Alma Garcia

In the article Race, Religion, and Opposition to Same-sex Marriage there are two methods that are used to find out whether the racial difference to the same sex marriage is due to religious beliefs. The two methods used are ordinal logistic regression and the stacked structural equal models. There were two General Social Surveys (GSS) taken in 1988 an in 2004-2008. Using those numbers from those two surveys may explain if there is black-white religious beliefs due to same-sex marriage. Several churches mentioned in the article like the Southern Baptist Convention, the Church of God in Christ, and the Assembly of God belief that it is morally wrong to marry someone with the same-sex. Some findings have found that Conservative Protestant have higher rates of religious participation which also oppose to homosexuality. Research has found that that more active goers are the ones that have conservative views. Therefore, African Americans are noted to be very involved in religious organizations. Even though this is the case there have been other studies where it shows that African Americans are more supportive of civil rights unlike whites do. Whites have a 32% of being catholic with accepting homosexuality. Unlike African Americans where they are more likely to be Christian rather than catholic. African Americans have shown that they aren't very accepting towards homosexuals by the music they play, the movies that are shown, or even celebrities making statements about not liking them. Some variables that are also included in the findings are that the questions asked. For example, it included the persons relationship status, if they had kids, and how much education did the receive. The findings showed that whites declined their number from 1988 to 2004. Meanwhile, African Americans mainly stayed the same with 64% opposing same-sex marriage. Therefore, African Americans are opposed to same-sex marriage because of the religious views they carry compared to whites.

            In the article, Race Differences in Sexual Activity Among Adolescent Women: The Role of Neighborhood Characteristics, explains how there being segregation in neighborhoods risk the young adolescent women to be sexually active. Karin L. Brewster used two different methods to gather data. Those two methods are individual and aggregate level data. Black teenagers are most likely to participate in being sexually active than white adolescent females. Black teenagers have a higher rate of having negative outcomes. Studies show that in Chicago, black teens living in a poverty neighborhood limits their resources to contraceptives, which risks teenagers to get pregnant. Black teens and white teens living in a large city with harsh poverty neighborhoods are more likely to drop out of school and get pregnant than others living in a stable economic neighborhood. Young teenagers' expectations can be influenced in low wage jobs that their parents make. It gives them little motivation to achieve higher goals. A factor that can play in young teenagers being sexually active is if they live with both of their parents. The analytic strategy used is seeing how the life of blacks and white's history fall into teenagers being sexually active. Women's attitudes to abortion and what women should be doing falls into having a family. Teenagers appear to be having intercourse when they live in a low poverty neighborhood rather than teens who don't. Not everything falls into where these teenagers live, but that is one of the main aspects. If housing doesn't change then the numbers of teenagers being sexually active.