Re: Slovaks, neighbors on gays
> in Hungary & Poland a larger percentage of people sayI have wondered about that, too, Colin.
> they don't know anyone who is gay but beleive they should
> be able to marry. What's up with that?
I think the discrepancy is particularly striking in Hungary. In
Poland and Slovakia (by comparison to the Czech R. and probably the
US), we can at least see it as part of the trend "the less you know,
the more antagonistic the reaction," which is fairly well documented
in attitudes to minorities in general.
But I've no idea what the Hungarian results mean. On the one hand,
you could assume that the attitudes must be quite antagonistic, since
the gays are so closeted (given that only 8% people have a clue that
someone around them is gay). But on the other hand, the general
attitude there is quite similar to that in Slovakia where 30% people
are aware that someone they know is gay.
I wondered whether it may be a typo in the results, but I have only
one source where the numeral (8%) is actually spelled out and listed
as the lowest response to this question in the 4 countries. Or it
might be due to a variation in how exactly the question was phrased in
Hungarian. Or it may reflect the puzzling situation. Any ideas?
votruba "at" pitt "dot" edu