Does Homophobia Divide Europe?

According to the Russian scholar, Igor Kon (2010), sexual minority rights contribute to the well-being of all citizens, and homophobia can be seen as a litmus test for democracy in Russia. In this paper, we attempt to apply this litmus test not only in Russia, but also in other European countries. We ask whether there are signs of convergence between Western and Eastern Europe a quarter of century after political system changes in Eastern Europe.

The empirical base of the study includes all rounds of the European Social Survey dataset (from Round 1 in 2002 to Round 7 in 2014), focusing especially on a key variable measuring the agreement level with the statement that gay men and lesbians should be free to live their own life as they wish. To measure other dimensions of homophobia and a longer era, we also examine the European Value Study dataset which contains the two variables to measure homosexuality- and homophobia-related attitudes between 1981 and 2008.

For data analyses, descriptive statistics and explanatory models will be constructed by applying multilevel mixed effect linear regression models. Our preliminary results show that there are still significant differences between Eastern and Western Europe regarding social attitudes towards gays, lesbians, “homosexuals” and “homosexuality”. However, we a significant increase in levels of acceptance of homosexual neighbours between 1990 and 1999 in post-socialist countries such as the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia and Poland. At the same time, on the basis of the ESS data we cannot find similar tendencies.