Abstract
The gay adoption issue, with its currently uncertain status in some states, including Texas, will be chosen as a focus of the following paper. In accordance with the purpose of the writing class, this paper aimed to figure out what the Texas Tech University (TTU) community thought about gay adoption. By collecting and analyzing the data of 145 surveys on campus, we learnt that overall, the TTU community approved of gay adoption; the Millennials were more likely to favor gay adoption, the females supported this gay right more strongly than the males, and the Republicans here were less favorable to gay parents. In addition, we were excited to learn that the proponents of gay rights at TTU were less likely to identify a difference in parenting between heterosexual and homosexual couples. (Nam)
Key words: Gay adoption, Texas Tech University, Millennials.
Texas Tech University community toward gay adoption: How age groups, gender, and political orientation affected its support for gay parenting
Introduction
Gay issues in general and gay marriages in particular have been attracting much attention from the public in the United States. Although the support for the union of homosexual couples has increased considerably, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriages on June 26, 2015, has still not been warmly welcomed and completely complied with by a number of people, especially the religious groups. These opponents count on their freedom of religion and speech to serve neither marriage licenses nor wedding cakes for gay couples. Ms. Kim Davis, a normal clerk in Rowan County in northeast Kentucky, has been a well-known figure recently for her refusal to issue same-sex marriage licenses and her defense of God’s definition of marriage (Blinder & Fausset, 2015). Similarly, cake bakers have become “the most formidable legal opponent of gay marriage” (Green, 2015, para.1), even though they have mostly not convinced the court with their argument that cake baking is a form of art and free speech. Armed with the ruling of the Supreme Court, homosexual couples seem to have more advantages in the battle with all the opposed. However, their rights to adopt children have not been guaranteed nationwide in the United States; Mississippi makes itself an exceptional case by outlawing gay foster parents (Beitsch, 2015). Therefore, after the marriage license, the legalization of the adoption right is more likely to become the next goal for the same-sex couples.
The gay adoption issue, with its currently uncertain status in some states, including Texas, will be chosen as a focus of the following paper. However, in accordance with the purpose of the writing class, this paper aims to figure out what the Texas Tech University community thought about gay adoption. By collecting and analyzing the data, we should clarify if age, gender, nationality, political and religious orientation make any difference in people’s attitude toward the issue.
Literature Review
Same-sex couples over the past decade have increasingly garnered support for their adoption right from a large number of Americans. According to the result of Values and Belief Survey conducted by Gallup in May, 2014, in response to the question, “Do you think same-sex couples should or should not have the legal right to adopt a child?”, the proportion of “Yes” answers after two decades had doubled from 29% in 1992 to 63% in 2014 (Swift, 2014, para.1). The graph “Americans’ support for same-sex adoption vs. support for same-sex marriage” in this survey also revealed that same-sex parenting is likely to gain more favor than gay union (Swift, 2014). In another survey by Pew Research Center in 2013, a 64% majority of Americans agreed that “same-sex couples can be as good parents as heterosexual couples”, a 10% increase in comparison with the acceptance rate of 2003 (PewResearchCenter, 2013, para. 23). Based on those research results, we believed that the Texas Tech university community would not be an exception in the nationwide propensity for supporting same-sex rights; in other words, generally, it would go toward gay adoption.
The readings also show that there are considerably different views on gay adoption among age groups. Surveys in 2011, 2013 and 2014 conducted by a variety of agencies unanimously led to the same conclusion, that older people were normally less accepting of gay rights than younger ones; and the public support for gay adoption substantially has come from the “Millennials” who were born after 1980 (PewResearchCenter , 2013; Swift, 2014; Jones et al., 2011). This generation gap has been considered the most crucial factor deciding the future of all gay issues. In the case of Texas Tech University, we predicted that the younger people were, the more likely they would be to favor gay parenting.
