Examining Cynicism in Regards to Reasons for Gay Marriage

Much research has been conducted with regards to general and specific attitudes towards gay marriage; however, to our knowledge, very little, if any, research has evaluated the reasons that others give for why gay couples want to get married. The purpose of the current study is to examine various common and uncommon reasons why couples get married, and to determine if there is a general cynicism towards gay marriage that does not exist towards heterosexual marriage. Participants were given a variety of reasons why a male gay or heterosexual person might get married, and they were asked to rate how strongly they agreed with the reasons why the target person might want to get married. The results were surprising in that there was very little cynicism towards the gay target person’s reasons; in fact, there was more cynicism towards the heterosexual target person’s reasons. We discuss the implications of this research.