In the world today, there are many views on a person’s sexual preference. In the past, the only acceptable affiliation was heterosexuality. Even today, most of the larger churches do not support homosexuality. In fact, there is a current issue pertaining to The Disney Company’s support of homosexuality. This stemmed from the fact that Disney is giving insurance benefits to homosexual partners (as well as heterosexual partners) and forty percent of Disney’s personnel are homosexual.

With so much adversity to homosexuality, how does the everyday citizen of the United States feel about the issue. Do we consider ourselves a homophobic society? I am interested to know whether we do feel we are homophobic, and if so, with that feeling, how do we treat homosexuals. Do we make jokes about them? Do we feel uncomfortable seeing them? I believed that though we might consider ourselves not homophobic, we do these things. I wanted to see the correlation between our gender, religious background, where we come from, and how we treat homosexuals. It is my opinion that these factors will have a significant effect: males, Protestants, and rural people being more homophobic. We shall see.

Subjects. The participants were students from an introductory psychology class (PSY 121), who volunteered to participate in a project for introductory statistics students (PSY 200). There were a total of 27 participants who filled out my survey.

Apparatus. The questionnaire was composed of two parts. The first part was directed at a person’s gender, religious background, rank in school, sexual preference, and type of area they came from. The second part consisted of questions I devised to see how the individual thought of and treated homosexuals with a ranking system of one to five.

Procedure. The students filled out sign-up sheets for an opportunity to fill out surveys for extra-credit points in their class. When the students arrived, they were given instructions that the questionnaires they were about to receive were written by PSY 200 students, and the answers were completely voluntary and anonymous. They had thirty minutes to fill out as many surveys as were present and then they were free to leave.

Seven out of the 27 participants was male (26%) and twenty were female (74%). Four of the males and fourteen of the females did not consider themselves homophobic. The most significant correlations appear to be negative between gender and negative actions and feelings toward homosexuals. The one positive significant correlation involved being friendly toward homosexuals (r=.473).

Seven (26%) were Baptist, four (15%) were Catholic, five (19%) were Christian or non-denominational, eleven (40%) were an undefined religion, and none were Pentecostal.

Rank didn’t seem to have many high correlations although the ones it had correlated rank positively with friendliness and negatively with jokes. It was very interesting to see that the population area the participants came from had no significant relationships with attitudes toward homosexuality.

The most significant correlations were between whether a person considered themselves homophobic and how friendly they were toward homosexuals. It appears that the more homophobic they considered themselves, the more antagonistic they were and the fewer homosexuals they knew. For example, the correlation between homophobia and knowing homosexuals was r=-.754.

This questionnaire is about attitudes toward homosexuality. The information gathered will be used for a PSY 200 statistics project. Please answer honestly.

1. What gender are you? M F

2. What is your religion?

1. Baptist
2. Pentecostal
3. Catholic
4. Christian/Non-denominational
5. Other _________

2. What rank are you in school?

Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Other

1 2 3 4 5

3. What sexual preference are you?

1. Heterosexual
2. Homosexual
3. Bisexual

2. What type of community do you come from?

1. Rural
2. Suburban
3. Inner-city
4. Urban
5. Other __________

In the following questions, rank your answers according to the scale shown here.

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Strongly Agree

1 2 3 4 5

11. I have told, or participated in, jokes about homosexuals.

1 2 3 4 5

12. If I were in a group that was making fun of a homosexual person (because they are homosexual) I would participate (or at least, not do anything to stop it).

1 2 3 4 5

13. I would make fun of a homosexual person when I was alone.

1 2 3 4 5

14. I have ever thought to myself when I found that an attractive person of the other sex was homosexual—"What a waste."

1 2 3 4 5

15. I think that a person chooses to be homosexual.

1 2 3 4 5

16. I think that if there is a chemical imbalance in a person making them homosexual, the person should have it changed.

1 2 3 4 5

17. I feel uncomfortable when I see two males kissing.

1 2 3 4 5

18. I feel uncomfortable when I see two females kissing.

1 2 3 4 5

19. I have ever said, "I don’t mind homosexuals, as long as I don’t have to see it" or something similar.

1 2 3 4 5

20. I would feel flattered if an attractive person of my sex asked me out.

Sex – Male N = 7 – 26%

Sex – Female N = 20 – 74%

Religion – Baptist N = 7 – 26%

Religion – Catholic N = 4 – 15%

Religion – Christian N = 5 – 19%

Religion – Other N = 11 – 40%

Area – Rural N = 14 – 52%

Area – Suburban N = 9 – 33%

Area – Urban N = 4 – 15%

Strongly Disagree – SD Disagree – D Neutral – N Agree – A Strongly Agree – SA

Continued…

Continued…

*. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).

MEAN MEAN

Males Female Sig. Level Baptist Catholic Christian Other Sig. Level

(N=7) (N=20) (N=7) (N=4) (N=5) (N=11)

MEAN

Rural Suburban Urban Significance

(N=14) (N=9) (N=4) Level

The results seem to show a difference in attitude between males and females, and Protestants and non-Protestants. It appears to support my hypothesis that males and Protestants seem to be more homophobic or act more unkindly toward homosexuals. I find these results understandable considering the pressure on males to be "macho" and the Protestant boycott of Disney concerning the homosexual issue.

Contrary to my expectation, I found no significant differences in the area a person came from and their attitudes toward homosexuals. This could be due to the limited sample size or other factors that I am unaware of. I think my ideas have changed on this matter though. Though people from rural areas may not be confronted with the issue as much as urban dwellers (making them more afraid because they don’t know both sides), there is a lot of hatred within cities as well. I agree with my findings that one would not find a significant difference between the two.

I think that it would be interesting to further develop this study with a larger sample size with a wider variation of backgrounds and sexual preferences. I believe that it could actually be broken down into smaller areas to test the correlation between different aspects of the survey, such as, how homophobic a person feels he/she is and how they actually treat homosexuals.