Marco Gomez

Marco Gomez

600 Words

Race, Religion, and Opposition to Same-Sex Marriage

This article is taking a look at the racial and religion differences in supporting same-sex marriages. The study uses whites, blacks and others as the races. The study also shows how religion, political beliefs, Cohorts, Education and Sociodemographic all can play a role in the opposition in supporting same-sex marriage.

The methods used in this data were general social surveys from 1988, 2004 through 2008. They analyzed information that included questions asked if they supported same sex marriage. They also analyzed religious factors, using Catholics, Protestants and those with no beliefs and looked into the frequency of people attending religious gatherings. They used Political beliefs which surveyed whether they were liberals or conservative. The Ages used were people born before and after 1940-1965 and some in between. Education was also analyzed seeing if school degrees have any effect on the views on same sex marriage. Finally, sociodemographic analyzed, to name a few females/males, family income, divorced or non-divorced and weather they had children or not.

Results showed that in 1988 all three races whites, African Americans and other were almost all equal in the upper 60 percentiles in the opposition of same sex marriage. In 2004- 2006 things change where you start to see a decline in whites and other being more in favor of same sex marriage with African Americans decreasing slightly. The last year analyzed in this study both white and other race decrease under 46% and African Americans decrease to high 50's. In the end, the data shown in this article determines that the reason African Americans are more opposed to same sex marriage is because of their religion and their church attendance. African Americans have deep beliefs in their religions and go to church often making them more opposed against same sex marriage. 

Effects of Neighborhood and School Environments on Transitions to First Sexual Intercourse

This article is taking a look at how much affect or influence a Neighborhood and a School Environment has on a young person's first time having sexual intercourse. In this study they used neighborhoods as census tracts and interviewed students that resided out of Philadelphia.

The method used in this study was a cross-classified multilevel model. That method consists of gathering the information from students of multiple schools and neighborhoods and not just focusing on one area. The study used 214 tracts and 70 schools that consisted of parochial, vocational, private, general and comprehensive schools. There were a total of 1,213 youths used in this study. The researchers used 4 measures of behavior norms for this study. The first one measured was when it was socially acceptable in a neighborhood for a young person to have sexual intercourse. The second one was the same but when socially acceptable in school. The third was a measure of the ideal age of when a person should first have sexual intercourse. The fourth was what the youngest age you could imagine a young person having a baby.

Results showed that white schools had a higher rate of transitioning to first sexual intercourse than African American schools. The difference between them was about 1 year more in white schools. The researchers also found that an African American is less likely to transition to having sex for first time in an all African American school than attending an all-white school. Results also showed that public schools were 22% higher than private schools in the transition to sex intercourse. In conclusion, the results of this study showed that the neighborhoods where the students lived at played a small role and that the schools environment played more of a significant role on when the students initiated their first sexual intercourse.