Sexual Prejudice Predicts Opposition to Marriage Equality for Men and Women

Despite the need to identify crucial barriers to equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community, it remains unclear if prejudiced attitudes-namely, sexual prejudice and ambivalent sexism-precede declines in support for marriage equality or if one's policy position impacts prejudices. We examine these two possibilities by utilizing four annual waves (2014-2017) of longitudinal panel data to assess the temporal ordering of sexual prejudice, ambivalent sexism and support for marriage equality across heterosexual men (n = 9,036) and women (n = 15,185). Results reveal that sexual prejudice predicts within-person declines in support for marriage equality for both women and men. This association is, however, bi-directional for men. We replicate these associations across (a) ethnic majority and minority men and women and (b) non-religious and religious men and women, albeit with a few notable exceptions: Hostile sexism precedes sexual prejudice for ethnic minority men, and benevolent sexism precedes support for marriage equality among ethnic majority group men and non-religious men. Collectively, our results demonstrate that conservative gender ideologies precede hostile attitudes toward the LGB+ community over time.