Other different standpoints among sexes and political persuasions also merit further scrutiny. An analysis about how people changed their attitude toward gay marriage by PewResearchCenter pointed out that in the past decade, women were more open with same-sex parenting than men were (favorable rate in 2013: 71% vs. 57%) (PewResearchCenter, 2013, para. 24). Meanwhile, according to a 2011 survey, Democrats and Independents were more in favor of gay adoption than Republicans were; the favorable rates respectively were 64% and 55% vs. 38% (Jones et al., 2011, p. 9). From these research studies, we suspected the female members of the TTU community would have a stronger support for gay adoption than the male ones. We knew that the Republican Party had a great influence in Texas; and we wanted to learn if the Democrats and Independents at Texas Tech University would show a higher favorable rate of gay parenting than the Republicans would.
The debate on gay adoption right started decades ago, and recently has become heated, especially after the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court on same-sex marriage. The opposing groups remain consistent with their argument that the children raised by gay parents are more likely to have the same lifestyle (Dunkin, 2014) or they are probably less stable and successful than ones living with different-sex parents (Republicanview.org, 2014). However, the same-sex couples believe that their unconditional love, not their lifestyle, actually matters to children (Beitsch, 2015). Mississippi, the only state outlawing the gay foster parents, has become the decisive battle as the gay couples have continually challenged this state’s adoption ban on them (Pettus, 2015; Lewin, 2015). Based on these readings, we also suspected the supporters for gay adoption in Texas Tech University could have a reason for their stand that they do not see any differences in parenting between homosexual and heterosexual couples.
Methods Section
This research attempts to clarify whether the TTU community generally would support gay adoption as well as other same-sex rights. It also studies the different levels of support for gay parenting among age groups, sexes, and political persuasions. We wanted to illuminate the following facts: if the younger members of the TTU community were more likely to favor gay adoption, if the females would support this gay right more strongly than the males, and if the Republicans here were less favorable to gay parents. In addition, we were excited to learn if the proponents of gay rights at TTU identified the difference in parenting between heterosexual and homosexual couples.
To examine these hypotheses, we conducted a small survey around the TTU campus. This survey consisted of 17 separate questions, which were made in a certain way. We asked TTU members for a wide range of information from their age and political affiliation to their viewpoints on gay issues and some specific rights as well. For example, several questions were designed exclusively to learn how people felt about gay marriage and gay adoption, or if they had changed their mind over time. With regard to format of the questions, beside yes-no and multiple choice questions, we chose a Likert scale for some questions in order to specify how strongly people felt about an issue. We felt it would be helpful for us to compare the favorable levels of different groups.
We completed the survey in the last week of September 2015. Before doing it, we made an agreement that after filling out one ourselves, each member in our writing class would have at least twelve surveys filled out by six American men and six American women. When conducting the survey, we were responsible for keeping track of all that happened. Then, we started doing our surveys separately. Some of us collected the surveys randomly in a whole building or from a range of specific groups; some did them across the campus. However, we all kept following our rules closely. All the surveys were done on the TTU campus and by the TTU members who were either students or faculty and staff. We got a total of 145 surveys, excluding one that was incomplete. Finally, the data were inputted together into an Excel sheet after we chose it as an easy way to tabulate our result.
Result Section
The survey results have proved our belief that the TTU community generally would support gay adoption as well as gay marriage. Of 145 people who filled out the survey, 68% supported gay adoption, of which 53% of respondents frankly expressed their strong favor. Similarly, a 62% majority of people had positive attitudes toward the decision of the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.
We suspected that the young generations at TTU would support gay adoption more strongly than the old ones; unfortunately, this hypothesis could not be fully examined. The data clearly showed that 53% of respondents aged 29 or under strongly agreed to gay adoption rights. The age groups of 40 or over were also included in the survey; however, the data were not representative enough, as we had actually collected only 14 surveys among these age groups (just about 10% total number of surveys collected). Therefore, based on the survey result, we could not make any reliable comparison regarding support for gay adoption between young and old generations in the TTU community.
The collected data also provided information about different attitudes toward gay parenting between sexes at TTU. We suspected that TTU females were more likely to favor gay adoption than TTU males and we collected data successfully from 70 men and 75 women. The survey result showed that a majority of 79% females supported same-sex couples’ adopting children, of which 60% claimed their strong favor. However, the percentages for male members were just 57% and 46% respectively. In the total number of supporters for gay adoption in the TTU community, women took a large proportion with a percentage of 60%. Obviously, we were right about how gender affected people’s attitude toward gay adoption.
