Does religiosity affect attitudes towards homosexuality? Evidence from the European Social Survey (ESS)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose Religiosity remains one of the most consistent predictors of moral conservatism in contemporary Europe, particularly in shaping public attitudes toward homosexuality (Lin et al., 2021; Janssen and Scheepers, 2019). Drawing on data from Round 9 (2018) of the European Social Survey, this study aims to investigate how both the intensity of religious commitment and religious affiliation influence support for homosexuality across 28 European countries. Unlike previous studies that treat religion as a uniform influence, this research offers a more nuanced analysis by incorporating doctrinal diversity, demographic moderators and contextual variation. Design/methodology/approach Using ordinary least squares regression, the findings confirm a robust negative association between religiosity and support for homosexuality. Findings However, this relationship varies significantly across religious groups: Jewish and Protestant respondents demonstrate comparatively higher acceptance, while Eastern Orthodox and Muslim respondents express more conservative views. These denominational patterns suggest that religious doctrine and institutional context jointly shape moral attitudes, challenging monolithic views of religion’s role in public opinion. Demographic characteristics further mediate this relationship. Gender and marital status interact in meaningful ways, with married men consistently showing the least supportive attitudes, while never-married women are the most affirming. These patterns reflect the influence of gendered religious socialization and traditional family norms on value formation. Originality/value This study contributes to the literature by integrating theory-driven hypotheses with cross-national analysis and highlighting the layered ways in which belief, identity, and social context intersect. It also offers implications for public policy, education and civic engagement – suggesting that strategies to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion must account for religious diversity, demographic variation, and the institutional environments in which attitudes are shaped.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".