June is Pride Month. A month to advance the fight for LGBT + rights, and the Ipsos institute publishes on this occasion a major survey, carried out in 30 countries. There is a Pride March today, Saturday June 10, in Toulouse.
On the occasion of the month of June, Pride Month, the Ipsos institute publishes a major survey conducted in 30 countries. We learn that in France, 1 in 10 adults identify as being LGBT+, with striking generational differences. In terms of sexual orientation, for example, 4% say they are LGBT+ among baby boomers – French people born before 1965 – and then 19% among Generation Z – those born after 1997. pride takes place in Toulouse today, Saturday 10 June.
Discrimination, violence and anti-LGBT+ hatred remain a reality in our country, recalls the government, which launched in 2020 and until 2023, a national action plan for equal rights, against hatred and anti-LGBT+ discrimination. Decryption with the sociologist Jean Viard.
franceinfo: According to the Ipsos poll, are we really facing a generational divide?
John Viard: Yes, there is an absolutely considerable evolution. It’s always complicated these phenomena where, basically, the intimate becomes public, that is to say that there is both the fact that we talk about it, that it is legal, that it there are precisely the pride marches, there are all these debates which moreover often started after AIDS, and then afterwards, there is also the fact that the law is changing, and therefore there is a movement.
We have here an important event in the history of societies, I believe, which is that basically the heterosexual norm, which was or was simply lived by the majority, which is still the case, or supported by a minority which , basically, was in that frame because that’s the one society tolerated. We must remember the violence, even if it is still enormous, against minorities, and therefore effectively, we see an evolution over a very short period because basically, in two generations.
Two generations, but it’s true that when you look at this issue of generational divide in detail, it goes very quickly, even from one generation to another, between this generation Z (born after 1997) and the generation just before , those between the ages of 26 and 42, who are half as likely, 9%, to identify as LGBT+. So it’s really going very, very fast, from one generation to another?
Yes, because, moreover, in the last period, look at marriage for all, it has become a phenomenon – we even saw a minister apologize for the positions he had taken – so that means that, at a moment, the law changed, and so suddenly, we went to another era. We had experienced that, for example with the pill too, around 1968. There was a time when the rule changed, at the beginning, there were refusals, remember in France, the political fights for marriage for all, and then basically, once it’s done, people realize that basically it doesn’t change anything. It changes for some, who were completely discriminated against, but for the others, they don’t live any worse, so tolerance is progressing and that’s what’s interesting, it’s to see this dynamic.
But you also have to remember, look for example in Belgium, there was no debate. And look at the violence in France, France is also a country which, as soon as we talk about intimacy – at the moment, it’s the debate on the end of life – we are not a country at the forefront, we are a very conservative country, we are very, very afraid of losing the rules – some would speak of decivilization – of losing the rules that actually built us. But when you change, in the end, you realize that it liberates, it gets better, and people who didn’t dare find the place of their freedom, which is all the same magnificent.
But there is also the fact that marriages of people of the same sex, each time there are 50, 100 people; people asserting themselves more, we realize that basically, the two cousins, we said: they are friends, they sleep together, but not at all, they are a couple. What was hidden being shown, everyone sees it, and so we realize that indeed, it doesn’t hurt. It also shows that there are times when you have to know how to be in the minority – it was the same debate on the death penalty – and then afterwards, society lives much better in a freer framework, which is both a liberal framework, sometimes libertarian, in any case a framework of freedom, and a framework of freedom which is gripping the planet.
We can clearly see what the global consciousness of the modern world is, because the study concerns 30 countries, these evolutions are very, very clear. Then there are countries that were more conservative, like Japan, like South Korea, like Turkey, with more authoritarian regimes, and then the Anglo-Saxon world, the Latin American world. This clearly shows that the construction of the population, the history of this construction, favors or does not favor the open-mindedness of societies.