strongly 28% 24% 27% 26% 25% 24%

Oppose, not strongly 15% 13% 19% 9% 7% 19%

Oppose, strongly 25% 23% 14% 32% 25% 5%

N 2129 1436 1496 2127 1480 1692

Note: Some percentages do not add up to 100 due to rounding.

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Brewer

TABLE 2

Influences on Support for Gay Rights, Pooled 1992, 1996, and 2000 National Election Studies
Coefficient Standard error
Egalitarianism .23** .04
Egalitarianism x 1996 .01 .06
Egalitarianism x 2000 -.001 .06

Moral traditionalism -.23** .04

Moral traditionalism x 1996 -.01 .05
Moral traditionalism x 2000 .13* .05

Feelings toward gays .57** .03

Feelings toward gays x 1996 -.10* .04
Feelings toward gays x 2000 -.28** .04

Liberal ideology .04 .04

Liberal ideology x 1996 -.01 .06
Liberal ideology x 2000 -.02 .05

Democratic PID .10** .02

Democratic PID x 1996 .03 .03
Democratic PID x 2000 -.03 .03

Year = 1996 .16** .03

Year = 2000 .18** .03
Female .19** .02
Age (years/100) .09 .05
Income ($/100,000) .05 .03
Education .05 .03
Religious belief -.17** .03
Religious practice -.09** .04

Constant .12 .04

2
R .45
Standard error of the estimate .71
N 3828
Note: Tables entries are OLS regression coefficients. Robust standard errors are in parentheses.
** Significant at the .01 level (two-tailed test)
* Significant at the .05 level (two-tailed test).

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