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Attitudes towards Homosexuality in Europe: Analysis of the European Values Study

Sexes 2024, 5(2), 148-162; https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes5020011
by María Silvestre Cabrera *, Raquel Royo Prieto and Iratxe Aristegui Fradua
Reviewer 1:
Reviewer 2: Anonymous
Sexes 2024, 5(2), 148-162; https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes5020011
Submission received: 3 April 2024 / Revised: 10 June 2024 / Accepted: 14 June 2024 / Published: 20 June 2024
(This article belongs to the Section Sexual Behavior and Attitudes)

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.  My main concern with this paper is theoretical.  I will address my concerns each.

2.   Abstract:  This has to be the briefest abstract I have encountered in 45 years of research.  It lacks the results and conclusions normally found in an abstract.

3.  Line 23.  While these associations are probably real, the more important question is why?  Is it religious affiliation (e.g., Catholic vs. Protestant) at work or level of intrinsic/extrinsic religion?  Or something  else?

4.  Line 30.  Fill in "The ability of ______ to be good parents" with anything you want.  Aside from possibly deep seated mental illness or total disability, the blank could be almost anyone as individuals, including homosexuals.  However, from the perspective of sociology, the issue isn't how a few of any group might succeed at anything but how does the average of the group succeed? 

5.  Line 39.  The deeper question is why is heterosexuality so often "normative"?  Why not just have unregulated sexual activity and anything goes?

6.  Line 81.  Why would some sexual-affective relationships be more valued than others?  Are people totally irrational to do this? 

7.  Lines 86-98 lack a number of other possible explanations and assume that homophobia almost necessarily entails violence towards others. 

8.  Line 103.  Actually, there is research, even by lesbians, that finds that a high percentage of lesbians were sexually abused as minors, and that on average, lesbians do have higher rates of obesity.  These are stereotypes in that it would be unfair to assume all lesbians have such experiences, but sociology is about averages as well as outliers, so averages should not be ignored. 

9.  Line 115.  It is assumed that the only explanation for internalized homophobia is the adoption of negative social views of others.  There are other theories.

10.  Line 122.  It is assumed that the only explanation for greater rejection of homosexuality by men is control of masculinity as if all gay men are deemed effeminate.

11.  Line 131.  It is of note that Elwood's studies of Californians found that gay men, and possibly lesbians, had higher levels of education and income than the average Californian. 

12.  Line 181.  This question isn't the same as the issue mentioned at line 30. 

Even Gates (2015) seemed to believe that same-sex parents were less likely to have stable, long-term relationships compared to heterosexual parents, the intervening variable of instability accounting for apparent deficits in same-sex parenting.  Scholars who have tried to refute Regnerus (2012a,b) have usually done it by controlling for instability, merely manifesting the likelihood that instability is an intervening factor.  Recently, Gartrell and her colleagues have reported that - in contrast to 50 years of previous denials by scholars - that same-sex parents (at least for lesbian mothers) their children are more likely to grow up to identify as nonheterosexual than the children of heterosexual parents.  If something as theoretically likely as that (Stacey & Biblarz, 2001) was rejected for decades only to be found correct recently, what else could be next?  It's not all bad - in terms of being more tolerant and open-minded, there is research to support that positive outcome.  At the very least, if the question had been asked "Is it possible for some homosexuals to be good parents?" the percentages of responses might have been different.  Later at line 295 the conclusion is drawn that people think that homosexuals cannot  be as good parents as heterosexuals, which is not the same as the idea that their children's outcomes, on average, might be worse (due to instability rather than sexual orientation per se).  Allen and Price (2020 or so) found with Canadian data that when heterosexuals had children, their stability increased; when lesbians or gay men had children, their stability decreased.  Since stability of caretakers seems to be a predictor of more well adjusted children, that finding didn't bode well.  Sullins has argued that the children of same-sex couples are inevitably only biologically related to one parent within the same-sex couple which at the very least can cause issues as the biological parent will usually or often want more rights over the child and even if they don't, the courts will often grant them more rights.  Whether from inside the couple or imposed from outside, this situation of division within the parenting couple probably puts at least a few children at greater risk for poorer outcomes. 

13.  Back to theory.  First, social exchange theory would predict that being overbenefitted leads to guilt.  One gay youth was cited as being resilient because he said that it was better to be gay because gays had all the (presumably in some part, sexually) fun!  Well, if you are having more fun with the same or less effort, then you are, relatively speaking, overbenefitted and might well feel guilty.  You can feel guilty when you have done nothing wrong per se.  I used to feel guilty because I had such a great job, even though my job had almost no moral taints to it.  Thus, it could be that some nonheterosexuals feel guilty not because of socially imposed moral guilt but simply because they know from observation that they are having more or better sex than their heterosexual peers, especially those who are married. 

