Social Change in Attitudes about Same-Sex Relationships Before and After the Same-Sex Marriage Debate

• In Event: 3523 - Family Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 min): Table 9: Sexual and Gender Identities in Families

Abstract

Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex relationships have liberalized considerably over the last forty years. After a period of remarkable stability in the 1970s and 1980s, public acceptance of such relationships increased dramatically beginning in the early 1990s. We examine how the demographic processes generating social change in attitudes toward same-sex relationships changed over time. Using data from the 1973 to 2014 General Social Survey and decomposition techniques, we estimate the relative contributions of intracohort change and cohort replacement to overall social change for three different periods. We examine (1) the period prior to the rapid increase in attitude liberalization toward same-sex marriage rights (1973-1991); the period between the initiation of change and crucial breakthroughs in LGBTQ+ rights (1991-2002); and (3) the period since the legalization of same-sex marriage (2002-2014). We find that both intracohort and intercohort change played positive and significant roles in the liberalization of attitudes toward same-sex relationships in the post-legalization period, but that individual change was more important than population turnover over this period. Furthermore, the relative importance of intracohort change has increased over time.

Authors

• Ashley Wendell Kranjac, Chapman University

• Robert L. Wagmiller, Temple University