Gay marriages and its related issues – a perspective of TTU community

Abstract

Subsequent to the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriages, numerous articles reported varying opinions of the people regarding gay marriage legalization and its related problems.  In a similar attempt, a survey was conducted by us on Texas Tech University (TTU) campus to map people’s perception on the same issue.  This report clearly expounds the motivation behind such a survey and also draws a correlation between different factors such as political and religious orientation of the people and their effects on people’s opinions on gay marriages.  The key findings were that the political and religious orientation of the people play a minor role in their decision regarding gay marriages.  Also, people tended to support or oppose gay marriage related issues based on their effect on their freedom of speech and freedom of religion.  (Sriramvignesh Mani and Thomas Leverett)

Keywords: gay marriages, political and religious orientation, freedom of speech

            The Supreme Court of the United States on June 26^th passed a landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriages throughout the country, following a dramatic shift in the public perception about homosexuals.  It was observed that in the months following the revolutionary announcement, widespread opposition to the Supreme Court’s order erupted from religious people citing the lack of clarity between the rights granted to all individuals to follow their religious practices and the same-sex ruling.  For example, Kim Davis, a Rowan County clerk in the state of Kentucky, denied marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as it violated her religious conscience (Fox News, 2015).  Similarly, quoting the rights of individuals to practice their religious faith, Philips, a bakery owner in the state of Colorado, refused to make a cake for homosexuals (Hanna, 2015).  In addition to the above public differences towards same-sex couples based on religious reasons, adoption of a child by same-sex couples encountered roadblocks in various states such as Michigan, Texas and Mississippi, as people opposing gay adoptions pointed at the need for heterosexual parents to provide proper development of a child (Beitsch, 2015).  In spite of the above homosexual related issues, the results from several studies suggest that the majority of Americans are in favor of same-sex marriages and their related issues.  Also, the studies expound that age and political inclination play a major role in determining a person’s opinion about gay-related issues and gay marriages (Swift, 2015).

            All the above interesting correlations between different issues compelled us, a group of ten Texas Tech University (TTU) students taking an English as a Second Language Course (ESL 5301-001) in fall 2015, to conduct a survey among approximately one hundred and forty TTU students, to comprehend the general scenario regarding gay issues on the TTU Lubbock campus.  The participants in the survey were randomly chosen and it was ensured that an approximately equal number of male and female students in different age-groups were arbitrarily selected for the study.  From this survey, we aim to elucidate the perception regarding gay marriages on the TTU campus and also correlate it with gender, age-group and political inclination of the people on the TTU campus.

Literature Review

Several polls were conducted among the American population, following the Supreme Court’s decision, and in the past, to determine their views regarding same-sex marriages.  Several institutes such as AP-gfk (USA Today, 2015), Gallup (Swift, 2014), the Public Religion Research Institute (Public Religion Research Institute, 2011), and Pew Research Center (Pew Research Center, 2013) conducted polls among the American public to determine their opinion on gay related issues.  In addition to the general consensus about the gay marriages, most of the surveys covered important key issues such as rights of people with religious beliefs to deny marriage certificates, rights of people in wedding-related businesses to deny services to gay couples, and rights of the same-sex couples to adopt children.  Along with highlighting the opinion of people on the above key issues, the above surveys also established a correlation between different factors such as age group and political inclination of the people and their perception about the gay marriages and its related issues.  In general, the poll results suggest that for any of the gay related issues, the highest support was shown by people in the age group of 18-29 (millennials) while the lowest support was shown by older generations.  Also, it can be deduced from the surveys that Democrats offered the majority of the support to homosexuals and their issues.  Republicans, on the other hand, offered the least support to gay related problems citing various reasons.  These polls also highlighted that over the years, the overall acceptance of gay marriages among the American population increased steadily to 53%, along with gay adoptions, which 63% of Americans support.