14.  At the top of page 8, the title of the Figure should be in English, I would presume to be consistent with the rest of the manuscript.

15.  When I was a child, school meant sitting in hard, wooden seats in a very hot building, some of which were not yet air conditioned.  They did have windows for daydreaming at, of how much more one might learn if one just went to the air conditioned library in town and studied there by oneself.  What if one child exempted himself or herself from this difficult situation and skipped school to study at the nicer library.  They might even learn more!  But why have truancy laws then?  I'd argue because of equality, social norms expected all children to suffer equally rather than some having better conditions than others.  Even having separate schools for Blacks and Whites was deemed unequal even if the facilities were equal.  From my viewpoint as a heterosexual, I  was faced with numerous challenges to getting to a married state as the only place to engage in legitimate sex.  And once you were, you could only do it with that one person even if they turned cold toward you.  Women had the inherent right to reject any suitor for any reason, superficial or sound.  And you had to pass the gate of her parents as well as her.  And to get a good education and a job to even begin to be worthy enough for consideration, not to mention developing a high level of whatever morality she might desire.  On the other hand, if you dared to identify as gay, you could seek sex in a lot of venues, often without financial cost, and few of the same requirements normally imposed by heterosexual women.  To the heterosexual eye, this sure seemed unfair and unequal.  In other words, gay men, at least, seemed to be overbenefitted relative to heterosexual men, and in social exchange terms, feeling underbenefitted normally leads to anger.  Thus, social exchange theory ties concern about normalizing homosexuality to concern about normalizing inequality in ways not favorable to heterosexual men.  Religion tries to tell heterosexual men that they must accept a more difficult path, which may fuel their sense of inequality even further and even their anger.  This is a theory that needs, at some point, to be tested empirically.

16.  Another theoretical angle is that of game theory.  In sports, both teams are expected to play by the same rules and referees are supposed to be unbiased in enforcing the rules.  If this isn't a basic human instinct, why bother with it?  The rules heterosexual men face are:  no sex before marriage, no sex with anyone else after marriage and often not much sex within marriage but regardless of the challenges of getting to married, you retain all the responsibilities associated with marriage.  You also have the rule of respecting basic biological differences with your wife and understanding them even though you are naturally learning by some degree of guesswork.  On the other hand, many LGBT persons reject such rules (maybe for good reason) which creates a divided nation: those who want to comply with heterosexist rules and those who don't.  Rules are often somewhat arbitrary and it's not hard to find reasons to dispute them.  But rules are what they are and those who chose to play the game without following them are going to seem like they are making themselves superior to those who do feel compelled to follow the rules.  In other words, I would bet that if you surveyed those religious anti-gay folks and asked if LGBT persons followed the same rules as heterosexuals are expected to follow (no sex before marriage, no sex outside of marriage after marriage, not much sex in marriage, marriage is for life even if you're not terribly happy, etc.) would you have a more favorable attitude toward them? I'd guess they would.  In other words, it's not so much anti-gay as anti- different rules for romantic relationships, where the rules favor LGBT persons, at least in the short run.  In one Canadian study, lesbian women said they looked forward to marriage so they could engage in sex outside of marriage with less risk of offending or losing their spouse; just image how a heterosexual women would feel if her husband-to-be said he was so looking forward to marriage so he could start having sex with a lot of other women and his wife would have to accept it.  I doubt they would get married.  The kicker is that heterosexual relationships almost always involve the risk of pregnancy whether wanted or not and also the risk of a need for an abortion (which are not always risk free either).  Since the woman takes most of this risk upon herself, she must demand rules that reduce the chances of her or any other woman from getting pregnant by her husband unless it's mutually desired with her vote being the deciding one.  Thus, I don't see how the two groups can have mutually acceptable rules that accommodate for this female biological reality. 

The point is this, you don't have to be a religious bigot to see how heterosexuals might question the situation of homosexuals because of what must look like, to heterosexuals at least, matters of inequality in terms of sexuality in relationships.  And I forgot to mention that same-sex sex has to be easier to navigate because both persons have the same body parts and don't have to figure out how to please someone with totally different such parts, not to mention different body chemistry and usually different gender socialization. 

