Asymmetry in attitudes: Exploring the support for and the opposition to the rights of gays, lesbians and same-sex couples in 25 countries

 

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. 

https://www.cogitatiopress.com/socialinclusion/pages/view/nextissues#PostSocialistFatherhood