The 23rd Seoul Queer Culture Festival is under way at Seoul Plaza in Seoul on July 16, 2022. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, June 23 (Korea Bizwire) — Individuals who prioritize religion over secularity tend to hold more negative attitudes towards sexual minorities, a study showed Thursday.
A research team from the Department of Psychology at Sungshin Women’s University released an academic paper in which it conducted a Pearson correlation analysis of 308 non-sexual minorities aged from 19 to 39.
The study showed that people with a stronger belief that the standards of ethics and rightness are determined by God and that religious tradition exists irrespective of historic and cultural context have a more negative attitude towards sexual minorities.
People who value religious existence more than secular existence also showed the same types of attitude.
The research team suggested that people who value religious doctrines that do not accept sexual minorities or reject the recent change in social trends in favor of sexual minorities on the basis of such doctrines could have expressed a negative attitude.
Furthermore, the analysis revealed that people with a stronger belief that there is a fundamental difference between homosexual and heterosexual individuals and that homosexuality is not universally accepted in historical and cultural contexts displayed a more negative attitude towards sexual minorities.
In contrast, other factors such as age, gender and educational level showed a weak positive correlation with the attitude towards sexual minorities.
The attitude towards sexual minorities was more negative when the gender of the sexual minority was male rather than female and for individuals whose sexual orientation was heterosexual rather than homosexual.
Lina Jang (linajang@koreabizwire.com)
