Changing Identities of Religious People: The Role of Religiosity and the Public Discourse in Evaluating Gay People in Central and Eastern Europe

Abstract

This study examines the values of religious and non-religious people in Central and Eastern Europe over the past thirty years. It focuses on changes in perceptions of gay people and explores how the emergence of sexual orientation in public discourse has influenced its acceptance or rejection. The research highlights a specific duality in the region where religiosity is accompanied by an increasing acceptance of gay people in the region; but in some countries, differences between religious and non-religious perceptions of gay people are increasing. The study argues that this duality is shaped by different public discourses, identity politics, and the varied roles of churches in these processes across countries. Consequently, it offers a new interpretation of the relationship between religiosity and attitudes toward gay people.

1. Introduction—Different Patterns of Perception of Gay People

Perceptions of gay people vary significantly between Western and Eastern Europe. In the wealthier, more developed regions of the continent, where post-materialist values and trends in gender equality and individual-choice norms have advanced, the most notable value shift in recent decades has been the increasing societal acceptance of gay people. However, the Eastern region—including Russia and the European states of the former Soviet Union—continues to display strong opposition to gay people (Halman and Ingen 2015; Jäckle and Wenzelburger 2015; Takács and Szalma 2020). The Central and Eastern European region (hereinafter CEE), which includes the former communist states of the Eastern bloc and Warsaw Pact, occupies an intermediate position between the Western and Eastern parts of Europe regarding attitudes towards gay people.

Both Western and Eastern patterns have influenced the social history and values of this region. At the same time, the CEE region, independent since the fall of communism, has always exhibited its own unique characteristics. The strong Western orientation that followed the regime changes in these countries is no longer taken for granted. The enthusiastic and strong Western orientation of the transition period has been questioned in recent decades, and this has strengthened voices that emphasize the region’s specific development rather than the desire to identify with the Western world. This discourse no longer focused on similarities with the West but, on the contrary, on cultural, historical and economic differences. A new identity politics is beginning to emerge in the region (Enyedi 2020). This shift is reflected in the emphasis on national independence and the sajátos position of CEE countries within the European Union. As part of this search for identity, debates over the perception of gay people have intensified in the region (Ayoub 2016; Ayoub and Chetaille 2017). Gay people are becoming an increasingly prominent aspect of public discourse, serving as a lens through which individuals and political communities define their value systems (Sremac and Ganzevoort 2015; Ayoub 2014, 2016; Mole 2016; Renkin and Kościańska 2016; Hall 2017; Kazharski 2019; Kurimay 2021). In this context, attitudes towards “homosexuals” are seen as one potential (though not exclusive) node in the region’s broader search for self-identity, particularly in countries where religion is deeply embedded in national tradition and where LGBT rights are perceived as threatening to national interests (Stychin 1998; Binnie 2004; Bob 2012; Ayoub 2014, 2016; O’Dwyer 2018).

This study focuses on two interconnected issues. First, it seeks to trace changes in the perception of gay people in the region under study. Second, it explores the role that religiosity—which has traditionally had a negative influence on attitudes toward gay peoples—plays in shaping these perceptions. Specifically, this study examines how religious identity patterns affect the acceptance of gay people and the extent to which religious attitudes are shaped by shifts in the political environment and public discourse. By analyzing both homonegativity (cf. Berg et al. 2015) and the influence of religion on these attitudes, our research aims to reveal the more complex interrelationships and offer new insights into the role of religion in shaping societal views on gay people.

In light of the above considerations, this study examines how perceptions of gay people have changed in the region’s value system over an extended period (from the fall of communism to the present). Simultaneously, it seeks to answer how the emergence of sexual orientation in public discourse has affected both general and individual levels of acceptance or rejection. The questions concerning the perception of gay people are closely tied to the analysis of the role of religiosity. We also explore how previous research (Adamczyk and Pitt 2009; Adamczyk 2017; Jäckle and Wenzelburger 2015; Piumatti 2017; Janssen and Scheepers 2019) suggests that religiosity—an important factor in negative attitudes toward gay people—shapes individuals’ relationships with gay people.

