Introduction

Sexual prejudice negatively affects the quality of life and life chances of those involved. Manual workers are consistently found to be less accepting of homosexuality in studies of sexual conformism. This can be seen as an application of Lipset’s ‘working class conformism’. Our core hypothesis is that this lower tolerance is rooted in working-class experiences. Counter-arguments are that that social class does not matter in contemporary society and that the relationship is spurious, with education as the true cause.

Methods

We test the central hypothesis with European survey data. First, we regress sexual prejudice on time trends and class with repeated cross-sections from the European Social Survey, ranging from 2002 to 2016. As an extra check, this is also applied to the European Values Study, going back to 1981. Further, we test the spuriousness argument with a matching design, testing whether stratification accounts for the lag.

Results

The time series shows a stable lag between working-class members and others against the general trend of decreasing sexual prejudice. The matching design provides evidence that working-class membership in itself is a factor behind differences in sexual prejudice.

Conclusions

Contrary to ‘death of class’ conjectures, working-class membership is related to sexual prejudice. This contribution shows that this gap is due to experiences of belonging to the working class and not solely to educational differences.

Policy Implications

Occupational experiences, especially in low-skill manual labour, have social effects in areas such as sexual prejudice. Improving the quality of work thus facilitates a more inclusive society for sexual minorities.

中文翻译：

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对男女同性恋者的性偏见的阶级基础

介绍

性偏见对参与人员的生活质量和生活机会产生负面影响。在性习惯研究中，始终发现体力劳动者较少接受同性恋。这可以看作是Lipset的“工人阶级顺应性”的一种应用。我们的核心假设是，这种较低的宽容性源于工人阶级的经验。相反的论点是，社会阶级在当代社会中并不重要，而且这种关系是虚假的，而教育是真正的原因。

方法

我们使用欧洲调查数据检验中心假设。首先，我们从2002年至2016年对欧洲趋势进行了反复剖析，以得出对时间趋势和阶级的性偏见。作为一项额外的检查，这也适用于追溯到1981年的欧洲价值观研究。我们使用匹配的设计测试伪造参数，测试分层是否解释了滞后。

结果

时间序列显示，工人阶级成员与其他成员之间存在着稳定的滞后性，与总体上减少性偏见的趋势相对。匹配的设计提供了证据，表明工人阶级成员资格本身是性偏见差异背后的一个因素。

结论

与“阶级死亡”的推测相反，工人阶级的成员身份与性偏见有关。这一贡献表明，这种差距是由于属于工人阶级的经历而不仅仅是由于教育差异。

政策含义

职业经验，特别是在低技能的体力劳动中，会对性偏见等领域产生社会影响。因此，提高工作质量有助于为性少数群体建立一个更具包容性的社会。