A team of researchers reported Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the legalization of same-sex marriage on a state-by-state basis decreased anti-gay bias at a rapid rate. This result held true across the 35 states and Washington, D.C., which legalized same-sex marriage in some form before the US Supreme Court ruled that marriage was a fundamental right for all in 2015.
However, a sharp contrast emerged across the 15 states that did not pass same-sex marriage locally before the Supreme Court ruling. In these states, there was a reactive “backlash” effect, in which the federal legalization was associated with increased anti-gay bias — despite the fact that there was decreasing levels of bias in these states before the ruling. [...]
This study incorporated two large surveys designed to measure implicit and explicit anti-gay bias. The first set of data included the responses of 949,664 people who completed Project Implicit surveys between 2005 and 2016. Hehman and his team also examined the American National Election Studies (ANES) dataset, which included 10,870 respondents from 2008, 2012, and 2016. Both of these surveys asked participants the extent to which they felt “warmth” toward gay and lesbian people. [...]
The researchers write that these results indicate that “government legislation can inform attitudes even on religiously and politically entrenched positions.” Previous studies show that people modify their views and actions to align with the perceived norms of their environment. This study shows, in some cases, the government has the power to establish a sense of what’s normal, which in turn becomes what’s accepted.
No comments:
Post a Comment