Study: Views on gay marriage in the Americas

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner signed Argentina’s gay marriage bill into law on Wednesday. It is the first Latin American nation to legalize gay marriage, and joins Canada as the only nations in the Americas with marriage equality.

Several jurisdictions in the Americas have gay marriage, such as Iowa, Massachusetts and Mexico City, but this does not compare to the seven European nations and South Africa that have full marriage equality.

Americas Quarterly speculates that the Americas are behind because of the strong influence of the Catholic Church.

Honduras, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic all have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage and Bolivia’s new constitution limits legally recognized marriage to unions between a man and a woman. In Costa Rica, the Supreme Court ruled against gay marriage.

Americas Quarterly analyzed data from the American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) survey which includes data from 42,238 respondents from 25 nations in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean.
The survey asked, “How strongly do you approve or disapprove of same-sex couples having the right to marry?” on a scale from one to ten (ten meaning “strongly approve.”)

Canada, Argentina, and Uruguay fell at the positive extreme with over 50 percent support, while Guyana and Jamaica fell at the negative extreme with less than ten percent support.

Sexual acts between men in both Guyana and Jamaica are crimes. In Guyana, even “attempted” anal sex is punishable by ten years in prison.

The study found high correlations between religiosity and a negative view on homosexuality. The more important religion was to respondents and the more frequently they attended religious services, the more likely they were to oppose same-sex marriage.

It also found correlations with socioeconomic and demographic variables. Residents of large cities were more likely to support same-sex marriage, as were respondents who completed more years of formal education. Both wealthier and younger populations were found to support gay marriage at higher rates, too.

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