            Similar to the general surveys as mentioned above, numerous articles focused on specific issues.  For example, an article in Republican views (Republican views, 2014) focused on the arguments put forth by Republicans against same-sex marriages.  According to it, most of the Republicans feel that legalization of same-sex marriages is against the definition of the marriage institution as per the Minnesota Supreme Court decision in 1971.  Also, they point out that homosexual families do not provide a suitable environment for the child’s development based on a study which showed children to be more stable under the care of heterosexual parents compared to homosexuals.  It also showed that girls and boys raised without the care of a father were prone to increased sexual activity and crimes, respectively.  However, other articles (Pettus, 2015, Smart, 2015) reported that adoption by same-sex couples actually provides a better environment for child development, as same-sex marriages offer many positive benefits to the couples in the form of longer life-spans, lower rate of depression and lower divorce rates.  In addition, the article also states that same-sex marriages actually make the couple happier, as they were married by mutual consent.  Due to the large difference of opinion about the effects of gay marriages on the living conditions of the homosexuals and its subsequent effects on gay adoption as shown above, the legalization of gay adoption ran into many road-blocks in states such as Texas, Michigan and Alabama (Beitsch, 2015).

            In addition to the varying opinions on gay marriages and their consequent effects on the environment provided for a child’s development, various articles reported protest by religious people against the Supreme Court ruling.  For example, Kim Davis, a Rowan County clerk, refused to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples (Holpuch, 2015) as it was against her religious belief.  Similarly, Philips, a bakery owner in the state of Colorado, refused to bake a cake for homosexuals based on the first amendment right that allows people to practice their individual rights (Hanna, 2015).  Though several people voiced their support for Kim Davis, a few other articles (Levy, 2015, Somashekhar and Craighill, 2015) highlight that approximately 55 % of Americans feel that being a government official, she should do her job without any religious bias.  These articles also clearly mention that the support for Kim Davis varies extensively between different political parties with major and least support from Republicans and Democrats, respectively.

             The varied public opinion on gay marriages at the national level motivated us to undertake a similar survey on Texas Tech University campus.  We make hypotheses in the following section based on previous poll studies.  The analysis for each hypothesis will be presented in the results and discussion section.

Hypotheses

1.     We suspected that most of the Republicans opposing gay adoption on campus would often cite as primary reason, the need for gender role models for the proper development of a child.  An article (Republican views, 2014) claimed that at national level, most Republicans feel gay marriages are less stable and heterosexual marriages are more stable.  Based on this observation, we believed that Republicans would cite the need for gender role models for proper growth of a child.

2.     From the survey, we wanted to establish the factors affecting people’s decision on gay marriage related issues.  For example, we wanted to establish whether a non-religious Republican bases his/her thoughts on gay marriages based on his/her religious inclination or political orientation.  We believed this would be an interesting find as none of the articles to the best of our knowledge addressed this perspective.

3.     Many articles indicated varied opinions regarding the stability of gay families at the national level (Republican view, 2014, Pettus, 2015, Smart, 2015). However, we suspected that most of the Texans would regard gay families to be less stable and hence voice against gay adoption.

4.      Though most of the religious people supported Kim Davis, few articles (Levy, 2015, Somashekhar and Craighill, 2015) highlighted the fact that on average, 55% of Americans are against Kim Davis.  They feel that being a government official, she should act according to the rules and should not act based on her religious beliefs.  Based on this, we suspected that we would not observe a vast difference in the number of people supporting and opposing baker’s, as they are not confined within any rules stipulated by government.

Methods

Following the vast number of interesting articles focusing on the views of people regarding gay marriages, a survey was conducted among Americans on the Texas Tech University campus with the aim to establish correlations between people’s perception and different issues.

As previously mentioned, one of the main focuses was to determine whether Republicans most often cited the environment provided by homosexual parents for a child’s development as one of the reasons in support of their views against gay adoption.  Also of interest was to establish whether people based their decision on gay marriage related issues depending on their political inclination or religious orientation.  For example, a non-religious Republican could decide his stand based on his religious or political inclination.  In addition, the survey also focused on clearly elucidating the relationship between people’s perception on the stability of a gay family and their support for gay adoption.  Also, it was noted from several articles that most Americans oppose Kim Davis for not issuing same-sex marriage licenses as she is within the boundaries of the law while in the office.  These articles suggest that people tend to make decisions on sensitive issues based on the right of the individual to exercise their freedom.  This helps us in predicting the people’s reaction on the baker’s case as the bakery is not administered by government or there is no predefined set of rules.

