Are Shifts in Same-Sex Marriage Attitudes Associated With Declines in Religious Behavior and Affiliation?

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X221106431
• Published date: 01 January 2023
• Date: 01 January 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

American Politics Research

2023, Vol. 51(1) 81–90

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X221106431

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Are Shifts in Same-Sex Marriage Attitudes

Associated With Declines in Religious

Behavior and Aff‌iliation?

Paul A. Djupe

1

and Jacob Neiheisel

2



Abstract

The anti-LGBTQ politics of the Religious Right has been implicated as one of the critical forces promoting the rise of disaff‌iliation

from religion. The association seems plain given the rapid rise of the nones amo ng younger cohorts of Americans –a group

which also holds the most pro-LGBTQ attitudes. However, little work actually tests the link between shifting attitudes on same -

sex marriage and declining religious behavior and aff‌iliation. Drawing on the Portraits of American Life Panel study with waves in

2006 and 2012, we use appropriate measures to document the religious effects of changing views on same-sex marriage. We

f‌ind that while shifting views did have a negative effect on church attendance and aff‌iliation, these effects were not limited to

shifts toward support for same-sex marriage and were not limited to liberals.

Keywords

religion and politics, public opinion, same-sex marriage, panel data

Introduction

In this paper we revisit the theorized connection between at-

titudes toward same-sex marriage and religious behavior. Nu-

merous scholars have placed changes in the American public’s

views toward same-sex marriage at the center of explanations

for the rise of the religious “nones”(e.g., Hout & Fischer, 2014;

Jones, 2016;Putnam & Campbell, 2010). Direct tests of such a

linkage are rare, however, and have often come to divergent

conclusions regarding the role that same-sex marriage views

play in shaping their religious attachments and behavior

(Var g as , 201 2 ;Brenner, 2019). Therefore, we turn to panel data

from the Portraits of American Life Study (PALS) to explore

how shifting attitudes toward same-sex marriage might track

with changes in religious behavior –worship attendance (‘at-

tendance’for short) and leaving congregations. We f‌ind some

evidence that shifts in support for “traditional marriage”track

with changes in attendance, but the effects are not limited to

same-sex marriage supporters or to liberals. Moreover, this

relationship is most pronounced among those most likely to

encounter conf‌licts over the issue of same-sex marriage: fre-

quent attenders. These are the opposites of most conclusions to

this point.

Existing Literature

The early 1990s saw the release of the band R.E.M’s hit single

“Losing My Religion”and also, coincidentally, a sharp uptick

in the proportion of the American public who, when queried

as to their religious aff‌iliation on a survey, answered “none”

(Hout & Fischer, 2002,2014). Most explanations for the

surge in religious nones center on the salience of the Reli-

gious Right and how its contentious blend of religious

dogmatism and conservative politics effectively turned po-

litical liberals off of religion (Baker & Smith, 2009;Campbell

et al., 2021;Hout & Fischer, 2002).

1

Since the 1990s, the

trend toward ever-greater numbers of religious nones has

continued in a secular fashion (but see Djupe & Burge, 2020),

and at present over a f‌ifth of the American public claims no

particular religious identity at all (Brenner, 2019;Newport,

2017), making the nones the largest religious tradition in the

U.S. (Burge, 2019).

Organized religion’s reputation for being intolerant toward

LGBTQ Americans is often cited as perhaps the chief reason

why young Americans are abandoning religion at such a rapid

clip (Hout & Fischer, 2014;Jones, 2016;Putnam &

Campbell, 2010;Vargas, 2012; cf. Brenner, 2019;Hout &

Fischer, 2002, p. 185). Those who came of age at a time when

1

Department of Political Science, Denison University, Granville, OH, USA

2

Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jacob Neiheisel, Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo, 422

Park Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA.

Email: jacobnei@buffalo.edu