The issue of how gay people are evaluated can be understood by examining social distance and attitudes toward norm violations. This approach allows us to investigate the relationship between general views on homonegativity, the perception of gay people, and religiosity. Through this analysis, we aim to address how religiosity influences the acceptance or rejection of gay people in the countries of this region. Like previous studies (Finke and Adamczyk 2008; Bognár and Kmetty 2020), we begin with the assumption that differing attitudes toward norm violations reflect the characteristic features of a religious worldview. Our study also examines the extent to which religion shapes perceptions of sexual orientation and gay individuals (Doebler 2015a, 2015b).

In analyzing the relationship between religiosity and the perception of gay people in the CEE region, we focused on countries that form the core of this loosely and inconsistently defined area (Wolff 1994; Berend 1995; Bremer 2008). This selection is justified by comparing data and changes in countries with broadly similar societal developments, alongside individual characteristics (further discussed in the sub-analyses). The study includes Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Croatia, which belong to the intermediate region of Europe. These countries share the characteristic that medieval social development shaped their societal structures, similar to Western social development. However, the period of this order was shorter in these countries and was often disrupted by military-political structures and the imposition of power by rulers (Szűcs 1985). These factors may explain why, at the dawn of modernity, this region was slower to adopt new ideas and structural changes from the West (Berend 1996; Janos 2000). Another commonality is that the gradual development of civic society was interrupted by forty years of communist rule, and all six countries have since joined the European Union. Lastly, the dominant form of Christianity in these countries is Western—primarily Roman Catholicism, though with Protestant and Orthodox influences. (The Czech Republic, while also characterized by Western Christianity, differs in that Roman Catholics, the largest denomination, are outnumbered by non-religious individuals—see

Table 1. Religious denomination per country (Source: EVS 2017).

	CZ	HR	HU	PL	SI	SK
Roman Catholic	20.40%	77.40%	34.40%	88.70%	56.50%	63.40%
Protestant	1.70%	0.30%	10.40%	0.60%	0.30%	10.00%
Orthodox	0.80%	0.70%	0.30%	1.10%	2.50%	0.50%
Other religion	2.20%	0.80%	0.60%	0.60%	3.60%	0.40%
Do not belong to any religious denomination	74.90%	20.80%	54.30%	9.00%	37.10%	25.70%

.)

The most significant change in recent decades has been the elimination of legal discrimination against gay people, which is something that persisted during the communist era. Furthermore, same-sex partnerships have become mostly, though not always, legally recognized in the studied countries (Takács 2015). However, differences in gay rights remain across these countries. Poland has the most severe restrictions, with no marriage equality and limited public expression of LGBT organizations (Ayoub 2016). By contrast, Croatia and Slovenia have the most liberal attitudes toward gay rights, with the introduction of hate speech laws improving the legal and political position of gay people. (https://www.ilga-europe.org/files/uploads/2022/04/Rainbow-Europe-Map-2021.pdf, accessed on 2 January 2025). Although the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary fall somewhere in the middle, the overall region, shaped by different social traditions than Western Europe and often characterized by a democratic deficit following the regime changes, still displays strong homonegativity (Štulhofer and Rimac 2009; Ayoub 2016; Takács and Szalma 2020).

However, since the regime changes, as a counter-reaction to the failures of socialism, which became evident by the late 1980s, countries in the region have increasingly sought to align themselves with Western Europe. This orientation, in both economic and cultural terms (expressed in EU accession), has strengthened Western European influences. For decades, Western patterns have been a primary point of reference (Goldmann 1997; Ekiert 2003; Drahokoupil 2008). Although this has not erased all aspects of the region’s traditions, the more accepting attitudes toward gay people in Western Europe have likely influenced value choices in these countries.