To answer all the above interesting queries, a questionnaire was prepared by us with a relevant set of enquiries (shown in Appendix I).  Though most of the questions had multiple choices as the answer, we used the Likert scale for a few questions to segregate people’s reaction under different categories.  In a Likert scale, a value of 5 represents strong agreement with the issue while a value of 1 represents strong opposition to the issue.  Regarding the survey collection, the entire class had an agreement according to which each student in the class would survey 6 male and 6 female TTU students.  A total of approximately 146 surveys were collected from students and faculty, out of which one of the surveys was ignored due to its incompleteness.  It should also be pointed out that we used Microsoft Excel (MS-office 2013) for the analysis of our results and generation of plots shown in the following sections.  Though the survey is complete in its present form, we would like to stress that the survey may have certain drawbacks, in the form of poorly framed questions which, when addressed, might answer entirely different questions related to gay marriage issues. 

Results

            Based on the data collected from the survey, the following results were calculated and related to the hypotheses made previously.

            We believed that Republicans opposing gay adoption on campus would often cite as the primary reason, the need for gender role models for proper development of a child.  In support of this hypothesis, an article (Republican views, 2014) claimed that at national level, most Republicans believed homosexual marriages to be less stable.  However, it was observed from the results that the above hypothesis was not true.  Almost all the reasons such as income, parental love and two parents were cited by 5% of Republicans in support of their views against gay adoption, except the need for gender role models (Figure 1). However, almost 10% of Democrats mentioned the need for parental love as the main reason for their stand against gay adoption (Figure 2).  Fascinatingly, from figure 1 and figure 2, it can be seen that neither Republicans nor Democrats mention the lack of gender role models as the main reason for their views opposing gay adoption. 

            Also, we suspected that people’s political and religious orientations might influence their views on gay marriage related issues.  For example, we intended to show if a non-religious Republican or a religious Democrat bases his/her arguments based on his/her religious orientation or political inclination.  But, the survey results clearly indicated that no such correlations exist, and many factors in addition to religious and political interest play a crucial role in channeling their views on gay marriage related issues.  No plots are shown as the percentage of non-religious Republicans or religious Democrats opposing gay marriages is zero.  On the other hand, unexpectedly, it was observed that people with homosexual family members supported gay marriages regardless of their religious and political interests.  Nearly 43% of the people supporting gay marriages had a homosexual family member.  Though the absolute numerical value was slightly less than the percentage of people supporting homosexual marriages without any gay family members, it was clear and can be believed that a significant amount of people support gay marriages due to the presence of a gay family member.  The relative percentage of the people with and without gay family members supporting homosexual marriages is shown in Figure 3.

            In addition, we also suspected that most Texans would consider gay families to be less stable and hence, voice against gay adoption.  Results from the survey were in accordance with the above hypothesis.  80% of the Texans opposing gay adoption believed gay families to be less stable (Figure 4).  Though based on the above result, a direct relation cannot be established between Texans’ belief on the stability of gay families and their opinion on gay adoption, a correlation can be drawn between them.  In addition, the results also showed that majority of Texans supporting gay adoption didn’t believe gay families to be stable.  Furthermore, the results clearly elucidate that the major proponents of gay adoption among Texans were the ones who believed that gay adoption would make no difference in the family (Figure 5).  The above observed trends in Texans’ view on the stability of gay families were in good agreement with their religious views.  40% and 30% of Texans identified themselves as strongly and slightly religious while only 15% of them recognized themselves as non-religious (Figure 6).  Hence, these results suggest that the religious inclination of Texans plays a major role in their opinion on the stability of gay families and subsequently gay adoption.    

            In addition to the above hypotheses, we also believed that there would not be a huge difference in the percentage of people supporting and opposing the baker’s decision, as he/she is not governed by any laws.  The above hypothesis was based on the response of people at national level to the case of Kim Davis.  In conjunction with our belief, the results showed that 39% and 48% of people supported and opposed the baker’s decision, respectively (Figure 7).  It was further hypothesized that people voiced their support for an issue based on the freedom of expression and freedom of religion.  In other words, people voice their support for individuals against an issue if it violated the individual’s freedom of expression and religion.  Results from the survey were in quite good agreement with the above hypothesis.  It was observed that among pastors, doctors, bakers, artists, and agencies, only 2% of the people felt that emergency responders like doctors had rights to deny their services to homosexuals.  However, 40% - 60% of the people felt that pastors, bakers, artists, and agencies had rights to deny their services to homosexuals as it violated their freedom of expression and freedom of religion (Figure 8).

