What Your Neighbor Believes: Contact, Religion, and Discrimination against LGBTQ Persons - A Cross-National Analysis in 178 Countries

Issues regarding homosexuality and gay rights remains one of the most contested and controversial around the world. Alas, in countries with high occurrences of discrimination, a suppression of such individuals’ rights frequently occurs. This study has two purposes. Firstly, employing a content analysis and factor analysis of the U.S. Department of State’s 2012 Country Human Rights Reports, it develops an original cross-national indicator which measures the level of discrimination toward LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) persons in 52 areas of discrimination and in 178 countries around the world. Secondly, employing Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, it examines a number of variables believed to affect the level of discrimination toward LGBTQ persons such as age, gender, education, urbanization, GDP per capita, armed forces personnel, human rights, religious affiliation, religiosity, and societal attitudes toward LGBTQ persons.