Attitudes Toward Same-Sex Marriage: The Case of Scandinavia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the variables that explain attitudes toward same-sex marriage. Using recently collected Scandinavian data (from Norway and Sweden) with a high response rate, this study shows that gender, regular participation in religious activities, political ideology, education, whether the respondent lived in the capital city, and attitudes toward gender equality were important for attitudes toward same-sex marriage. Age and income were not important for attitudes toward same-sex marriage. Although both Norwegians and Swedes clearly favor same-sex marriage, Swedes are significantly more positive than Norwegians.

Keywords:

• attitudes
• gay marriage
• law
• norms
• public opinion
• same-sex marriage

Notes

1. Same-sex partnership laws (which are similar to marriage) were, in fact, in place in several countries much earlier. Denmark was the first country to implement such a law in 1989 (Rule, 1989).

2. Because of missing values on some of the independent variables, 3,152 observations are included in the regression—that is, not all 3,526 respondents that answered the question on same-sex marriage, as reported in the previous section.