Liberals or Libertarians? Religious Millennials and Support for Same-Sex Marriage

I explore the evolution of Protestant (especially evangelical) support for same-sex relations and same-sex marriage, particularly among the 18-29 “millennial” cohort. Two possibilities are investigated: that Protestants are becoming more "liberal" over time in their support for same-sex marriage, or that Protestants are becoming more “libertarian” in the sense that they remain morally opposed to same-sex relations while supporting the legal right to same-sex marriage. Drawing upon the “ambivalent evangelicals” conception of Bean and Martinez (2014), I use General Social Survey data from 1988 and 2006-2014 to illustrate the growth in support for same-sex marriage among Protestants who remain opposed to same-sex relations. To do so, I estimate predicted probabilities of support using multinomial logistic regressions which control for a host of demographic and religious variables. Specifically, I investigate the impact of age and the “three B’s” of religious identity upon this phenomenon. The GSS is a nationally representative sample which allows me to investigate the ambivalence phenomenon longitudinally, rather than in a single survey year as Bean and Martinez did. I find that Protestants overall are becoming both more liberal and more libertarian as it relates to same-sex marriage, and that there is a growing gap between opposition to same-sex relations and opposition to same-sex marriage, particularly among younger evangelical Protestants.