A great divide on homosexuality in the contemporary world : how do attitudes change?

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the issue of global divide on homosexuality in the contemporary world, to determine the main predictors of homonegativity and to understand how societal attitudes towards homosexuality change. A brief historical excursion from pre Christian era to modern days was conducted to observe how societal attitudes towards homosexuality were changed several times throughout history. I derived several theories from social psychology to explain this attitude change, the most important of which was expertise heuristics. Taking into account historical patterns and theoretical background, we conducted empirical cross-country and multiple regression analysis based on the global data from more than 100 countries. I discovered that religion and religiosity are one of the main factors which contribute to homonegativity by shaping personal attitudes and societal values. The mechanism of religious influence could be explained by the expertise heuristics effect. This effect means that persons derive their attitudes from the experts’ statements and judgements. Thus, confidence in authorities matters. In case of religion, more confidence in religious institutions a particular person has, more these institutions and their propaganda affect attitudes and opinions of this person. Applying this to attitudes towards homosexuality, greater confidence in religious institutions contributes to more homonegativity. However, the negative effect of religion differs for different religious denominations. I discovered that Islam is the most homonegative of all religious denominations while Protestantism is the least homonegative one. Our main finding is that religion shapes attitudes towards homosexuality through homonegative propaganda by its institutions which influence societal attitudes and values. The possible way to value change is secularization and decrease of the role of religious institutions in society. These findings are supported by historical patterns and by our empirical results