Political orientations also made a difference in people’s support for gay parenting in the TTU community. We suspected that Republicans here were less favorable to gay parents, and we were right. Of 39 Republicans being asked, only 23% strongly agreed to gay adoption rights, while this rate among Democrats and independents were respectively 91% and 48%.
We thought that the TTU members generally would not find much difference in parenting between heterosexual and homosexual couples, and the data confirmed that. Responding to the eleventh question that required them to point out what mattered most when finding an adoptive home for a child or children, 65% of people chose “parental love for children” as the most important condition, and 57% considered the condition of “having appropriate gender role models” as the least important. These numbers were very compatible with all the data that we collected with the twelfth and the fourteenth questions. The majority of respondents did not see any difference with the children who were raised by gay parents. For example, when responding to the twelfth question on sexual orientation of children raised in a gay family, 67% of people chose the answer “No difference”. In addition, a considerable number of people commented on the fourteenth question that some possible differences happening to those children, if any, would be to have a larger worldview and an open mind toward gender roles.
However, regarding the specific issue of parenting, there were also some different viewpoints among sexual and political orientations. When considering the most decisive factor for adopting children, while 70% female respondents indicated the “parental love for children”, only 58% men shared the same opinion. Similarly, the percentage of Democrats and Republicans supporting parental love were respectively 73% and 54%. Regarding the appropriate gender role models, TTU women seemed to be in favor of gay adoption more than TTU men, when 66% of them determined this factor as the least important one for choosing foster parents. A majority of 75% of Democrats also downplayed the traditional gender role models, whereas, only 47% of males and 48% of Republicans lowered the importance of this factor. The TTU male members, whatever their political orientation was, seemed to care more about the financial condition than the females. Among people who rated “income” as the number one factor for deciding an adoptive home for children, 65% of them were males; only 34% named themselves Republicans and only 15% belonged to Democrats.
As the result sheet shows, except for the relative balance of male and female numbers on which we made an agreement before conducting the surveys, the difference in proportions among age groups or political orientations was beyond our prediction. Of 145 respondents, nearly 70% were at the age of 29 and under; the 40-or-over people only made up 10%. Similarly, we were surprised to find that 41% of respondents did not want to associate with a party’s name and claimed themselves “independent”. All these unexpected results made us finally unable to test some of our hypotheses adequately.
When looking closely at the data and examining the correlations between the numbers, we also found out some very interesting results that we had not ever predicted before. For example, 58% respondents who considered themselves very religious were females. The ratios of women to men in the Republican and independent groups were the same, while female respondents outnumbered in the Democrat group with a percentage of 63%. These results were not in our expectation, but they were indeed very important for our study. They will be discussed more carefully in the following section.
Discussion
We predicted that overall, the TTU community would favor both gay marriage and gay adoption, and the result strongly supported this hypothesis. The percentage of proponents here was very close to the nationwide facts provided by other studies on the similar topics in 2013 (PewResearchCenter, 2013) and 2014 (Swift, 2014). Looking closely at the data, we also learnt that people who approved of gay marriage would definitely support gay adoption, and anyone strongly opposing same-sex union was also less likely to favor gay parenting; however, the opposite direction in both these cases rarely happened. The possible explanation for that might lie in the common thought among the majority of people at TTU that there was no difference in parenting between homosexual and heterosexual couples and what mattered most when finding an adoptive home for a child was not parents’ gender role model but their love for children. This was the same as what gay couples all over the country argued for their adoption right (Beitsch, 2015).
Our hypothesis about the generation gap in the attitude toward gay adoption was not fully tested, because the data we collected among older age groups was not enough to make any comparison. The most interesting thing is that we actually conducted the survey in a random way and predicted the abundance of the Millennials in the TTU community, but their number still exceeded all our expectation. This confirmed that young people were indeed a crucial group on campus, and they decided the overall public opinion at TTU. In our research, TTU’s support for gay adoption substantially came from them, and this result was not different at all from other previous studies on attitude toward gay adoption among age groups nationwide (Jones et al., 2011; PewResearchCenter, 2013; Swift, 2014).
