Ukrainians improved their attitude towards LGBT people during the year
A year ago, in May 2022, we received survey data from specialists of the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology which demonstrated a drastic improvement in the attitude of Ukrainian society towards LGBT people over the six years since a similar previous survey conducted in 2016 (https://gay.org.ua/en/blog/2022/06/01/ukrainians-have-dramatically-improved-their-attitude-towards-lgbt-people).
The results were so startling that even sociologists themselves were wary of them — however, a number of other surveys have since confirmed its qualitative findings.
This year, we commissioned the KIIS to repeat that survey. As expected, they confirmed the findings of the previous year and demonstrated that since then the attitude of Ukrainians towards LGBT people has only improved. The growth of support for registered civil partnerships is especially noticeable: from 23.6% last year to 28% this year. Although those who deny the right of LGBT people to state recognition and protection of their family relationships still make up a relative majority (38.9%) in our society, their share is already one and a half times less than of those who do not object to such a step.
Obviously, the increase in support for the introduction of civil partnerships was influenced by the participation of open LGBT people in the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression. The attitude of Ukrainians to this has also improved a little over the year.
It is interesting that even among those, who have a negative attitude towards LGBT people, almost a half already admits that, nevertheless, all citizens of Ukraine should enjoy the same rights. Although the western regions remain somewhat more conservative than the rest of Ukraine, this difference is not significant.
A detailed descriptive report (in Ukrainian) of the conducted research can be found at the link: https://gay.org.ua/publications/AReport_NashSvit_May2023.pdf
Finally, a caveat should be added regarding comparisons with data from other sources. The practice shows that findings of such researches greatly depend on the methodology, which is why the data of simultaneous surveys by different sociological services on the same topic usually differ significantly (in their report, sociologists of the KIIS demonstrated this using the example of surveys on the support of civil partnerships in Ukraine). The most correct is the comparison of data from the same team of sociologists for different years — it makes possible to identify trends in the development of the situation. The data of all, without exception, sociological polls conducted in 2022-2023 convincingly indicate that Ukrainian society is confidently and relentlessly approaching the modern European mainstream in LGBT issues.
