Almost one in five finds aggression against gays acceptable: young people less and less tolerant of LGBTQIA+community
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More and more young people find violence against gays acceptable and want to abolish same -sex marriage. This is according to figures from the Youth Research Platform (JOP), De Morgen writes Thursday.
On a scale of 0 to 10, Flemish youth scored 3.2 for homophobia in 2023. In 2018 that was 2.04 on the same scale. Researcher Fien Pauwels from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) emphasizes that further research is needed.
When asked if they find aggression against gays acceptable, almost one in five « (completely) agreement » answers. In 2018, not one in ten agreement went. The group that does not agree decreased from more than eight in ten to almost seven in ten. The proportion of young people who want to abolish gay marriage also increased, just like the group who does not want to see a gay teacher in front of the class. While three-quarters of the students still thought that schools should learn respect for LGBTQIA+persons, it dropped to just over half.
It is a survey with more than 1,500 students from the fifth and sixth secondary. Three quarters of them live in Brussels, Antwerp or Ghent. The relapse is noticeable in all groups. Both boys and girls, believers and non-believers and students in transfer or labor market-oriented directions became homophboo on average in five years. But boys and students from the labor market -oriented finality knew the biggest rise. Jewish (5.43) and Muslim youth (5.38) scored on average the highest on homophobia. On average, young people in Flanders are still clearly on the tolerant side.