A more pronounced characteristic of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region in recent years has been its dual pursuit, desiring integration into the European community while simultaneously seeking a distinct identity that expresses the specific historical and cultural characteristics of the region. This search for identity, increasingly articulated on a political level, includes cultural elements that define self-identity in opposition to Western European norms. Not only have there been resolutions against Western migration policies, but also against the Western “pink-washing”—a term for the acceptance of sexual minorities—which has gained broader social support in the region (Hall 2017; Herbert 2019). This opposition is further reinforced by public discourse, where homonegative judgments are often framed as markers of “true Europeanness” or “normal Europe” (Sremac and Ganzevoort 2015; Mole 2016; Kazharski 2019; Enyedi 2020) (These voices do not necessarily mean that this homophobic discourse is shared by all members of society or is uniformly prevalent in the countries under study. Nor does it mean that this ‘true Europeanness’, as it is understood, is not also present in the Western part of Europe).

This phenomenon is especially visible in countries where a countermovement to neoliberalism has evolved into economic nationalism, prioritizing national interests over global economic integration (Bluhm and Varga 2019; Orenstein and Bugarič 2020). In these countries (notably Poland and Hungary), economic policies are aligned with a strongly conservative ideal, placing a heavy emphasis on traditional family structures. As a result, family policies often seek to promote national wealth by restricting the individual rights of women, children, and sexual minorities. Anti-gay and anti-abortion rhetoric is becoming more prominent in public discourse, serving as part of an illiberal backlash against Western influence (Guasti and Bustikova 2023).

The instrumental return to conservative traditions (Kristoffersson et al. 2016) has restructured public discourse, creating a multi-level debate between anti-gay and pro-gay movements (Ayoub and Chetaille 2017) (Due to geopolitical factors and the somewhat different socio-historical conditions, this phenomenon is of course less prevalent in the Czech Republic and Slovenia, while it is more prevalent in other countries (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and Croatia)). Religious tradition and religiosity play a significant role in shaping public positions in this identity struggle (Ayoub 2014, 2016), leading to a framing contest in which attitudes toward gay people are presented as key components of national identity (Guglielmi and Piacentini 2024). This framing increases the social visibility of gay people by polarizing public discourse, with one camp advocating for transnational norms and the other defending national identity. This dynamic results in both a growing acceptance of gay people and a counter-reaction of homonegativity. These factors, in turn, influence the perspectives of both religious and non-religious individuals on gay people. Our research thus assumes that these forces shape both the content of religiosity and the acceptance or rejection of gay people in the region.

2. Hypotheses

The thirty-year period since the fall of communism offers an opportunity to monitor changes in values. The first assumption of our research on the effect of religiosity is that the increase in the acceptance of gay people is less pronounced among individuals who consider themselves religious. Relying on previous research, we believe that religious values negatively influence the acceptance of gay people, even if religious people adapt to the expectations of secularized public spaces (Taylor 2007). This can be assumed even though the impact of religiosity on people’s values has changed significantly in recent years. Previous research on this issue has shown that the once significant role of religion in moral judgment in Europe has become increasingly marginalized (Storm 2016) and that hard indicators of society (such as education, family status, and age groups) have become more important in the transmission of values (Sieben and Halman 2014).

There is no doubt, however, that this change is much less tangible when it comes to evaluations of gay people. Research on both Europe and the United States has found that religiosity is one, if not the greatest, explanatory factor for the rejection of gay people (Adamczyk and Pitt 2009; Adamczyk 2017; Jäckle and Wenzelburger 2015; Janssen and Scheepers 2019). Then again, studies have shown that in areas where society as a whole is characterized by homonegativity, religiosity is not as strong a reason for the rejection of gay people as in the case of Western Europe. Although this presumably reduces the differences between religious and non-religious people in the CEE region, we expect that religiosity is accompanied by a greater rejection of gay people for the period under review (Hypothesis 1).

