Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on LGBT studies
Year: 2023
DOI:
[PDF]
Dynamics of societal attitudes toward LGBT in Ukraine: do revolutions matter?
Maksym Kasianczuk
ABSTRACT:
Ukraine was the first among other post-Soviet countries to abolish criminal prosecution of voluntary sexual contacts between adult men (1991). There are limited longitudinal data on the population’s attitudes toward LGBT people, most of them obtained by two LGBT NGOs, because Ukrainian academic sociology prefer to ignore sexual orientation and gender identity issues. The data on Ukrainian public opinion regarding equal rights for LGBT people covers a period from 2002 to 2023. Paradoxically, massive changes in society (the two revolutions and the start of the Russian occupation (2002–2016)) did not result in the big changes in low-level attitudes towards LGBT (37 [32–42]% agreed that LGBT citizens should have the same rights as other citizens). Only after 2016, but before the large-scale Russian invasion, did public opinion begin to change (from 33 to 64 [62–66]%). After the big invasion started (2022–2023), public opinion regarding LGBT rights remained high. In the paper, the possible societal drivers of such public opinion’s dynamics are discussed.
keywords: LGBT movement, longitudinal data, public opinion, societal changes