Another angle on this is like combat vs. non-combat veterans.  Now some non-combat veterans may have saved more lives than combat veterans and might be more educated, more intelligent, whatever.  However, we respect combat veterans because they usually accepted greater risk than non-combat veterans.  And heterosexuals accept more risk in terms of unwanted or wanted pregnancies than gay men and even lesbians.  Furthermore, they, on average, produce more "product" in terms of number of children.  So, from a societal point of view, they accept more risk to produce more product, so why should they not be more valued, just as a combat veteran is more valued? 

In terms of research, a deeper dive into other factors that might predict the variables used here would be much more informative than just a descriptive report of percentages and means across different nations.  At the very least, that possibility should be discussed in a section on future research with the same data set.

 

Author Response

The responses to reviewer 1 can be found in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article presents captivating writing and a very clear presentation of its content. The topic presented is extremely relevant, especially if we consider the historical-political context, in which we are witnessing an increase in hate crimes directed at minorities, including sexual minorities. However, this article can still be worked on to improve its quality.

The introduction follows a clear rationale. The authors begin by framing the theme, socially describing Europe in terms of tolerance and conservatism, as well as addressing the most obvious differences between the different European territories. Then, they move on to defining the basic concepts of the article (e.g., sexuality, homophobia), thus clarifying the fundamental constructs for understanding the article. It is also worth noting the historical contextualization regarding attitudes towards homosexuality, making clear the societal evolution at this level. The references used are all relevant, focusing on recent references whenever possible and references to basic articles in this area whenever justified. Nonetheless, considering the 3 itens that are explored in the results, topics as homossexuals as parents.

The Methodology begins with a section on the sample, which should describe it. However, this description seems absent to me (e.g., which countries are included? how many participants in total and per country?) and the content of this section seems more compatible with the section on the procedure used to carry out this study - this section which is absent from this article. Also in the Methodology, it seems to me that there is an error: point 2.2 should probably be titled "Data analysis" and not "Results", since the content is in fact a description of how the data obtained was analyzed. Therefore, I recommend a general review of point 2 - Methodology, in order to restructure it. The item "can homosexuality be justified?" It's not very clear... Justifying sexual orientation in what sense? If it is accepted? I don't understand... Finally, I think it's important to reflect on the sentence that starts in line 171, as it seems a bit abusive to me to say that you can gauge the attitudes of a population based on just 3 questions, especially with a closed answer - I believe it would be better to reformulate it.

Point 3 should be titled "Results". The tables presented do not contain the symbols related to what they present in the columns (in this case, %), so the authors should add them, and they are not structured according to APA standards, which I strongly advise. Additionally, correspondence analysis should be better explained, as it contains a lot of information and is quite confusing. The content of figure 2 should be translated into English. On line 197, the table number should be added in the section "As the table shows (...)". The paragraph starting at line 258 should take place in the discussion and not in the results, as it does not describe results but rather interprets them in light of the existing literature and the socio-political context.

The discussion should begin with a recap of the objectives of the study and what was intended. It would also be more interesting to see the results of the 3 items discussed, as there were only 3, and to fit them into the existing literature.

There is still a lack of reflection on the limitations of the study, suggestions for future studies and possible implications for practice.

Finally, I advise a linguistic review throughout the text and images, as there are errors, and some sentences are written in a strange way and lose some meaning.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

I advise a linguistic review throughout the text and images, as there are errors, and some sentences are written in a strange way and lose some meaning.

Author Response

The responses to reviewer 2 can be found in the attached document.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.  One concern is how east/west and north/south are defined.  Take Finland, it is east geographically (next to Russia, Latvia, etc. that are apparently defined as "east") but probably defined as "west".   How are middle nations like Hungary, Slovenia, Austria defined?  It's not really clear if geography is being used or if another approach is being used to define the dimensions.  If another approach is being used, for example, Finland is defined as "west" because of its culture being more western, then the way things are defined may reflect what is known about the national cultures. 

2.  Abstract.  I would recommend moving sentence #2 to become sentence #1. 

I would delete (nova) since analysis of variance did not appear to be used.

3.  At line 74 sexual value theory seems to be discussed in terms of social structures but not social reasons.  If the underlying rules are "gender diversity is better (no matter the child's gender, they have a role model and a complementary role model and a model of how diverse parents can work together cooperatively in spite of serious gender differences" and "two parents are better than one" and "stability of child caretakers is good" then the best way to get all three that way is married heterosexual parents.  So it's not some arbitrary matter of prejudice but logically seeking the most effective way to support child development (on average). 

4.  At line 101 the issue of stereotypes is brought up.  Stereotypes can be legitimately based on reality, some of the time.  Gay men and lesbians often have higher levels of education and income than heterosexuals (see Elwood's studies with California data).  With respect to lesbianism, Balsam et al. (2005) found something on the order of 40% of lesbians in that study had been sexually abused as children.  It's also been found that lesbians tend to have higher BMI than heterosexual women.  Stereotyping is risky because not everyone will fit but it may be more accurate than guessing. 