Our research interprets the differences that can be inferred between countries with slightly different traditions in the region. This is manifested not only in the degree of religiosity, but also in the degree of alignment with the values of Western civilization. In the case of those countries within this region which are highly secularized and oriented along Western patterns (the Czech Republic, Slovenia) (Hamplová and Nespor 2009; Strielkowski and Čábelková 2015; Flere and Lavrič 2007), the perception of gay people is expected to be obviously different from that found in countries (e.g., Poland, Croatia) where the vast majority of society defines itself as religious, and where religious precepts fundamentally influence people’s relationship with gay people (Pawlik 2017; Ramet and Borowik 2017; Marinovič and Ančić 2014; Zrinščak 2017). Consistent with previous research, we therefore assume that homonegativity is stronger in those countries within this region where religiosity holds a greater value (Hypothesis 2). Moreover, we expect that those who call themselves religious in the more religious countries of the region to reject gay peoples more strongly than non-religious individuals, and we also anticipate that the difference between the two is greater than in less religious countries (Hypothesis 3).

On the issue of evaluating gay people, we distinguish between a statement about sexual orientation and a statement about gay people themselves. This is justified primarily because the rejection generally experienced among religious people has primarily moral, value-based reasons. That is, in their case, homonegativity is rooted in the kind of religious tradition that interprets homosexuality as a sin, so rejection is primarily about the sexual orientation and not the gay people. All the more so because the religious tradition encourages more accepting behavior among religious people by emphasizing acceptance of one’s neighbor. Based on this and previous research (Doebler 2015a, 2015b; Glas and Spierings 2021), we hypothesize that the aversion of religious people toward gay people manifests itself primarily in the condemnation of sexual orientation itself and that they are more forgiving toward gay people (Hypothesis 4).

Attitudes towards gay people have gained more prominence in public discourse over the past decade. The thematization of the issue in public discourse thus repositions the relationship with gay people. However, we hypothesize that this does not solely result in increased acceptance and decreased homonegativity. This is presumably accompanied by the fact that competing groups in public discourse are expressing their opinions in the public space much more strongly than before (Ayoub and Chetaille 2017; O’Dwyer 2018). This, in turn, leads to more markedly different positions and a stronger identification with opinions (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). We expect a double change in this process. On the one hand, we hypothesize that the thematization of sexual orientation in public discourse is leading to a more definite space for accepting behavior in a previously majority-rejecting society (cf. Ayoub 2014). On the other hand, we think that public debate appears to those who define themselves as religious as an identification point, allowing them to express their differences from others more emphatically. Based on this, we assume that the deviation of the religious from the non-religious will be greater than in the past in countries where the political elite have campaigned against gay rights as part of a defense of national identity, such as Poland, Croatia, and Hungary, and it is unlikely that there will be any significant change. This is in contrast to countries (Slovenia, Czech Republic, and Slovakia) where the greater public visibility of gay people was not linked to the national identity narrative (Hypothesis 5).

It is also noteworthy that there is a significant divergence between the countries in the region that have engaged in anti-gay campaigns in terms of the historical stance taken by the churches in this public debate. While in Poland, in particular, and to a lesser extent also in Croatia, the historic churches were extensively involved in the government’s anti-gay campaign (see reference), in Hungary, the historic churches remained largely silent. It is therefore hypothesized that the political discourse is reinforced by the church institutions with varying weight in each country, which certainly influences the attitude of religious people towards gays. Consequently, it is expected that the anti-gay campaign in Poland and Croatia has a stronger effect on the gap between religious and non-religious people, while in Hungary this effect is smaller.

3. Data and Methods

We used 4 waves of the European Values Study (EVS) data in our analysis. The first EVS round was conducted in 1981, but none of the East-Central European countries participated in that round. The first wave we used in this paper included the surveys from 1990 to 1993 (referred to later as 1990). The next wave was conducted between 1999 and 2001 (referred to as 1999), then 2008–2010 (referred to as 2008), and the last one in 2017–2020 (referred to as 2020). (The exact data collection year is available here: https://dbk.gesis.org/dbksearch/file.asp?file=ZA4804_EVS_ParticipatingCountries.pdf, accessed 2 January 2025).

