Gay in the Americas

Tolerance for minority rights is the hallmark of liberal democracies. Indeed, without such tolerance, democracy is fatally flawed. Creating an atmosphere of tolerance for minorities is one of the key challenges in constructing and deepening democracy in our hemisphere.

The shameful treatment of African Americans in the United States, for example, persisted for decades after the Civil War, and only began to improve in the middle of the twentieth century— finally declining in the twenty-first century to levels that made the election of an African American president conceivable and then possible. A similar process has occurred hemisphere-wide with increasing tolerance toward the full participation of women in professions and in politics, a process that is still ongoing.

But what of other islands of intolerance? Specifically, the rights of gays, a group that has been the target of hostility for centuries around the world, including in well-established democracies. Gay rights are especially problematic in much of Latin America. It is often assumed that this is because of the persistence of the culture of machismo, but another factor accounting for intolerance for the right of gay people is the overall low level of education in Latin America and the Caribbean compared to North America. Education has consistently been found by scholars to be the most important factor associated with a more tolerant society.

Read the full text of the article at www.AmericasQuarterly.org.

Mitchell A. Seligson is Centennial Professor of Political Science and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. He is director of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) that coordinates the AmericasBarometer surveys. His most recent book is The Legitimacy Puzzle in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2009).