Changing Attitudes On Same Sex Relations?
Looking at Mormon beliefs using the General Social Survey
Introduction
In the 2010s, the US saw one of the largest shifts in public opinion and relatively quickly, too. In 2010, most people opposed same sex marriage and by 2019 a majority of people supported it.
Where do Mormons fit into this narrative?
It is a well-known fact that originally the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints fought for Proposition 8 which banned same sex marriage in California - mobilizing its members to support it. However, this happened in 2008, 16 years ago.
The church has a gospel topic essay on “same sex attraction“ saying that while it is not a sin to identify as “gay, lesbian, or bisexual,“ homosexual relations “violate“ God’s laws. Historically, Mormons are heavily influenced by the Church’s positions on social issues and often align with them. But for this issue, recently, I’ve seen some evidence of deviation.
Charts
We’ll look at this at least two ways. First, do Mormons oppose same sex marriage? Theoretically, there is wiggle room for a Mormon to believe that homosexual relations are wrong (being aligned with the church’s positions), but support the freedom of choice for homosexual marriage. So, first we look at questions specifically around supporting and opposing Same Sex Marriage.
For the second way, the General Social Survey has a question about whether “relations between two adults of the same sex“ is morally “wrong.“ With this wording, it feels more like picking one side or the other. And for a Mormon the sides either are homosexual relations are wrong (aligned with the church) OR homosexuality is not wrong (aligned with the majority of US society).
Attitudes on Same Sex Marriage
As you can see in the last 20 or so years, we can see the switch in the US national numbers. Most people now support same sex marriage 70/30 whereas going back a few years it was 70/30 opposing.
We do see some tapering off recently, and the trend may now be holding steady around 70 support 30 oppose.
Looking specifically at Mormons, we have data as late as 3 years ago from PRRI
We see that Mormons support at 46% which means they are about half as likely to support compared to the US overall(69%). Though, the number of mormon supporters of same sex marriage has doubled in the last 10 years.
Attitudes on Same Sex Relations
Now let’s look at whether people view same sex relations as “wrong.”
A Majority of people in the US >60% do not view same sex relations as wrong. The trend cross over happened slightly after the trend crossover for same sex marriage support and reaches as high as 60% saying “not at all wrong“ is not quite as high as 70% supporting same sex marriage.
⚠️Update 27 December 2024: previously, I made an error in this chart filtering to those raised Mormon instead of those currently identifying as Mormon. The trend in both groups is the same. However, among those raised Mormon, the peak is higher at ~52% whereas among current Mormons the peak is ~31%. I have since updated the text in this post and the graph above. This can just serve as a sanity check if you read it before the update and wondering why things look different now!⚠️
Analyzing the chart above, there are a growing plurality of Mormons who say that same sex relations are “not wrong at all“ which by itself is an interesting finding. That means there are a large number of Mormons living in tension with the church beliefs and their own on this particular topic.
I would love to look at this question in a larger survey of Mormons to dig into the demographics since a finer analysis is trivial with our low N sizes. Who are the demographics on both sides of this question? Is this a stronger age or party division? I would also love to ask a few survey questions of my own exploring how beliefs are reconciled with the church saying one thing and some members believing another.
Discussion
What do you think about this analysis? What questions would you ask in a survey to Mormons to better understand this topic? Any hunches you have or anything that surprised you?