ATTITUDES TOWARDS HOMOSEXUALITY, SAME SEX MARRIAGE AND ADOPTION

Since our intrauterine life, we have been taught we “should” play with robots or dolls and that male and female have different normative roles in the society. All these issues are related to heteronormativity, sexism and stereotypes that unwittingly we interiorize from our early years. Thus sexism needs to be understood in relation to heteronormativity and heterosexism (Pharr, 1997). The aim of this study is to explore the knowledge and attitudes toward homosexuality (L and G), the level of sexism, and the opinion about the adoption and gay marriage in a group of Italian students. 1091 Italian heterosexual students (26% male and 74% female) with a mean age of 23.66 (SD= 4.11), filled-in, upon informed consent, a questionnaire including a sociodemographic data-sheet, the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (Glick, Fiske, 2000), the ATGL-R Scale (Herek, 1994) and some questions on the level of knowledge on homosexuality. Men show higher mean scores than women in the subscales Hostile Sexism (t= 8.067; p< .001) and Attitudes Towards Gay Men (ATG-G; t= 4.972; p< .001). They also reported a lower level of knowledge about LG issues (t= -3.324; p< .01) and LG marriage (t= -2.322; p< .05). Statistics didn’t confirm any significant difference between men and women in attitudes toward lesbians and adoption. A negative correlation was found between ATG scores and level of favorableness toward (1) LG marriage (ATG-L: r= -.461, p< .001; ATG-G: r= -.468, p< .001) and (2) LG adoption (ATG-L: r= -.337, p< .001; ATG-G: r= -.451, p< .001). Significant differences were shown in opinion on LG marriage (F= 19.257; p< .001 and adoption (F= 20.539; p< .001) as a function of political orientation, as well as in groups with different levels of knowledge on LG. The differences found in relation to some variables related to attitudes towards homosexuality and not to others show heterosexism is a many-faceted construct that needs a complex understanding.