Study: Education, Not Race, Correlates with Support for Marriage Equality
The influx of African-American voters at polling places in California last November was seen as the result of Barack Obama’s candidacy; but the upsurge in voting by the black community was also pegged as the reason why the anti-gay ballot initiative Proposition 8, which revoked the existing right of gay and lesbian families to marry, squeaked through.
The GLBT community immediately fell into a funk of soul-searching, wondering whether the African-American community as a whole detested their gay and lesbian fellow citizens, even as charges of racism were hurled at gays from religious and social conservatives who had seized upon a scant few instances in which angry gays vented by screaming racial epithets at African-Americans.
Subsequent studies indicated that those early impressions were not completely accurate. Though the anti-gay amendment had found widespread support among blacks and Latinos, in large part due to religious organizations publicly promoting the rescinding of rights for gay and lesbian families, it was suggested in the aftermath that the demographic that had voted against marriage equality was not racially based per se, but rather consisted of people who went to church services on a more regular basis.
Other reports speculated that education played a major role in the outcome. A new study on the outcome of voting patterns on an anti-gay constitutional amendment in Florida, also approved last November, seems to support that view.
A Sept. 2 article in Florida newspaper The Gainesville Sun reported that the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Florida, showed that race was far less important in the outcome of the Florida vote than was the level of education of the voters.
Indeed, the article reported that education, as a factor in the outcome, was five times more important than race.
As with the narrow success of Proposition 8, the passage of the Florida ban on marriage equality was initially seen as being the result of black voters flocking to the polls to vote for Obama, who became the first African-American president.
But the new study upsets that notion and, along with it, the received wisdom that the African-American community is unchangeably hostile to full equality before the law for gay and lesbian families.
Said Dan Smith, who co-authored the report with Stephanie Slade, "[African Ameircna voters] are movable in terms of this issue," the article reported.
Smith, who is a professor of political science at the university, went on to add, "There’s a lot of evidence showing increased education leads to greater tolerance."
Smith based that assertion on the study’s results, which indicated that while black voters did help pass the anti-gay ban, it was not at as great a rate as first thought: the article reported that for every African-American voter at the polls, the anti-gay ban picked up only a fraction more support.
The study shows that, county by county, a one percent increase in African-American residents translated into only 2/10 of one percent in terms of additional support for the amendment.
By contrast, a one-percent increase in residents with a bachelor’s degree translated into a one-percent decrease in support for the anti-gay amendment: a one-to-one correlation that is far weightier than the one-to-two-tenths correlation seen in terms of race and the amendment.
One implication is that education of other forms--such as outreach by GLBT advocacy groups--might make a bigger dent that formerly thought in the African-American community. Groups that considered shifting focus away from outreach to black voters might, the study suggests, wish to think again.
Said Smith, "I think the study shows [the African-American community] shouldn’t be written off."
The article said that a similar study conducted in California also suggested a stronger link between education and support for marriage equality than exists between race and the issue.
