Homophobia and hostility: Christian conservative reactions to the political and cultural progress of lesbians and gay men

Abstract

American society has witnessed a steady rise in anti-gay sentiment and activity among many Christian conservatives. While other issues, such as abortion and school prayer, also capture their attention, homosexuality seems to produce increasingly intense reactions from them. In this article, I offer an explanation for this phenomenon. Rather than attributing this increase to a rise in homophobia among Christian conservatives, I argue that an important explanation lies in the ways Christians perceive hostility from the general culture. In contrast to earlier years, a greater proportion of the hostility that Christians currently perceive is filtered through the general culture’s often positive reactions to the gay and lesbian rights movement. I illustrate this argument by using numerous sources of data: secondary analyses of national opinion datasets, a content analysis of newspaper editorials, and in-depth interviews with Christian conservatives.