The role of religion in explaining the relationship between sexual prejudice and the rejection of marriage equality

Support for marriage equality (i.e., extending the privilege of marriage beyond heterosexual couples) is gaining global momentum as evidenced by the increase of countries introducing related legislation. In spite of this social shift, little research has attempted to understand factors predicting the rejection of marriage equality. In this paper, we explore the role of religion in explaining the relationship between sexual prejudice and the rejection of marriage equality. Religion is a complex construct, and so we operationalized religion in multiple ways. Specifically, we explored the role of religious affiliation (i.e., religious-group membership; Study 1: n = 81) and multiple forms of religiosity (i.e., trait-like conceptualizations of how an individual uses their religion in their life; Study 2: n = 168) in explaining the rejection of marriage equality beyond variance accounted for by simple sexual prejudice. As expected, negative attitudes towards marriage equality were related to being higher in sexual prejudice and religious fundamentalism, being lower in Quest, and being Christian (vs. non-religious). In addition, both religious fundamentalism and intrinsic religiosity moderated the marriage equality rejection-sexual prejudice relationship. Importantly, in multiple regression analyses, religious affiliation did not predict the rejection of marriage equality, and religious fundamentalism was the only significant religiosity predictor. Taken together, religiosity emerged as a more useful quantification of religion than religious affiliation in the context of explaining the rejection of marriage equality.