My Friend is Gay, But… The Effects of Social Contact on Christian Evangelicals’ Beliefs About Gays and Lesbians

This paper examines the relationship between social contact with gays and lesbians and beliefs about homosexuality, and explicitly investigates whether this relationship is different for Christian evangelicals than for others. We find that although social contact with gays and lesbians is related to beliefs about homosexuality in ways predicted by social contact theory, those with a gay or lesbian friend hold more positive attitudes, this is not the case for Christian evangelicals. In fact, analyses reveal that the effect of social contact for Christian evangelicals is significantly less than the effect for non-evangelicals. Results suggest that social contact alone is not enough to positively change Christian evangelicals’ beliefs about gay and lesbian individuals. This research adds to our knowledge about social contact by providing empirical evidence that all subgroups of the population are not affected equally by social contact with minority groups—an important piece of information for theoretical developments and policy makers.