A New Report Reveals Worldwide Attitudes Towards LGBTQ People

Though we've made a fair amount of progress in terms LBGTQ acceptance compared to a few decades ago, a new survey shows there's still crucial work to be done.

According to a survey about sexual and gender minorities around the world, about a quarter of the world's population (29%) believes that people who have romantic or sexual relationships with someone of the same gender should be considered criminals.

The International LGBTI Association (ILGA)’s 2017 Global Attitudes Survey, surveyed more than 100,000 people in 77 countries, asking if they agreed with the statement that "people who engage in romantic or sexual relationships with people of the same sex should be charged as criminals."

While 29% of people who agreed may seem like a small number, it's evidence that LGBTQ people still face dangerous discrimination around the world.

However, the report also found that most respondents (55%) believed that LGBTQ people should have equal rights and protections, and half also believed that people should be legally recognized as the gender with which they identify.

As the report's researchers found, knowing someone who identified as LGBTQ could play a large part in a person's beliefs.

"Knowing someone in these communities has significant positive effect on attitudes towards them," Aengus Carroll, the report's co-author, told NewNowNext's Logo. "At the global level, 41% of respondents know someone who is romantically attracted to people of the same sex, and 35% of respondents directly know someone who dresses, acts, or identifies as another sex than the one they were born… When people know each other first-hand, a destigmatizing effect can be produced, and that counters the stereotyping too often perpetuated by religious and political leaders and the media."

While it's not surprising that knowing someone first-hand helps with destigmatization, you shouldn't have to know someone who identifies as LGBTQ to believe that they deserve equal rights.