Condemnation of homosexuality in the black community: a gender-specific phenomenon?

Abstract

While it is commonly accepted that homosexuality finds less tolerance in the black community, little or no research has addressed this issue empirically. In the context of an epidemiological investigation of AIDS-related attitudes, 2006 state employees were surveyed to compare the condemnatory orientation of blacks and whites towards homosexuality. One item measured endorsement of a hostile proposition concerning the deleterious impact of AIDS on the homosexual population. Greater relative endorsement was found of the proposition by blacks confirming the hypothesis that less social tolerance of homosexuality exists in the black community. Analyses of gender, educational achievement, religious preference, and marital status revealed that the racial difference in condemnation of homosexuality was derived almost exclusively from a difference in attitude between black and white females. The primary source of this difference may stem from the black female perception that homosexuality exacerbates the developing problem of a decreasing pool of available black males already affected by integration, racially disproportionate incarceration rates, and relatively high rates of premature death among black males from heart disease, cancer, AIDS, substance abuse, and violence.