             In addition to all the above hypotheses, it was observed that the support for gay marriages was higher among females compared to males.  The results showed that approximately 55% of females supported gay marriages, compared to 45% of males.  Figure 9 displays the percentage of males and females supporting gay marriages.  However, it was also observed that the trend exactly reverses for the relative percentage of males and females opposing gay marriages (Figure 10).  Nearly 16% and 13% of males and females were against gay marriages as shown in the plot.

            All the plots referenced above are shown in Appendix II.   

Discussion

            The following conclusions can be made from this study that focused on the perception of people regarding gay marriages and their related issues, including gay adoption.  Several hypotheses were made before the survey was conducted, and several correlations were drawn out based on the survey.

            As discussed based on several articles in the introduction section, it was hypothesized that a correlation exists between the percentage of Republicans opposing gay adoption and the various reasons cited by them for their views against gay adoption.  It was also believed that most of them would mention the need for gender role models to provide a conducive environment for a child’s development.  The results confirmed that a correlation exists between the Republican’s opinion on gay adoption and their views on the qualities for proper development of a child.  But, contrary to this belief, most Republicans did not mention the need for gender role models as the primary reason for their opinions against gay adoption.  Most of them believed that income and parental love play a significant role in child’s development.  It is clear from the results that Republicans, in line with their party’s tradition, attach importance to money, and heterosexual parents to proper growth of a child.  Additionally, it was also observed that most of the Democrats opposing gay adoption mention the need for parental love as the prime requirement for a child’s growth.  Again, it can be seen that Democrats, being less capitalistic, give lower significance to income and support of parental love for the proper development of a child.

             To further strengthen the above argument regarding people’s decision based on their political orientation, we also thought that people’s political orientation and religious inclination would contribute significantly to their decision regarding gay marriages and its issues.  However, it turns out from the study that no strong correlations exist.  Surprisingly, it was actually observed that people with gay family members tended to support gay marriage more, regardless of their religious or political orientation, bringing into light a totally unexpected result.  The observed outcome can be explained based on the fact that people fight for the rights of their near and dear ones.  Also, psychologically, people empathize in support of others who were discriminated against based on any factors such as their sexual orientation, religion or color.  We thus believe that most people tend to make a decision on gay marriage related issues based on their environment, and factors such as political inclination and religious orientation play a minor role in influencing their decision.

            Focusing on the Texans, it was hypothesized that most of them would vouch gay families to be less stable and oppose gay adoption.  In accordance with this hypothesis, the results showed that among the Texans opposing gay adoption, most of them believed gay families to be less stable compared to heterosexual families.  Though it cannot be definitely concluded that Texans oppose gay adoption as they believe gay marriages to be less stable, a correlation can be established between their views on stability of homosexual families and their opinions on gay adoption.  The observed trend among Texans regarding homosexual families’ stability can be explained based on their religious inclination.  It is widely considered that Texans are more religious and their strong religious belief channels their thoughts against gay families.  In order to assertively support our above claims, from the survey, it can be seen that most Texans identified themselves as strongly religious and only a few voted against religious beliefs.  The above results are shown in the previous result section.  Also, a similar analysis on non-Texans revealed an entirely different scenario.  The results point out that a relatively greater number of non-Texans identify themselves as non-religious compared to strongly religious.  The above result acts as support in shifting the major focus of the hypothesis on Texans compared to the general population, as the main objective of the hypothesis was to deduce a correlation between perceived stability of gay families and approval of gay adoption which are strongly influenced by religious beliefs.

