How do French students perceive homosexuality?

By Anais on Thursday, March 3, 2011 - 12:17

LGBT organizations SOS Homophobie and the Caelif have conducted an interesting survey among French students.

The goal was to try and get a clearer idea of the way French students perceive homosexuality, how they react to it and what they consider homophobic. This study– the first of its kind in France - was conducted in spring of last year at universities of Paris and its surrounding area (the Ile de France), and followed a poster campaign made by the government in 2009.

More than 4,500 answers were received and analyzed. Out of the 4,500 students, half of them are women, and 98% of them are under 27. As for their sexual identity: 75% are straight, 11% are gay and 6% are bi.

The questions mostly concerned the representations of homosexuality and the representations of homophobia. Here are some of the results:

Even if this is rather encouraging, it’s still surprising that 13% consider it deviant and 2% a mental disease, for this is a generation that never knew homosexuality as a disease or a crime. In France, homosexuality has not been a crime anymore since 1982, and it’s not considered a disease anymore since 1992… As for the question regarding a friend’s coming out, I personally don’t find it surprising as it mostly reflects what my gay friends and I have experienced at university:

In France, same-sex marriage is forbidden – a ban that was recently reinforced by a decision from the French Constitutional Court. The results below show that a majority of students consider this ban homophobic, but don’t place marriage and adoption on the same level. This reflects what a majority of French people think: marriage should be allowed, but adoption by same-sex couples is another story. And if you say ‘yes’ to marriage, you can't say ‘no’ to adoption. And this is an issue that calls to family values that are so deeply rooted in the French society that even the Left is divided. The French are willing to say that gays and lesbians should be allowed to do whatever they want, as long as there's no child involved - you don't impose your lifestyle to someone who didn’t ask for it.

Finally, 24% consider that recognizing civil rights equality for gay people is not a way to fight homophobia, which I think is the scariest result, and somehow in contradiction with the previous results. It would have been interesting to know what they consider necessary to fight homophobia!