5.  At line 170.  It's not clear to this reviewer how the concepts of north/south and east/west were defined precisely.  If the concepts were defined clearly then each of the 34 nations should be able to be classified as NE, NW, SE, SW.  Since the only means show up in a chart, it's not clear how ANOVA was used unless only to prove there were some significant differences over the range of the nations. 

6.  At line 177 there is an "ng" after the 5, not clear why.

7.  Measurement.  The response you get on a question depends on how you ask the question.  For example, "can homosexuality be justified?".   Obviously, it can be, people couldn't stand to live with themselves as homosexuals if it could not be justified in their own minds.  In other words, justified to whom?  Whole journal articles have been written about the positives of living a gay lifestyle (and yes, this reviewer would agree with many of them).  And would you like homosexuals as neighbors?  I'd say sure because good neighboring depends on a lot more than sexual orientation.  On "homosexual couples are as good parents as other couples" if  it was worded as "can be" I'd say yes.  "can be better than some/many heterosexual couples" I'd say yes.  But on average, homosexual couples are essentially step-families since only one parent is a biological parent at best and per the previous rules, sexual/gender diversity within parents is a good thing, then (on average) something important is missing for the child's development.  Furthermore, the most recent research (see Gartrell et al., 2024), finds that lesbian mothers' children, especially daughters, are substantially more likely to grow up to identify as LGB, which could be seen as neutral but also seems to be associated with reduced numbers of grandchildren (Gartrell et al. split the children into three groups but if you collapse the two nonheterosexual groups into one group, the difference is statistically significant rather than non-significant as reported by Gartrell et al.

8.  Furthermore, future research should ask about lesbian mothers and gay fathers separately on "as good as parents" because the responses might well be different.  There is also the issue of how to compare different types of parents because some groups are dealing with almost compulsory parenthood, so that the good, bad, and ugly heterosexuals become parents while homosexual couples become parents more by choice, so there is probably some selection effect going on so that the more qualified homosexuals choose parenthood. 

9.  At line 261 there seems to be a conflation of intolerance with not justifying homosexuality.  I may not think that being overweight is good for one's health but that doesn't mean I will be intolerant of those who are.  I know many persons who can't seem to lose weight despite their best efforts so it's not for lack of trying or motivation but it remains a health danger for them. 

10.  At line 301, central European countries are mentioned but the theory is built on north/south and east/west (binary) but now it seems it's non-binary possibly.  Which is correct?

11.  At line 316, I'd argue that as a conservative I am for gender diversity in parenting, so are those who disagree with me prejudiced?  Probably not.  If someone won't accept my diversity why is it prejudice if I don't accept theirs?  In other words, disagreement should not be equated with prejudice.  If you believe the Catholic Church (no, I am not Catholic) then the original diversity was gender diversity (Adam/Eve).  And God saw that diversity as good.  So religion ought not to see diversity as inherently bad in contradiction to their own god. 

12.  I did my own attempt to quantify this data more clearly.  I classified each nation as west/east and north/south, which involved some hard choices since some countries are more central than either of the two directions.  But the means for agreement on gay parents as good were 11.2 (East and South), 45.38 (South and West), 18.38 (East and North), and 62.61 (West and North).  Predicting agreement on gay parents from the two dimensions and their interaction effect yielded an F-test of 8.23 (p = .007) for the north/south dimension and an F-test of 84.91 (p < .001) for the east/west dimension.  While a graph of the interaction effect looks promising, the result was not significant (p = .247).  The adjusted R-squared was amazing at 79.1%.  The result suggests that the effect size of the east/west factor is much more important than for the north/south factor.  With more advanced methods, one could factor in the basic anti-homosexual attitude as another independent variable and perhaps see how much more regional locations add to the prediction of the agreement on gay parenting variable, using individual data.  It is sad that this article uses so little of the available data and with only very simplistic analyses, even though the use of ANOVA is hinted at but never presented as results.   

13.  The authors should provide the Pearson zero-order and Spearman Rho correlations among the three variables overall and also, probably within each of the four cells mentioned above as the variables may correlate differently in different regions. 