            In addition to the above hypotheses, we also suspected that there would be an equal number of people supporting and opposing the baker’s decision not to bake a cake for gay couples.  To our surprise, the survey results clearly showed that people were evenly split, with almost 39% favoring the bakers and 48% opposing the bakers for their action against gay couples.  We suspect that the observed distribution in people’s opinion regarding the baker’s decision was driven by their feelings about freedom of expression and freedom of religion.  People in favor of the baker’s decision were pro-freedom of speech.  In simpler terms, people believed that bakers were not bound by the laws of the government and had the right to deny their services to people.  In conjunction with the above claim, results from the survey showed that people in essential services such as emergency responders or doctors had the least right to deny their services.  In addition, the results showed that people in religious services such as pastors or people in their own profession of interest such as artists or bakers had the rights to deny their services to gay couples. 

            Furthermore, we also observed that relatively more females were supporting gay marriages compared to males.  However, due to the limitations associated with this study, a specific correlation could not be established between the gender and their perception about gay marriages and its related issues.

            As mentioned above, the difficulty to draw out a correlation between certain aspects is due to few limitations associated with the study.  Though we focused on conducting the survey among equal numbers of males and females, we believe that questions focusing on the differences in opinion about gay marriages based on gender would have helped us in establishing a correlation between the gender and their views.  Also, we believe more general questions, instead of focusing specifically on Kim Davis and the bakers, would have definitely helped us in collecting more sample points as people unaware of Kim Davis and the bakers would leave the questions unanswered in the current situation.  Though a wide range of questions was posed to the audience, I believe that this study would have been a lot better if we had analyzed a specific topic, such as views of Democrats or Republicans, or views based on age differences in detail, as we would be in a better position to make conclusive statements, than we are now.  Finally, we would like to point out that this study does not represent the entire community of TTU/Texas/the U.S.A., as the sample size was small and any statements made in this study should be treated as rough estimates of people’s perception and should not be considered as irrefutable or final.

Conclusions

            We carried out a survey on the Texas Tech University campus to assess people’s perception on gay marriages and their related issues following the Supreme Court order legalizing gay marriages throughout the U.S.A.  A questionnaire was prepared with appropriate queries focusing on our aim.  Approximately equal numbers of males and females were randomly chosen and were requested to fill out the survey.  The following conclusions were drawn from the survey.  Based on the study, it was concluded that Democrats and Republicans mention different requirements for proper development of a child and subsequently voice their opinions on gay adoption.  Also, it was seen that religious and political inclination of people play a minor role in determining their sentiments towards gay marriages.  In addition, it was observed that a majority of Texans identify themselves as religious and consider gay families to be less stable.  Furthermore, based on freedom of expression and freedom to exercise religious practices, half of the people surveyed supported baker’s decision to deny services to gay couples.

                                                            Appendix-I

ESL 5301-001                     

Gay Marriage & Issues  Survey – answer them as you wish.

Thank you for filling out our survey!

1. ___ Male             ___ Female

2. Age:    ___ <20    ___ 20-29     ___ 30-39    ___ 40-49    ___ 50-59    ___ 60-69    ___70 & older

3. Where are you from?
___ Texas                ___ USA, not Texas             ___ international

4. How do you identify yourself politically?
___ Republican      ___ Democrat     ___ other (specify)     ___ independent

5. Do you consider yourself religious?

___ Yes, very           ___ Yes, slightly                 ___ No       ___ dislike religion           ___ other: explain

6. Do you have family members who are gay?
___ Yes                     ___ No

7. Do you agree with the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing gay marriage? 5 = strongly agree, 1 = strongly disagree

1               2               3               4               5

8. Did you change your mind on the issue of gay marriage over the past few years? If so, what changed your mind?

9. How do you think the decision will affect the lives of LGBT people? Check the ones you feel are true.

___ they will be healthier and have less stress

___ they will be happier

___ they will be less likely to hide their status

___ they will be more likely to participate in civic and religious activities

10. Do you agree that gay couples should be able to adopt children? 5 = strongly agree,

1 = strongly disagree

1               2               3               4               5
11. What matters most when finding an adoptive home for a child or children? Put 1 as most important, 2, 3, & 4, least important