We included 6 countries: Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Hungary, but Croatia was not included in the 1990–1992 wave (Croatia declared its independence in 1991, but the war between Croatia and Serbia only ended in 1995). The smallest sample size was 987 and the largest was 2109. All the surveys were nationally representative. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews. The 1990–1999–2008 waves were already available in a joint file with unified variable names. We added the 2017 surveys to this file with harmonized variable names, so we had all the data available in one integrated file.

We had one main independent variable—religiosity—and two dependent variables–general attitude toward gay people and acceptance of gay neighbors.

The attitude toward gay people was measured with a 1–10 scale. The question was the following: “Please tell me whether you think it can always be justified, never be justified, or something in between”. One meant never and ten represented always.

The neighbor question was more direct. The question was the following: “On this list are various groups of people. Could you please sort out any that you would not like to have as neighbors?”. Several groups were listed; one of them were gay people. We created a dummy variable from this, where a higher value (1) meant the acceptance of gay neighbors.

The main independent variable was religiosity. Given that religiosity is usually measured along several dimensions since Glock and Stark’s analysis (Glock and Stark 1965), we have opted for a multidimensional analysis. In particular, we have highlighted the dimensions of religiosity that show a connection with the transcendent. We believe that religious worldviews and values are best captured through these dimensions. This explains our emphasis on lived religious experience (e.g., prayer, invocation of the transcendent, religious commitment, and religious self-evaluation) rather than on formal characteristics of religiosity (e.g., frequency of church attendance). We created a complex variable to measure this. First, we calculated a belief index by averaging the following 4 items (measured in 0–1 scale):

-

Do you believe in: God?

-

Do you believe in: afterlife?

-

Do you believe in: hell?

-

Do you believe in: heaven?

We recoded the “Are you a religious person” variable into the following 3 categories:

• 0: Atheist
• 0.5: Not a religious person
• 1: Religious person

And we also standardized the “Pray to God outside of religious services” question to have a min. value 0 and a max. value 1.

After this standardization process, we calculated the average value of the belief index, the religious person question, and the praying variable. The Cronbach alpha value of these three items was 0.84. The min. value of the final religious index is 0, the max value is 1.

In the regression models, we used the following five additional socio-demographic variables: gender (1: female, 2: male), age category (1: under 25, 6: above 65+), number of children, settlement size (1: Under 5.000; 2: 5.000–20.000; 3: 20.000–100.000; 4: 100.000–500.000; 5: Above 500.000) and education. We measured education with the following variable: “At what age did you complete your education”. As a control variable, we added the Inglehart material/post-material value index to the models (1: material; 2: mixed; 3: post-material) (Norris and Inglehart 2004).

We added two additional variables to the model to measure and control the contextual level. We calculated the average of the religiosity index for all the countries and EVS waves to test hypotheses two and three. We also wanted to control the official country-level laws and regulations about gay people. To measure this, we added the Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation (Waaldijk 2019)—GIRLHO—to the models. This index ranges from 0 to 8. Zero means intense discrimination toward gay people, while eight means equal rights for gay people. It contains measures about decriminalization, anti-discrimination legislation, and couple recognition. The current version of the index does not contain the 2020 measures, so the 2020 data were estimated by the authors based on the LBTQ Equality index (https://www.equaldex.com/equality-index, accessed 2 January 2025).

We used multilevel regression models to test the hypothesis. We applied linear models in the case of the general attitude toward gay people and a binomial logistic one in the case of the gay neighbor question. To the model, we added the intercept as a random term per country and wave and the other variables as a fixed effect. In the main models, we included individual and context-level religiosity and the rest of the control variables. In order to test hypotheses three and four, we added interaction terms to the models. We plotted the interaction terms for the easier interpretation of the results.