As we made an agreement on keeping equal the number of male and female respondents while collecting the surveys, the data we got was quite well representive in terms of gender. Our hypothesis on different views about gay parenting among sexes at TTU, therefore, was fully examined; TTU females were obviously more open with same-sex parenting than TTU males were. The favorable rates were very close to the reality and similar to the national data (PewResearchCenter, 2013). The support of women for gay adoption was confirmed by the fact that they were very certain about the most and the least important factor (parental love and gender role models) for deciding on an adoptive home for children. The male respondents seemed to be more practical than the females by paying more attention to the income factor.
A quick look back at the collected data also revealed that people, either men or women, who considered themselves very religious, were not likely to oppose gay adoption. This could be explained partly by the fact that females dominated among the group of respondents who considered themselves very religious. This seemed to contradict with the reality that the religious groups were not very supportive for gay issues (Blinder and Fausset, 2015).
Our belief in the different support for gay adoption among people of different political orientations was also tested quite successfully. In comparison with the percentage of proponents among partisans in the national scale (Jones et al., 2011), TTU Democrats seemed to be much more likely to favor this gay right while the Republican and the independent proponents at TTU had a lower rate than ones nationwide did. We thought that the Republicans would outnumber the Democrats and independents, but it was not right, the large number of independents went beyond our expectation. It seemed to us that the TTU community was politically quite different from the Texan community as it has a considerable number of members who did not want to associate with the Republican Party or any party’s name. This could be explained by the number of out-of-state people or the predominance of the Millennials who increasingly wanted to raise their own voice in terms of politics.
A separated comparison on the attitude toward gay parenting between Republicans and Democrats at TTU revealed the difference much more clearly. Like the group of female respondents, the group of Democrats supported gay adoption strongly and approved of gay parenting definitely. Meanwhile, the Republicans seemed to be not certain about gay parenting whether or not they were in favor of gay adoption; they could not define clearly the most and the least important factors affecting the decision on adopting a child. Among the respondents who thought that the children raised in same-sex families would be more likely to be gays, the Republicans took a proportion of 41% while the Democrats had only 5%. The Democrats relied their favor of gay adoption on their firm beliefs that “parental love” mattered most and much more than “having appropriate gender role models” when finding an adoptive home for children and that there was no difference between homosexual and heterosexual parenting.
Another possible explanation for the stronger support of TTU Democrats for gay adoption can be drawn from the correlation between gender and political orientations in our survey records. What interested us most was the fact that females only outnumbered in the group of Democrats while having almost the same number as men in the other political groups. A majority of 60% Democrats who strongly approved of gay adoption were women. From these facts, we learnt that female members decided largely the attitude of TTU Democrats toward gay adoption, and the female Democrats were more likely to have a considerable influence on the public support of the TTU community for gay rights. These, once again, confirmed our hypotheses on how gender and political affected the opinion of TTU community about gay adoption. While the result on age groups was not adequate for us to draw any conclusion, gender and political orientation were obviously important variables in our study.
As a research project of a small writing class, our study unavoidably had several salient limitations. First, the collected data was not well representative. We collected 145 surveys and could only keep them representative successfully in term of gender. While collecting the surveys randomly across the TTU campus, it was hard for us to control this characteristic. A suggestion for future research might be that we should enlarge the size of our survey and pay more attention to where we conduct it. For example, our survey should not be limited to certain buildings or groups; it should be more deliberately conducted among diverse schools and departments. Second, the nature of our questions also contributed to the limited result of our study. Almost all questions were asked in a certain way and they sometimes led people to hide the truth. Some people did not feel comfortable with our questions; then, we could not get out what they really thought or what we wanted to know. For example, some respondents struggled with the twelfth and the seventeenth questions because they were not completely sure about the answers, even though they were in favor of gay adoption. There has not been any official study about the influence of gay parenting on children and the probability of those children’s gayness. The respondents were also uncomfortable about deciding who would have the right to refuse providing services for gay marriages. Therefore, they were more likely to choose some unspecific answers such as “no difference” for the twelfth question or leaving all boxes blank for the seventeenth question. A further study should invest more time in designing questions and trying other ways of inquiring of people.
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