___ income, financial security                                          ___ having two parents that love each other

___ parental love for children                                          ___ having appropriate gender role models

12. Do you think children raised in a gay family are more likely to be gay than other children?

___ Yes    ___ Yes slightly     ___ No difference     ___ Less likely

13. Do you think gay couples are more stable or less stable than heterosexual couples?

___ More stable                    ___ No difference     ___ Less stable      ____ don’t know

14. How will it affect children to be raised by gay parents? What difference is there, if any?

15. Do you support Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to gay couples?
___ Yes (she should follow her conscience)                             

___ No (she should do her job)

___ No opinion/other opinion

16. Do you feel that the bakers had a right to refuse to bake a cake for gay couples?

___ Yes, they have religious freedom to refuse to do that

___ No, they should not be allowed to discriminate in who they serve

___ other (specify)

17. Which of the following, if any, do you feel have the right to refuse to serve gays? (check as many as you wish, or none)

___ pastors who don’t want to officiate a wedding

___ doctors/emergency responders

___ bakers who feel that their cakes are expression of their art

___ artists who don’t want to create a picture for a gay wedding

___ religious adoption agency which doesn’t want to place children in gay families

                                                                      

                                                            Appendix-II

References

Beitsch, Rebecca (2015, August 19). Despite same-sex marriage ruling, gay adoption rights uncertain in some states. USA Today. Retrieved on September 8, 2015 from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/08/19/despite-same-sex-marriage-ruling-gay-adoption-rights-uncertain-some-states/31992309/.

Fox News (2015, September 6). 'Thank you, Kim': Rally supports jailed Kentucky clerk over marriage licenses. Retrieved September 6, 2015, from http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/09/06/thank-kim-rally-supports-jailed-kentucky-clerk-over-marriage-licenses/.

Hanna, J. (2015, August 13). Court rules against Colorado cake shop in same-sex marriage case. CNN. Retrieved on August 13, 2015 from http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/13/us/colorado-same-sex-wedding-cake/index.html.

Holpuch, A. (2015, September 1). Defiant Kentucky clerk summoned to federal court over gay marriage refusal. The Guardian. Retrieved on September 1, 2015 from: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/01/kentucky-clerk-kim-davis-same-sex-marriage-supreme-court

Levy, A.E. (2015, September 9). Most Americans support sending Kim Davis to jail, poll shows. The Huffington Post. Retrieved on September 17, 2015 from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/kim-davis-poll_55f04a65e4b002d5c0776f39.

Pettus, E.W. (2015, August 28). Judge is asked to block ban on adoption by gay couples. Daily Journal. Retrieved on September 9, 2015 from: http://djournal.com/news/judge-asked-block-ban-adoption-gay-couples/

Pew Research Center. (2013, March 20). Growing support for gay marriage: Changed minds and changing demographics. Retrieved on September 15, 2015 from: http://www.people-press.org/2013/03/20/growing-support-for-gay-marriage-changed-minds-and-changing-demographics/.

Public Religion Research Institute. (2011, August 29). Survey - Generations at Odds: The Millennial Generation and the Future of Gay and Lesbian Rights. Retrieved on September 16, 2015 from: http://publicreligion.org/research/2011/08/generations-at-odds/#.VfkCwRFVhBd

Republican Views. (2014, April 26). Common arguments against gay marriages. Retrieved on September 8, 2015 from: http://www.republicanviews.org/common-arguments-against-gay-marriage/.

Smart, B. (2015, June 30). Will same-sex marriages make America Healthier? CNN. Retrieved on September 7, 2015 from: http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/29/health/same-sex-marriage-health/

Somashekhar, S. and Craighill, M.P. (2015, September 15). Post ABC poll: Most say Kim Davis should issue marriage license to gay couples. The Washington Post. Retrieved on September 17, 2015 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/poll-most-say-kim-davis-should-issue-marriage-licenses-to-gay-couples/2015/09/14/684e6d62-5b0a-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html. 

Swift, A. (2014, May 30). Most Americans Say Same-Sex Couples Entitled to Adopt. Gallup.com. Retrieved on September 11, 2015 from: http://www.gallup.com/poll/170801/americans-say-sex-couples-entitled-adopt.aspx.

USA Today. (2015, July 18). Polls shows slight dip in gay marriage support since Supreme Court ruling. Retrieved on September 1, 2015 from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/07/18/ap-poll-sharp-divisions-after-high-court-backs-gay-marriage/30341661/.