"If You Don't like Gay Marriage, Dont Get One!" a Qualitative Analysis of Same-Sex Marriage in Australia

Background: Prejudice against sexual minority groups has continuously declined in Australia over the past several decades, yet inequality in marriage policy that denies legal recognition of same-sex relationships remains. Additionally, in many parts of Australia, legislation around family rights for same-sex couples and parents are discriminatory. For example, in South Australia, same-sex couples are not allowed to legally adopt a child and cannot access assisted reproductive technologies (ART) without a diagnosis of infertility. The reasons behind these negative attitudes toward same-sex families are not well understood, but it is an important area for new research given that they are contributing to the continuation of discriminatory policies and practices. Much of the substantive knowledge is based on quantitative indicators, which provide greater response homogeneity and allow for the opportunity to gauge community perceptions as a whole, but they cannot assess the nuances of meaning behind responses, risk the omission of important issues that may be relevant to the respondents, and prevent opportunities to examine the language used by respondents (Raiz & Saltzburg, 2007).  The current study qualitatively identified reasons behind support of, or opposition to, same-sex marriage.

Method: This paper presents the findings from responses to a single open-ended item, but the original, mixed methods study was primarily a quantitative study of attitudes toward gay men and lesbian rights (see Webb & Chonody, 2013). Data were collected from a community sample (n=536) in South Australia. Content analysis was used to extract the main themes from participant responses. We sought primarily to provide a descriptive analyses of our data given that many responses were brief and somewhat superficial (e.g., “I’m all for gay marriage!”), which thus does not lend well to theoretical interpretation. Nonetheless, we were particularly focused on word choice and language use to identify nuances in the data

Results: An overwhelming majority of respondents (43.3%) identified the importance of equality as the reason for their support of same-sex marriage and deemed its ongoing illegality as a human rights violation, with a further 24.8% concluding that love is loveor that it should be no one’s business. However, responses suggest that religion and traditional beliefs about marriage were reasons against marriage equality. Results also indicated that gender role norms played a part in negative attitudes toward same-sex marriage as well as perceptions of same-sex couples’ inability to raise children. Our findings revealed heteronormativity language embedded in the responses of participants both for and against marriage equality.

Conclusion: The current study provided qualitative insight into Australian attitudes toward same-sex marriage and families and reasons that may maintain prejudice. Despite the overall positive attitudes, the presence of heteronormative language demonstrates that prejudice against same-sex families still exists. Challenging this type of prejudice is difficult because of its subtlety. Implications for advocacy efforts focused on marriage equality, parenting by same-sex couples, and the focus for future research endeavors in this substantive domain are identified.