Study Documents Global Homophobia
by Kilian Melloy
EDGE Boston Contributor
Monday Apr 23, 2007

A study authored by two professors investigating bigotry worldwide has yielded some surprising results about who would not want whom as neighbors.

In Love Thy Neighbour: How Much Bigotry Is There In Western Countries? Profs. Vani Borooah of the University of Ulster and John Mangan of the University of Queensland found that homophobia is the most prevalent form of prejudice in most Western countries, with Scandinavian nations being the exception. In those countries, prejudice, when it occurs, is more apt to be aimed at Muslims. Northern Ireland led anti-gay sentiment, with 36 percent saying they would not want gays living next door.

The study inquired into prejudice against five distinct groups of people: non-Caucasians, immigrants, Muslims, Jews, and gays, Pink News, a gay web site in the U.K., has reported.

The results of the study, says Mangan, a professor of economics, shows that over 80 percent of Northern Irish people and Canadians expressing some form of prejudice named gays as neighbors they would not want. In the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, and Italy, the percentage stood at 75 percent. Overall stats show that Canadians as a whole, however, are less likely than most other countries to harbor any prejudice: 22 percent of Canadians expressed unwillingness to have one or more of the five categories as neighbors, a number identical to Denmark and exceeding only Sweden (13 percent) and Iceland (18 percent).

Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald in Australia--where 25 percent of the people would not want gays moving into the neighborhood--Mangan also pinpointed a singularly major feature of prejudice in general. "Tolerance seems to rise with education more than anything else," Mangan noted, going on to indicate that older people "who tend to have more fixed beliefs" are also more disposed toward prejudice. The study identified several more points of interest regarding prejudice, including indications that men are more likely than women to be prejudiced; those over 50 were more likely to hold bigoted views than younger people, and unhappiness--including financial worries--was more prevalent among those identifying themselves as holding prejudicial views. Unskilled manual laborers were most likely to carry prejudices, as were those expressing a belief that the chief role of government is to "maintain order in the nation."



Cheerio for now....Vincent...xx