14.  Why might heterosexual men resent gay men?   With only female partners allowed, the heterosexual man is forced to deal with a partner's menstrual cycles, which can be confusing to him at best and psychologically painful at worst.  The heterosexual man is forced to have to deal with pleasing a body sexually that isn't at all like his, which involves a steep learning curve.  Many women won't allow for oral or anal sex, no matter how much the heterosexual man might want that.  Women have been known to secretly gather their human's semen and get themselves pregnant, putting the husband into a situation of having to be the father of a child he didn't volunteer for.  Other women can insist that no one in the couple use contraception at all so that unlimited pregnancies might result.  Many books have been written about how men and women communicate differently and have associated gender-based conflicts.  Gay men avoid almost all of these risks.  So one could fairly expect heterosexual men to resent gay men's advantages or at least lower costs/risks, using social exchange theory.  Those who feel underbenefitted per exchange theory tend to feel angry, hence a source of prejudice.  At the same time, some of the frequently mentioned internalized homophobia might, per exchange theory, be a result of feeling overbenefitted (leads to internal guilt) relative to heterosexual men, as surely gay men are not so dull as to not recognize the many advantages they have sexually.  My basic point being that sexual minority theory is a very limited theory that overlooks numerous other variables and theories that might prove useful. 

Author Response

Responses and suggested changes are included and explained in the attached document (cover letter of second revision).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors I do not think the manuscript is ready to be published yet. Although the authors made some important changes and improved the quality of the manuscript, there are still many other modifications to be made.   For example, the section "Procedure" is still missing;   the description of the sample is still very weak (e.g. no information regarding the participant's sex, age, religion - all pertinent variables to take into account when talking about sexuality);   the "Data Analysis" section is written in a very odd way and is not totally clear what was done;   there are errors in the tables (e.g. Table 1 as an extra row) and do not follow APA rules;   and other errors pointed out in the previous review were not resolved.   Comments on the Quality of English Language

I advise a linguistic review throughout the text and images, as there are errors, and some sentences are written in a strange way and lose some meaning.

Author Response

Responses and suggested changes are included and explained in the attached document (cover letter of second revision).

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

1.  My main remaining concerns are technical ones.

2.  At line 120, should not the references cited be [25, 26]?

3.  At line 214, did you mean a one-way ANOVA, which would seem to fit Table 3 and Figure 1 or did you mean a two-way ANOVA  based on N/S and E/W?

4.  At line 239, authors usually mention which version of SPSS was used.

5.  Footnote 12 is very important, perhaps it could be included in the methods section's narrative.

6.  On page 11, Figure 2.  Is the figure duplicated?  The two versions seem identical.  Should the title be in English?  Why does one version have dimensions listed (should be in English) and the other not?

7.  Figure 3 should in my view have similar titles since "Can homosexuality be justified" is not the same as "Do you justify homosexuality?"  For example, I might justify homosexuality but see it as not justified in some European countries. 

8.  Figure 4, same concern as in #7.  Do like is not the same as do not want.

9.  At line 364 should the citation be [3,37]?

10.  The revised paper is much improved. 

Author Response

The answers and changes are included in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Several changes were made in order to improve the quality of the manuscript. However, changes remain to be made, once again... In chapter 2 - referring to the Method, the "Procedure" section is still missing. The sampling procedure (2.1.1) contains information that should be in this section! I advise authors to analyze already published articles, in order to better understand the structure (e.g. chapters to be included and how they are interconnected, how to introduce them, what information they contain).

In the paragraph starting on line 217, it seems to me that the word "question" should be replaced by "item".

In the paragraph starting on line 229, it still seems like an abusive statement to me to say that the analysis of 3 items allows the analysis of tolerance levels in several countries. Are the samples from each country representative of the population? If so, this helps and should be mentioned when describing the sample. But still, 3 items do not reflect the level of tolerance. And it's not enough to say that they are aware of the limitations because, regardless of that, it remains an erroneous statement. I recommend replacing it with some expression like "the analysis of these 3 items allows access to specific factors indicating levels of homophobia/tolerance".

It does not seem necessary to include the source of all tables, considering that it is common practice to insert tables made by the authors of the articles themselves.

In figure 1, the * is presented as representing significance below 0.05. However, you don't see any * in the figure... Is it an error? Otherwise it gets confusing.

Throughout the results, several statements emerge that seem to me to belong to the discussion chapter. The results section should only serve to present descriptive or inferential statistics. The interpretation of the results obtained in the light of the literature or association of the results obtained with other facts and knowledge obtained from the reviewed literature should occur in the discussion and not in the results section, as occurs in this article several times (e.g., line 250, line 298 , line 309).

The discussion shows great improvements. However, there is a lack of mention of the results obtained and their explanations (for example, commenting on the results obtained by ANOVA).

Despite all the necessary changes, I emphasize that the authors' efforts to improve this work are notable and should be considered.

Author Response

The answers and changes are included in the attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

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