ABSTRACT

Support for marriage equality (i.e. extending the privilege of marriage beyond heterosexual couples) is gaining global momentum as evidenced by the increase of countries introducing related legislation, yet little research has attempted to understand factors predicting the rejection of marriage equality. In this paper, we explore the multi-faceted role of religion in explaining the relationship between sexual prejudice and the rejection of marriage equality. Specifically, we explored the role of religious affiliation (i.e. religious-group membership; Study 1: n= 81) and multiple forms of religiosity (i.e. trait-like conceptualisations; Study 2: n= 168) in explaining the rejection of marriage equality beyond variance accounted for by simple sexual prejudice. As expected, negative attitudes towards marriage equality were related to being higher in sexual prejudice and religious fundamentalism, being lower in Quest, and being Christian (vs. non-religious). In addition, both religious fundamentalism and intrinsic religiosity moderated the marriage equality rejection-sexual prejudice relationship. Importantly, in multiple regression analyses, religious affiliation did not predict the rejection of marriage equality, and religious fundamentalism was the only significant religiosity predictor. Taken together, religiosity emerged as a more useful quantification of religion than religious affiliation in the context of explaining the rejection of marriage equality.

摘要

支持婚姻平等（即把婚姻特权扩展到异性伴侣之外）正在获得全球动力，越来越多的国家引入了相关立法就证明了这一点，但很少有研究试图了解预测拒绝婚姻平等的因素。在本文中，我们探讨了宗教在解释性偏见与拒绝婚姻平等之间的关系方面的多方面作用。具体来说，我们探讨了宗教归属（即宗教团体成员资格；研究 1：n = 81）和多种形式的宗教信仰（即类似特质的概念化；研究 2：n= 168）在解释拒绝婚姻平等时，超出了简单的性偏见所解释的差异。正如预期的那样，对婚姻平等的负面态度与性偏见和宗教原教旨主义较高、Quest 较低以及基督徒（与非宗教）有关。此外，宗教原教旨主义和内在的宗教信仰都缓和了婚姻平等拒绝-性偏见的关系。重要的是，在多元回归分析中，宗教信仰并不能预测拒绝婚姻平等，而宗教原教旨主义是唯一重要的宗教信仰预测因素。总而言之，在解释拒绝婚姻平等的背景下，宗教信仰成为比宗教信仰更有用的宗教量化指标。