Race, Political Affiliation Divergence in Attitudes Toward Homosexuality and Black Government Aids

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 13. Race & Class Politics

Abstract

Public attitudes toward racial justice and sexual minorities play an increasingly important role in contemporary American politics, shaping policy debates, electoral behavior, and moral evaluations. Although support for minority rights is often assumed to be internally consistent—such that individuals who endorse racial equality are also more accepting of sexual minorities—existing research documents persistent racial and partisan differences in attitudes toward homosexuality. In particular, Black Americans are on average less likely than Whites to view homosexuality as morally acceptable, and party affiliation structures attitudes toward both race-related policies and sexual morality. Yet less is known about whether attitudes toward racial justice and sexual morality are aligned in similar ways across racial and partisan groups.
Using data from the 2016–2024 General Social Survey, this study examines the relationship between support for government aid to Black Americans and moral evaluations of homosexuality. The results show that among Whites, greater support for Black governmental aid is positively associated with acceptance of homosexuality, whereas no comparable association is observed among Blacks. Further analyses reveal that this racially differentiated pattern varies by partisan affiliation. Among Democrats, support for Black aid is positively associated with acceptance of homosexuality for both Whites and Blacks. Among Independents, the alignment remains largely White-specific, while among Republicans the relationship is weak and statistically indistinct across racial groups. Together, these findings highlight how attitudes toward race and sexuality are structured differently across racial and partisan contexts, challenging assumptions of uniform alignment in support for minority rights.

Author

• Jui-I Liao, National Taiwan University