4. Results

Our research, based on the four waves of the EVS, offers an opportunity for a complex interpretation of the relationship between perceptions of gay people, religiosity, and the role of public discourse. This period has also significantly reshaped the relationship with gay people in the CEE region. Based on the data from the four periods of the EVS, we are experiencing a uniform increase in the tolerance of gay people in the region (see Figure 1). The increasingly intense cultural and political relations with the Western world have strengthened pluralistic thinking. This is usually manifested in the perception of values and violations of norms related to privacy, including sexual orientation. Although the fundamentally traditional perception of gender differences in these societies does not disappear, a pluralistic society gives more room for the emergence of different values. All of this results (albeit with interruptions) in the increased tolerance of gay people.

The data also point to differences in the order of values of individual countries as follows: the country closest to the Western value pattern (the Czech Republic) shows the highest degree of tolerance. In addition, the data series also show that the first EVS measurement of the period after the change in regime showed a fundamental rejection of gay people everywhere in the region. The main trend of the thirty-year series of changes is that although the rate of aversion towards gay people decreased until the last measurement (2017/2020), only in the case of countries closest to Western values (the Czech Republic and Slovenia) has basic rejection been replaced by a more accepting attitude (showing a value above 5.5 on the scale).

Data from the four waves of the EVS showed a clear correlation between religiosity and the acceptance of gay people, as those who called themselves religious evaluated gay people more negatively. This is particularly evident from our regression table, which depicts the attitudes of those who profess to be religious towards gay people over a thirty-year time period. The religiosity variable was significant in the M1 model, with a negative B coefficient (−1.35). Religious values are associated with a greater degree of homonegativity (this confirms our Hypothesis 1).

All this also indicates that while the role of religion has significantly decreased in relation to the violations of norms, in general, and state-sanctioned violations in particular (Finke and Adamczyk 2008; Bognár and Kmetty 2020), religiosity remains a structuring factor in terms of evaluating gay people. This result is confirmed by the model regarding the acceptance of gay neighbors (see

Table A2. Multilevel binomial logistic regression models on the acceptance of gay neighbors.

Fixed Effects	M4			M5			M6
	B	S.E.	Sig	B	S.E.	Sig	B	S.E.	Sig
Intercept	−0.94	0.51	0.06	−1.19	0.52	0.02	−0.44	0.46	0.34
Country-level religiosity	−1.22	0.64	0.06	−0.72	0.68	0.29	−2.13	0.55	0.00
GILRHO	0.24	0.07	0.00	0.24	0.07	0.00	−0.03	0.10	0.77
Religiosity	−0.40	0.05	0.00	0.06	0.18	0.77	−0.16	0.09	0.08
Gender	0.38	0.03	0.00	0.39	0.03	0.00	0.39	0.03	0.00
Age category	−0.08	0.01	0.00	−0.08	0.01	0.00	−0.08	0.01	0.00
Education level	0.03	0.00	0.00	0.03	0.00	0.00	0.03	0.00	0.00
Number of children	−0.04	0.01	0.00	−0.04	0.01	0.00	−0.04	0.01	0.00
Settlement size	0.10	0.01	0.00	0.10	0.01	0.00	0.10	0.01	0.00
Post-material index	0.21	0.02	0.00	0.20	0.02	0.00	0.21	0.02	0.00
Religiosity×country-level religiosity				−0.81	0.32	0.01
Wave 1999							1.19	0.25	0.00
Wave 2008							1.22	0.35	0.00
Wave 2020							1.46	0.38	0.00
Religiosity×Wave 1999							−0.49	0.13	0.00
Religiosity×Wave 2008							−0.20	0.12	0.10
Religiosity×Wave 2020							−0.31	0.13	0.01
Random effects
Group	Std.Dev			Std.Dev			Std.Dev
Wave/Country (unit)	0.44			0.44			0.33
Model info
N	26,417			26,417			26,417
Pseudo-R2 (fixed effects)	0.10			0.10			0.13
Pseudo-R2 (total)	0.15			0.15			0.16

), where the individual level of the religiosity variable was also significant with a negative coefficient.

On the country level, we obtained mixed results. In the case of attitude toward gay people, the country-level variable was not significant (see M1 model in

Table 2. Multilevel regression models on attitude toward gay people.

Fixed Effects	M1			M2			M3
	B	S.E.	Sig	B	S.E.	Sig	B	S.E.	Sig
Intercept	1.86	1.28	0.16	1.10	1.28	0.40	2.31	1.54	0.16
Country-level religiosity	−1.92	1.65	0.26	−0.39	1.67	0.82	−3.00	1.85	0.13
GILRHO	0.27	0.17	0.12	0.27	0.17	0.13	−0.08	0.35	0.83
Religiosity	−1.35	0.06	0.00	0.02	0.24	0.93	−0.57	0.13	0.00
Gender	0.69	0.04	0.00	0.70	0.04	0.00	0.70	0.04	0.00
Age category	−0.25	0.01	0.00	−0.26	0.01	0.00	−0.26	0.01	0.00
Education level	0.08	0.00	0.00	0.08	0.00	0.00	0.08	0.00	0.00
Number of children	−0.12	0.02	0.00	−0.12	0.02	0.00	−0.12	0.02	0.00
Settlement size	0.23	0.01	0.00	0.22	0.01	0.00	0.23	0.01	0.00
Post-material index	0.48	0.03	0.00	0.48	0.03	0.00	0.48	0.03	0.00
Religiosity×Country-level religiosity				−2.48	0.42	0.00
Wave 1999							1.35	0.78	0.11
Wave 2008							1.42	1.19	0.25
Wave 2020							2.67	1.27	0.05
Religiosity×Wave 1999							−0.78	0.17	0.00
Religiosity×Wave 2008							−0.72	0.17	0.00
Religiosity×Wave 2020							−1.45	0.17	0.00
Random effects
	Std.Dev			Std.Dev			Std.Dev
Wave/Country (unit)	1.14			1.14			1.14
Residual	2.89			2.89			2.89
Model info
N	26,605			26,605			26,605
Pseudo-R2 (fixed effects)	0.15			0.15			0.17
Pseudo-R2 (total)	0.26			0.26			0.28

), but in the case of the acceptance of a gay neighbor question, we found a 0.06 significance (see M4 model in Table A2), which is close to the usual 0.05 acceptance level. As we only have 24 observations on the country*wave level, we have to treat these results with caution, so neither accept nor reject Hypothesis 2.

Hypothesis 3 was about the interaction of individual and context-level religiosity. Here, we found a significant relationship between both dependent variables (see M2 model in Table 2 and M5 model in Table A2); thus, our research confirmed Hypothesis 3, under which, in the more religious countries of the region, religious people reject gay people to a greater extent than non-religious people and the difference between the two is greater than in less religious countries (see Figure 2).

Our fourth hypothesis concerned whether religious people primarily reject gay people in general, and not gay individuals. As we have seen in the previous results (Table 2 and Table A2 and Figure 2), religiosity seems to work similarly on attitude toward gay people and acceptance of gay neighbors. This similarity is confirmed by analyzing the marginal effect sizes of the two variables (Figure 3).

It is challenging to compare a linear model with a logistic one, but the AME values help estimate the effect sizes. Here, we focus on the religiosity variables. The AME value of the individual religiosity variable was −1.35 in the previous model (see Table 1—in a linear model the B and the AME value is similar) and −0.10 here. So, religiosity decreased the positive attitude toward gay people with a 1.35 value in a 1–10 scale. In the second model, it decreased the acceptance of gay neighbors with a 0.1 value in a 0–1 scale. If we consider the different ranges of the scales, we could estimate a slightly stronger effect of individual religiosity in the case of the attitude variable. But we found the opposite in the case of country-level religiosity. This did not have significant effect on attitudes toward gay people and it had only a weak effect on the acceptance of gay people (sig = 0.06). So, the results are mixed here, and we could not confirm Hypothesis 4. In any case, our research results suggest that the Central and Eastern European region does not show such a marked difference between the two forms of homonegativity as compared with the Western European region (Doebler 2015b). While we can speculate that this may be due to a more general rejection of gay people, which leaves less room for more subtle distinctions, further research is needed to explore the reasons for the differences between regions.

