Study: Bias Against LGBT Individuals Decreasing Across All Demographic Groups

A new study out of the University of Virginia provides more bad news for Christofascists and their puppets within the GOP: anti-LGBT bias is falling across all demographic groups. Huge problems of anti-gay discrimination continue to exist but despite their efforts to fan anti-gay animus, the Christofascists are losing the larger was for equality and becoming more and more of marginalized demographic. In my view, the changes stem not only from the vastly increased visibility of gays, but also the larger decline in religion.  A decline I believe is driven by the reality that science is making it increasingly difficult to prop up the myths on which Christianity is based.  With educated people understanding that among other things (i) Adam and Eve never existed and (ii) the Bible is a much manipulated and revised work of fallible men, bias based on Bronze Age myths become increasingly unsustainable.  Here are highlights of the study findings:

The U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling legalizing marriage between same-sex couples in all 50 states follows on the heels of national polls showing rapid cultural changes in attitudes toward lesbian and gay people. A new University of Virginia study confirms this, showing that not only are Americans' conscious and unconscious biases against lesbian women and gay men decreasing across all demographic groups, but the trend also appears to be accelerating. 

Westgate and co-authors Rachel Riskind of Guilford College and U.Va. psychology professor Brian Nosek analyzed data collected from more than half a million people between 2006 through 2013 by Project Implicit.

Westgate's team found that implicit or "unconscious" bias against lesbian and gay people was 13 percent lower in 2013 than in 2006, suggesting that implicit bias has decreased substantially in recent years. They also found that explicit, or self-reported, bias decreased twice as much (26 percent) as implicit bias over the same seven-year period. This suggests that while many peoples' attitudes are changing at the deeper, unconscious level, some people may be less willing or able to acknowledge anti-gay bias than they were in years past. 

"Implicit biases can occur outside of conscious awareness or conscious control," Nosek said. "People may know that they have them and not be able to control them. This is the first evidence for long-term change in people's implicit attitudes on a cultural level." 

The authors also found that some people's attitudes were changing more quickly than others. Age, race and political orientation were the biggest predictors of attitude change. Unconscious bias decreased the most among women, as well as among white, Hispanic, liberal and younger people. Men - as well as black, Asian, conservative and older people - showed the smallest changes in bias. 

Most importantly, nearly all demographic groups showed decreases in unconscious and self-reported bias over the seven-year period, suggesting that across the board, people seem to be developing more positive attitudes toward lesbian and gay people in general.

"People today are genuinely more positive toward gay and lesbian people than they were just a decade ago," Westgate said. "The research shows that attitudes across the board are truly changing - it's not just a function of people feeling less comfortable admitting their bias in a culture that has become more open." 

Christianists Are Losing the "Culture War"

I suspect that we will be hearing more shrieks and gnashing of teeth from the wingnut set as news of the results of a Victory Fund sponsored poll become more widely disseminated. According to the poll, more than six in ten U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the United States, and 70% say they’d support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet secretary, according to a new nationwide poll from Zogby International. This, combined with a growing desire among the public -including conservatives - as reported by 365gay.com that there be less blurring of the lines between pulpit and ballot box, will certainly have Daddy Dobson, et al, upset since it means that the money spigot that they have gorged themselves from may begin to dry up. Already the political activities and anti-gay and anti-immigrant jihads of the Christianist has caused Christianity to be viewed in an increasingly bad light. Hopefully, the trend continues until Dobson and those like him are banished to the political wilderness. Here are highlights on the poll results:

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Washington, D.C.—More than six in ten U.S. voters say they could support an openly gay candidate for president of the United States, and 70% say they’d support the appointment of an openly gay cabinet secretary, according to a new nationwide poll from Zogby International. The poll results come just a week after an openly gay congressional candidate, Jared Polis, won his Democratic primary in Colorado. If Polis wins the general election in November, he would become the first non-incumbent, openly gay man ever elected to Congress.

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Sixty-six percent of poll respondents said they could support an openly gay vice-presidential candidate, while 69% said a gay candidate for U.S. Senate could get their vote. The poll of 1,089 adults was conducted August 13 to 15 for the Gay & Lesbian Leadership Institute (GLLI), a non-partisan leadership development organization.

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More than 415 openly LGBT elected officials serve at every level of government throughout the United States, a ten-fold increase in just the last two decades. At the federal level, five openly gay or lesbian Members have served in the U.S. House of Representatives, including current Reps. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Barney Frank of Massachusetts.