“Homosexuality is more accepted in Canada than France?”
I didn’t believe it myself. But here is the graph.
80% in Canada. 77% in France. Forgive me if it is just a cliché. But isn’t France a very “liberal” society, while Canada is more, forgive the term, “traditional” (at least as compared to France)?
I’m a little surprised to hear that you consider Canadians ‘traditional.’ Admittedly, I never really considered us in comparison to France in that respect before. There’s a huge range of attitudes among different Canadians and different parts of Canada, but in general I think of us as more socially liberal than the USA.
First, that’s not a big difference. Second, France has a deucent sized Muslim community as well as a bunch of conservative rural Catholics. Third, Canada has had gay marriage for longer.
As a UK citizen not many of those figures surprise me. There are plenty of countries in the 75-80% acceptance range that I’d have probably guessed correctly and I don’t really think that you’d find much practical difference in one country over another.
I assume in my head that there is going to be at least 20% in all countries opposed by nature of old-age and religious intransigence so those doing substantially more than 80% are doing really well.
I think the one that was surprisingly high was Spain (88%) but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Benelux and scandinavian nations were equally high.
You can see Canada moves from 70% (2007) acceptance to 80% +/- 3.7 in 2013, while France drops from 83% (2007) to 77 +/- 3.6 in 2013. With that kind of overlap the difference is almost meaning less.
I’m not sure what’s so special about France. The only thing that comes to mind is the stereotype of French men being feminine, and hence gay, so they must be more accepting of gays there than most other places, or something.
France really isn’t that liberal. The French are very much economic liberals, at least from a US point of view, and less ass-corked than Americans when it comes to sexuality, but they’re not liberal per se.
Yeah, this. I think some people (Americans, heck, probably us Brits too) have this idea that anything goes in louche France, where politicians bedhop constantly and live-in lovers get to be called ‘First Mistress’.
None of this necessarily translates to liberal acceptance of homosexuality, or gets over the fact that France is still a Catholic country. Still, 77% ain’t bad!
I’m still moving to Spain though. 88%! They must be really trying to hard to make up for the inquisition!.
I agree. While France might be considered liberal in some respects, there is a culture of intolerance that for years has discriminated against and ghettofied north African immigrants, Muslims, and other minorities, resulting in some notable incidents of civil unrest like the riots of 2005. And as someone already said, the Catholic population wouldn’t be generally receptive to gay rights, either. Taken together, I’m surprised that acceptance of gays in France is as high as it is.
Interestingly, that same culture of intolerance can be seen in some respects in Quebec – directed against Muslims and against the English community, for example – reflecting a francophone obsession with “cultural purity” and running distinctly counter to the strong social liberalism found in the rest of Canada. Gay marriage is now established in Quebec, but though they allowed civil unions before that, it took a court case to declare the Quebec civil law banning gay marriage to be unconstitutional, and then an appellate court ruling upholding the original decision when it was challenged by a wingnut “Catholic rights” association.
Not really, and I’m responding to that because I myself have made some broad generalizations. Stereotypes are an unfortunate form of discrimination when unfairly applied to an individual. When applied to a large group, they are not “stereotypes” but statistical properties of the cohort, and may very well be factual. Such properties are intrinsic to the description of any culture.
Sure, but the 99.999… is just a made-up number. If it was an actual measured percentage derived from a statistically significant sample, then you have yourself a fact, like it or not. The stereotyping here is in assuming without basis that such a number is correct.
