Thread by @LandonSchnabel

Now online: "Sexual Orientation and Social Attitudes" journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.117…

Sexual orientation is a strong and exceptionally consistent predictor of social attitudes. I conclude that sexuality should become a core factor in social scientific theory and empirical analysis.

Gender and race were historically marginal topics in sociology, but became core factors in the 1990s

Sexuality is still a marginal topic

Total # of papers in last 80 years in top generalist sociology journals:
Gender: 785
Race: 576
Sexuality: 25

Regardless of whether it's measured as partnering behavior or self-identification, sexuality is a strong predictor of political views.

In fact, sexuality is 2x as strong a divide on general political orientation as gender, race, and college:

But when sexual behavior and identity differ, identity is more influential in people's political orientation.

This pattern lends support to a marginalized identity explanation for why sexual minorities are so liberal.

The sexuality gap in attitudes has been consistent over time on general political orientation and most specific social issues.

But on same-sex marriage, there's been convergence over time (primarily because heterosexuals had more room for attitude change).

Not only are sexual minorities more likely to identify as liberal, they are more likely to hold liberal attitudes on specific social issues.

Their lesser religious fundamentalism and greater liberal partisanship help explain why sexual minorities are liberal on specific issues.

Sexual minorities are substantially more liberal than heterosexuals across all types of social attitudes:

In fact, sexual minorities are more liberal than heterosexuals on 100% of issues with significant differences by sexuality, and 99% of issues irrespective of significance.

This consistency is not matched by gender, race, or even education differences in attitudes:

Additional findings that didn't make it into the final version of the paper: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…

The impact of sexual orientation on social attitudes is intersectional, varying across groups and issues. It's impact is typically larger among more privileged groups.

I argue that sexuality should become a standard sociodemographic measure in social scientific research (journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…).

Here are some practical recommendations for (1) how to measure sexuality and (2) how to deal with missing data: