Christian and Political Conservatism Predict Opposition to Sexual and Gender Minority Rights through Support for Christian Hegemony

Abstract

Highlights Opposition to sexual and gender minority (SGM) rights persists in the United States. Christian conservatism and political conservatism are linked to opposition to SGM rights. In this study, support for Christian hegemony helped to explain this link. Our results suggest that a system of Christian power and privilege is a barrier to SGM rights.

Transgender-Specific Adolescent Mental Health Provider Availability is Substantially Lower in States with More Restrictive Policies

“…Further, few studies linking trans-specific state policy climate measures to healthcare-related outcomes among transgender samples have comprehensively accounted for other macro-social factors-such as state-level urbanicity, conservatism, and/or religiosity-that might not only predict the passage of restrictive trans-specific state laws/policies (Conley, 2021;Flores et al, 2015;Movement Advancement Project, 2019;Todd et al, 2020) but that might also shape healthcare access and/or healthcare provider availability for transgender people independent of such laws/policies (Campbell et al, 2019;Flores et al, 2020;Goldenberg et al, 2020a;Goldenberg et al, 2020b;Hughto et al, 2016;Reisner et al, 2022). Controlling for these statelevel characteristics would enable scholars to rule out other plausible explanations for associations between states' trans-specific policy climate and healthcare access and/or mental health provider availability among transgender people, such as the possibility that trans-specific state laws/policies are more restrictive in rural (vs. urban) states and that there are simply fewer trans-specific healthcare resources in these settings.…”

“…We controlled for three state-level variables plausibly associated with our main predictor and/or outcome: (1) conservatism (i.e., the proportion of Republican state legislators); (2) religiosity (i.e., the percentage of evangelical Christians/Mormons); and (3) urbanicity (i.e., the percentage of residents living in census tracts with >2,500 people; US Census Bureau, 2010). This approach enabled us to account for state-level characteristics that have been previously correlated with trans-specific state policy climate measures and/or transgender adults' access to supportive healthcare (Castle, 2019;Conley, 2021;Flores et al, 2015;Goldenberg et al, 2020a;Hughto et al, 2016;Movement Advancement Project, 2019;Todd et al, 2020) and thus to rule out the possibility that these macro-social factors might explain any observed association between states' trans-specific policy climate and trans-specific adolescent mental health provider availability. To be consistent with when the main predictor and outcome were measured, covariates were acquired for 2021 when possible.…”

“…Our religiosity measure, which indexed the percentage of evangelical Christians and/or Mormons in each state, has been widely used as a state-level covariate in structural stigma research with transgender and other stigmatized populations (Everett et al, 2022;McKetta et al, 2022), and research demonstrates that members of these religious denominations (vs. other religious groups; e.g., mainline Protestants) hold more negative attitudes towards transgender individuals and transgender rights/protections (Pew Research Center, 2016Public Religion Research Institute, 2021;Todd et al, 2020).…”

The Identity Thief: How Politics, Religion, and Values Stole Support for Sexual Assault Reporting and the #MeToo Movement

“…Rather than being an indicator of personal belief or even expectations about the religiosity of other individuals, Christian Nationalism is informed by conservative Christian religion within society more broadly and especially conservative ideals about the state . Whitehead and Perry (2020) identify Christian Nationalism as the single greatest factor shaping "traditional" patriarchal gender ideology, with their findings robust to a range of relevant controls across a full scope of Christian denominational diversity (see also Todd et al, 2020). Critically, these normative and aspirational orientations are independent of personal religious belief, belonging, and behavior, even among conservative Christians.…”

Christian Nationalism and Views of Immigrants in the United States: Is the Relationship Stronger for the Religiously Inactive?

“…A variety of scholars have proposed that Christian nationalism can be a salient ideology for those who are not evangelical Protestant, who are not devoutly religious, or who are quite secular (Braunstein and Taylor 2017; Delehanty, Edgell, and Stewart 2019; Edgell and Tranby 2010; Gorski 2020; Stroope et al 2020; Todd et al 2020; Whitehead and Perry 2020). Whitehead and Perry (2020) noted that “many non-evangelicals (or non-Christians, for that matter) also hold strong Christian nationalist beliefs” and that “some Christian nationalists can be quite secular” (p. x).…”