{"id":985,"date":"2023-07-16T17:34:53","date_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:34:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=985"},"modified":"2023-07-16T17:34:53","modified_gmt":"2023-07-16T17:34:53","slug":"homophobia-and-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2023\/07\/16\/homophobia-and-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Homophobia and Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Two weeks ago I published an excerpt from Probably Overthinking It<\/em><\/a> where I presented data from the General Social Survey<\/a> showing a steep decrease in the percentage of people in the U.S. who think homosexuality is wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last week I followed up to answer a question<\/a> about data from Pew Research showing a possible reversal of that trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I want to answer a question posed (or at least implied) on Twitter<\/a>, “I’d love to see all this, including other less-salient changes, through the lens of the decline of religion.” If religious people are more likely to disapprove of homosexuality, and if religious affiliation is declining, how much of the decrease in homophobia is due to the decrease in religion?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To answer that question, I’ll use the most recent GSS data, released in May 2023. Here’s the long-term trend again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The most recent point is a small uptick, but it follows an unusually large drop and returns to the long-term trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are the same results divided by strength of religious affiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As expected, people who say they are strongly religious are more likely to disapprove of homosexuality, but levels of disapprobation have declined in all three groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now here are the fractions of people in each group:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The fraction of people with no religious affiliation has increased substantially. The fraction with “not very strong” affiliation has dropped sharply. The fraction with strong affiliation has dropped more modestly. The most recent data points are out of line with the long-term trends in all three groups. Discrepancies like this are common in the 2021 data, due in part to the pandemic and in part to changes in the way the survey was administered. So we should not take them too seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, to see how much of the decline in homophobia is due to the decline of religion, we can compute two counterfactual models:<\/p>\n\n\n\n