Sexual minority and religious majority: Nonreligious gay/lesbian people’s and cisgender heterosexual Christians’ evaluations of gay and lesbian Christians.

What is it about?

Researchers have traditionally measured attitudes toward different groups in discrete identity categories, such as sexual orientation versus gender identity. However, people have multiple intersecting identities, some of which may be perceived as "conflicting" with one another. In this research we examined how nonreligious gay/lesbian people and cisgender heterosexual Christians evaluated gay/lesbian Christians, a relevant target group that is likely perceived as having two identities that "conflict" with each other. Overall, we found that perceived intergroup conflict, perceived identity incompatibility, and stereotypic inferences about political ideology were associated with negative evaluations of gay/lesbian Christians and participants' "double outgroups." However, inferences about political ideology of gay/lesbian Christians may help explain cases where participants evaluated gay/lesbian Christians differently than their double outgroups.

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Why is it important?

Our findings suggest that gay/lesbian Christians may be viewed as between two groups seen as politically opposed. In this study, neither nonreligious gay/lesbian people nor cisgender heterosexual Christians fully embraced gay/lesbian Christians, which may be driven by assumptions regarding this target group’s political ideology.