Anti-atheist and anti-gay prejudice are rooted in different psychological sentiments.

Evidence

Anti-gay prejudice is an instructive comparison because both atheists and gays are often described as threatening to majority religious values and morality. After all, atheists and gays routinely score at the bottom on large-scale cultural acceptance polls in America and other religious societies, and have for decades. Like atheists, gays are frequently targeted and excluded by strong religious believers and many religious organizations. This is typified by the Boy Scouts of America, who as of current writing, continue to explicitly deny membership to both atheists and gay males. (Interestingly, public pressure on the Boy Scouts of America has focused far more on lifting the anti-gay ban than on lifting the anti-atheist ban.) Nevertheless, despite surface similarities, our theory predicts that these two different prejudices are rooted in different psychological sentiments. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 266

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sets up the analytic distinction between distrust-based vs disgust-based prejudice that anchors the modern Big God research program.