New Delhi: Fifty-three percent of Indians favour — either somewhat or strongly — the legalisation of same-sex marriages, while 43 percent oppose allowing gays and lesbians the right to marry, a new survey by US think tank Pew Research Center has found.
India hasn’t yet legalised same-sex marriages, with the Supreme Court declaring this October that it does not have the power to modify the Special Marriage Act — a secular law governing inter-faith marriages — to allow for them to do so. A five-judge bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud left it to the Parliament to frame a law for extending institutional acknowledgement to such relationships, adding that the current legal framework does not support such a union.
Published this Monday, the Pew survey of 2,611 Indian adults was part of a larger analysis of public views on same-sex marriage across 32 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region. In India, the survey took place between March and May this year.
According to the report, across the 32 countries surveyed, support for same-sex marriages was found to be the strongest in Sweden, where 92 percent of respondents favoured such unions, while support was the lowest in Nigeria, where only two percent of respondents favoured same-sex marriage.
Same-sex marriages also found support in other prominent Western Europe countries, with 89 percent of respondents in the Netherlands, 87 percent in Spain, 82 percent in France and 80 percent in Germany being in favour of it.
In Asia, a median of 49 percent supported same-sex marriages from the 12 countries surveyed by Pew — Japan, Vietnam, Thailand, Hong Kong (a special administrative region in China), Cambodia, India, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Across these, an average 43 percent of respondents opposed same-sex marriages with the largest opposition found in Indonesia (92 percent), Malaysia (82 percent) and Sri Lanka (69 percent).
Views on same-sex marriages across Asia
In Asia, Japan had the highest public support for same-sex marriage. “Nearly seven-in-ten (68 percent) say they at least somewhat favour allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally,” said the report, adding that only 26 percent oppose it.
Vietnam (65 percent), Thailand (60 percent) and Hong Kong (58 percent) are the other three countries where close to six-in-ten of the respondents were in favour of same-sex marriages. The three countries and one specially administered region (Japan, Vietnam, Thailand and Hong Kong) do not legally recognise same-sex marriages. However, in Hong Kong, a court recently ruled that same-sex couples hold equal inheritance rights, the Pew survey noted.
In Taiwan, where same-sex marriage is legal, public opinion was split on the issue. Forty-five percent of respondents in Taiwan supported same-sex marriages, while 43 percent opposed it.
In South Korea, 56 percent of the public opposed same-sex marriages, while only 41 percent supported it. In Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia, at least six-in-ten of the respondents strongly opposed legalising same-sex marriages. In Malaysia, three-quarters (75 percent) of respondents strongly oppose same-sex marriages, while 7 percent somewhat opposed it.
In Europe and America
While people in Western Europe were found to be staunch supporters of same-sex marriage, the populations in Central Europe were more split on the issue. In Poland, only 41 percent of adults supported legalising same-sex marriages, while Hungary had only 31 percent in favour.
In Italy and Greece, two other European countries where same-sex marriages are not legal, while the issue found strong support in the former (73 percent in favour), the public was split in the latter (48 percent in favour).
In North America, there was a strong support for same-sex marriages. In Canada, 79 percent supported them, while 63 percent of the public supported it in the US and Mexico.
Across the four countries surveyed by Pew in Africa and the Middle East (South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and Israel), public opinion, in general, was in opposition to same-sex marriages. In South Africa, where same-sex marriage is legal, only 38 percent favoured it. In Nigeria, (two percent) and Kenya (nine percent) public opinion was found to be strongly against same-sex marriages.
In Israel, only 36 percent of the respondents were in favour of legalising same-sex marriages and 56 percent opposed it, the survey found.
(Edited by Smriti Sinha)
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