The FINANCIAL — It’s obvious to even the most casual observer that Georgia, while very welcoming to tourists and expatriates, is not as friendly to those that fall far outside of its cultural norms.
About 70% of Georgians say they would have a problem living near a homosexual, a number that does not seem to fluctuate across different polls or over time, but just what about homosexuality is so undesirable to Georgians? How extreme can these views get? For the first time, we’ve asked questions about homosexuality that allowed our respondents to get as extreme as they’d like.
Georgian Opinion Research Business International, the Georgian member of Gallup International, conducts a quarterly omnibus survey using nationwide sampling to interview 1000 respondents.
For the last omnibus in August, we included some questions meant to plumb the depths of Georgians’ attitudes toward homosexuality. Most of these questions were phrased for compatibility with the European Values Survey in which GORBI participates, but in light of the recent May 17thviolence I’ve included some questions meant to allow more severe attitudes to be expressed.
Georgians in general hold a view of homosexuality that is unfortunately common throughout the world – that homosexuality is a mental disease. Only 14% of Georgians disagreed with this judgment, while 69% felt it true.
Participating in gay, lesbian, transgender, or bisexual activities is a symptom of a mental disease.
Georgia Tbilisi Urban Rural
Agree 69% 61% 66% 75%
Disagree 14% 33% 9% 8%
DK 17% 6% 26% 18%
Because anti-homosexual views are so widely held, we asked what measures should be taken if a homosexual is “discovered.” A series of statements were read and respondents were asked to agree or disagree with each one. Considering the 69% of Georgians who call being gay a form of psychological deviance, it’s not surprising that the same number of respondents agreed with the statement “Homosexuals should be required to see a psychologist or counselor if they are discovered.” This was by far the most commonly supported action.
However, there were smaller portions of the population that felt homosexuality deserved punishment. 1 in 5 respondents said that homosexuals should be jailed for their lifestyle, and an alarming 11% would see them killed. To be clear, this means that 1 in 10 Georgians would support the death penalty for homosexuals who were “outed.”
Preferred reaction to homosexuality Georgia Tbilisi Urban Rural
Mandatory Psychological Counseling 69% 59% 66% 76%
Jail time 19% 6% 20% 26%
Capital Punishment 11% 6% 8% 16%
This and all responses varied by urbanization. We categorized respondents by settlement type, where “rural” includes settlements with less than 45,000 people. Non-Tbilisi urban areas include cities such as Kutaisi, Rustavi, and Zugdidi. For every question, Tbilisi residents were less punitive and more accepting than their urban peers. Rural respondents were routinely the least lenient; in particular, rural men.
In most places, and with most social issues, men answer less compassionately in surveys than their female peers. If we look at this this tendency in conjunction with rural attitudes of intolerance, we find a disturbing number: 25% of rural male respondents felt that homosexuality should be punished by death. That’s 1 in 4.
It’s of course important to remember that smaller subdivisions of a sample come with great margins of error, but even with the higher margin ofthis smaller demographic (6.5%), this is still a frighteningly high instance.
For the sake of brevity I only included how many respondents agreed with a particular suggestion, but each question followed the same trend: “Don’t Know” responses were lowest in Tbilisi and highest in other urban areas.Overall responses for these questions have a margin of error of 3% with 95% confidence. Visit our website at gorbi.com for more articles.
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