Conference Agenda

There is a vast literature on how various socio-demographic characteristics can shape attitudes towards the rights of gays, lesbians, and same-sex couples. Most studies use linear or ordinal regression models, which assume that support for and opposition to these rights are the endpoints of a single scale on which variables have a symmetric effect. However, the idea of causal asymmetry suggests that the opposition to and the support for attitude objects may be different latent scales. Our paper examines whether the effects of the individual-level variables on the attitudes towards gays, lesbians and same-sex couples are asymmetric. To disentangle the support and opposition effects, we apply a new method, asymmetric ordered logistic regression. The method consists of constructing separate support and opposition subscales, and the modelling of those subscales using ordinal logistic regression. Asymmetries can be assessed by the comparison of the subscale-specific coefficients.

We use all waves of the European Social Survey (ESS) to focus on items whether gays and lesbians should have the right to adopt children, and whether they should have the right to live their lives as they wish (ESS). We restrict our analyses to 25 countries for which reliable GDP data are available as we capture cohort effects using GDP during formative years.

We find four consistent asymmetry patterns. First, the level of economic development during formative years, a factor that is hypothesized to shape post-materialistic values, contributes to the support of same-sex rights, but there is no evidence that it would shape opposition to those rights. Second, religiosity, the hypothesized counteracting force against the advancement of same-sex rights, has a relatively strong positive effect on opposition and a relatively mild negative effect on support. Third, the effect of political ideology is two-faceted: identification with the left increases support (but does not decrease opposition), while identification with the right increases opposition (but sometimes decreases support). The effects of socio-demographic factors, like age, parenthood, education and satisfaction with income are usually symmetric. However, the gender effect is asymmetric: the difference between women and men is larger when it comes to the support of same-sex rights. These results suggest that understanding the opposition to and the support for the rights of gays, lesbians and same-sex couples may require different theoretical explanations.

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) community has been discriminated against over history (Tranby and Zulkowsky 2012; Vitullu 2010; Wolfe and Fogwell 2022). While discrimination against them persists in contemporary societies, religious individuals often exhibit more pronounced stigmatizing and intolerant attitudes, as many religions perceive homosexuality and gender non-conformity as moral threats (Eskridge and Fretwell 2019; Harrison and Michelson 2017). Religions tend to favor heteronormative patterns due to their alignment with biological sex, binary and complementary genders, and monogamous relationships that do not challenge traditional family structures (Warner 1993).

These rigid definitions of normativity create symbolic boundaries around ideal and stigmatized gender roles and norms, which are reflected in family structures and sexual identities (Tranby and Zulkowsky 2012). Although most religions do not embrace dissident sexualities and gender identities, my analysis focuses on the predominant Christian doctrine using European Social Survey Data (Rounds 4-7, 2008-2014).

Christian doctrines vary, leading to different attitudinal perspectives. One significant difference among them is the recognition of the Pope as the leader of the community, who announces official positions on sensitive topics like homosexuality. However, the extent to which his symbolic representation (Pitkin 1967) has the power to reshape parishioners' attitudes and beliefs, or if it remains a mere formality, remains underexplored. Therefore, I aim to investigate whether changes in the symbolic representation of the Catholic community, such as the Pope's stance, can influence Catholics' attitudes toward LGBTQ individuals.

During the sixth round of the European Social Survey, there was a transition from Ratzinger to Bergoglio, who adopted a more tolerant discourse toward gender diversity and non-heteronormative sexualities. It was expected that Bergoglio's appointment as Pope, with his more progressive and tolerant approach compared to the former Pope, would lead to positive changes in tolerance toward LGBTQ individuals, especially when compared to other Christian traditions that do not recognize papal authority. However, after verifying the assumptions of the difference-in-difference (DiD) design, the analysis yielded an insignificant DiD coefficient. Robustness checks support this interpretation of DiD estimators.

Nevertheless, attitudes are highly context-dependent, and results may vary across countries depending on the strength of the Church's influence and the significance of religion in shaping national identity. Further research should explore these alternative hypotheses, particularly considering the significant effects observed in citizenry and country fixed effects. A more pessimistic interpretation of the results suggests that combating homophobia requires measures beyond symbolic representation to promote tolerance and acceptance of the LGBTQ community in society.

Previous research revealed a puzzling finding in the measurement of attitudes towards homosexuality: In countries with extensive discrimination towards homosexuals, respondents were not aware of discrimination. In contrast, respondents in more tolerant countries report more frequently discrimination. At the same time, the countries also showed regional variability in the perceived discrimination of homosexuals. Respondents across and within countries might interpret the questions differently and survey measures are potentially misleading. Web probing is a crucial tool to reveal variations in respondents’ associations and/or silent misinterpretations when answering survey items. So far, web probing studies compared respondents’ associations across countries but disregarded potential regional variabilities of results. The combination of web probing with small area estimation provides a novel approach to study within and across country variability of respondents’ associations. Small area estimation approaches are able to deal with producing reliable analysis of relevant indicators when the survey is not representative at a subnational level.

This presentation will illustrate the analytical potential of the combination of web probing and small area estimation with the example of attitudes towards homosexuality focusing on three items of the European Social Survey and other European (and beyond) surveys. It will show regional variations and cross-national differences in respondents’ associations across six countries: the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. The data for this study is collected in 2024 via a non-probability sampling approach, and in the presentation we will discuss also some weighting issues encountered in the process with potential solutions for users.

This work aims to propose the usage of a composite indicator in studying the attitude of European people towards gay and lesbian people. Three items are selected from the last round of the European Social Survey (ESS)and combined using Categorical Principal Component Analysis (CATPCA). The composite indicator aims to cover three semantic subdimensions of the attitude towards homosexuals. Each item reveals the degree of agreement or disagreement of respondents about three statements related to the ‘life’ of LGBT+ people. The agreement (or disagreement) is measured by three ordinal variables using a Likert scale. The method of CATPCA allows for transforming three ordinal variables into a continuous variable obtained from the factor score. Every respondent has an associated ‘intolerance’ score (IS) towards homosexuals. In the second part of the work, the focus is on the comparison of these values among European Countries. The ultimate purpose is to point out the factors related to intolerance attitudes through a quantile regression model.