(RNS) — While most Americans continue to broadly support LGBTQ rights, that support may be waning, including among religious Americans, according to a new poll from PRRI. The study, based on interviews with more than 22,000 U.S. adults in 2023, found that Americans are somewhat less likely to support same-sex marriage and LGBTQ nondiscrimination protections and less likely to reject allowing business owners to refuse to serve gay people for religious reasons, compared with the year before.
“I think the big story is that most Americans of beliefs are widely supportive of LGBTQ rights,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of PRRI. “But, we do see slight declines in three of the issues we tracked when it comes to Americans’ views on LGBTQ rights. …That was fairly unexpected to us.”
Deckman said that for groups who advocate for LGBTQ rights, this information is equivalent to “a canary in the coal mine.”
Seventy-six percent of American adults reported supporting LGBTQ equality laws in open accommodations, housing, and employment, the study found, down from 80% the year before. The majority of respondents from most religious groups also embrace gay equality laws, though some religious groups saw slight drops in support from 2022. Among Muslims, for example, PRRI reports a drop from 70% support in 2022 to 56% in 2023, white evangelical Protestants saw a drop from 62% to 56%, and Hispanic Catholics from 86% to 78%.
A majority of Americans (67%) also continue to support same-sex marriage, though that number was down 2 percentage points from the previous year. While majorities of all but a handful of spiritual groups favor constitutional recognition of same-sex marriage (most Jehovah’s Witnesses, white evangelical Protestants, Muslims, Hispanic Protestants, and Latter-day Saints are in opposition), many groups even saw dips in support. The biggest drops in support were among Hispanic Catholics, with a decline of 7 percentage points from 2022, and Muslims, which dropped 13 percentage points.
Since PRRI began tracking the issue in 2015, a majority of Americans have opposed allowing a small-business owner to refuse services to LGBTQ people for religious reasons. As in the other categories, that majority still stands, but fell from last year— in 2023, 60% of Americans said they were opposed, compared with 65% in 2022. Dips were also seen in nearly every religious group.
Across all three policy categories, Unitarian Universalists, the religiously unaffiliated, Jewish Americans, and non-Hispanic Catholics of color consistently showed the highest support for LGBTQ rights, while Jehovah’s Witnesses, white evangelical Protestants, and Hispanic Protestants showed the least support.
Deckman partially attributed the declines in support to political polarization, and specifically to the divisiveness around LGBTQ policies, including bathroom policies and laws impacting gender-affirming care.
“Republicans have very strategically, I think, used that as a wedge issue,” said Deckman. “What might be happening, though it’s hard really to tell from this one cross-section … is that continuing to talk about LGBTQ identity and emphasizing the division among Americans in terms of transgender issues is having a larger impact on Americans’ attitudes about LGBT rights more broadly.”
