Tuesday 26 January 2010

UK more liberal on homosexuality

Here's something I heard on the news today... The UK Government has issued the results from the latest British Social Attitudes survey. it shows, among many other areas of life, that public attitudes to gay men and women have changed radically since the first survey was carried out in 1983.

Although we are not there yet, attitudes are definitely more liberal, according to a government-backed survey:

It states that 36% thought homosexual acts were "always" or "mostly" wrong, down from 62% in 1983. This has to be good news, but over a third of people still see gay life as wrong, which is still too high. Though it did go up to around 80% in the mid-eighties, I assume due to AIDS panic. It is worth noting one piece of analysis in the results: half of religious people believe that homosexual sex is always or almost always wrong compared with one in five of non-religious people. So the often hypocritical religious few could be the problem!

And this may be the first time I have ever agreed with a statement linked to The Sun, but... former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie said: "The reality is that in my days running the Sun if a pop star was suspected of being as homosexual, that was a story. Now the reverse is true. If he is homosexual it's not a story at all. If you go to weddings of your families and friends you expect to see male partners together. I couldn't care a damn what sexuality [people] are".

He also made the point that, as parents and grandparents have younger members of the family coming out and then seeing that they are not different, their wider acceptance follows.

Remember the day and time when I thought an (ex) editor of The Sun made sense! *shudder*

I wonder what the results from other countries would be?

The survey also suggests that our attitudes towards cannabis and single mothers not working have both hardened and that 45% said it made no difference whether a child's parents were married or just living together - up from 38% in 1998.

Here is a link to the Government website if you want to read more.

7 comments:

  1. I would imagine that the views here in the US are much more negative. Despite what the nation says, it's pretty backward and non-inclusive in so many ways.

    Thanks for bringing this interesting information to my attention.

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  2. I hope that views change slowly for the better.

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  3. Ah, 1983, the year I was born...

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  4. Yes, it's very encouraging. I agree that the one thing more than any other that makes people change their hostile attitudes towards gays is finding out that one of their friends, colleagues or, best of all, family members is gay. Of course one hears appalling cases of families disowning out-gay members or disassociating from such friends but I think they are in a minority. My own experience is that most people are surprised to find that gay people are, in spite of what they've been told, so 'normal' with the same positive and negative characteristics one finds in others they already know. That is my own personal hope in how the prejudices of the Evangelical Right in the USA, in the Moslem world and in Africa will eventually be worn down. Maybe not much more in my own lifetime, but it's coming....and it's inevitable.

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  5. oneexwidow was not born in 1983, whatever he says.

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  6. "I couldn't care a damn what sexuality people are"?

    Shock and disbelief as K*lvin McK*nzie tells a lie!

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  7. Still not liberal enough for my tastes!

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