In the third model, we tested the interaction of religiosity with the EVS rounds. The interaction between the individual level of religiosity and the EVS round was significant in both models (see M3 in Table 1 and M6 in Table A2). Figure 4 helps us understand this interaction term. In the first studied wave (1990), the effect of religiosity on attitude toward gay people and the acceptance of gay neighbors was weak; there was not a big difference in the acceptance level between non-religious and religious people. In the later waves, the examined correlation was significantly strengthened, with the trend lines decreasing much more steeply as religiosity increased. This confirmed our Hypothesis 5.

The increasing correlation between religiosity and attitude toward gay people has a clear link with how the public discourse on the perception of gay people changed in the observed countries. Society’s relationship to gay people has become so important in the last decade that judging this issue is an increasingly frequent part of public discourse. In addition to the analyses on the issue (Doebler 2015a; Hall 2017; Herbert 2019), this change is shown by the significant change that also appears in the frequency of Internet searches (see Figure A1 on the Appendix A).

The research results show a twofold effect in this regard. On the one hand, due to the fact that the issue has been receiving increasingly more attention in the last decade, it has offered more space to deviate from the previous traditionalist (homonegative) conception. Presumably, this has also played a role in the increased acceptance of gay people in all the societies studied in the region. This is well illustrated by our table of the perceptions of gay people, where for most countries, the acceptance of gay people has grown most strongly in the last ten years (in parallel with the more prominent social thematization of the issue). On the other hand, one of the most significant changes in the last decade has been the appreciable increase in the gap between religious and non-religious people in the region (see Figure 5). The public thematization of the issue has thus resulted in more marked differences over the issue of gay people between those who consider themselves religious and those who consider themselves non-religious, in several countries in the region.

All of this has occurred in a social setting where the acceptance of gay people is increasing among both religious and non-religious people (see Figure 5).

However, the growing differences on the issue of gay people between religious and non-religious people is not always the case across the six countries of the CEE region studied, as stated in our Hypothesis 5. Diversification of opinions has occurred where public discourse has not only addressed the issue of gay people as a private issue, but also linked it to party politics, national identity, or places where (such as in Poland and to a smaller degree in Croatia) the influential Catholic Church has participated in public controversy. The question of the perception of gay people thus had a greater influence in shaping the judgment of the people in cases where this issue was intertwined with questions of national and regional identity. This phenomenon has been the strongest in Poland, where the right-wing populist parties in government (Law and Justice/PiS) thematize the rejection of gay people as a means of preserving national traditions in the debate between political parties.

Thus, along with the alleged “migrant pressure” emphasized by political propaganda, the anti-migrant attitudes and the rejection of gay people are portrayed as an inheritance of Christian traditions and values in this discourse. In the campaign against gay people that meets the value evaluation of the majority society, the issue of gay people thus appears as an external threat, similar to migration. This offers populist parties and the Polish and Croatian Catholic Churches an opportunity for the consolidation of a national and regional self-identity against the “valueless West”. Since this discourse refers primarily to Christian values (Hall 2017; Herbert 2019), it can target religious people more successfully. The effect of this discourse is most pronounced in Poland, where the greatest difference between the judgment of religious and non-religious exists, along with the increasing pressure on the gay community (see the GIRLHO numbers in

Table A1. Global Index on Legal Recognition of Homosexual Orientation. (Waaldijk 2019). The 2020 data were estimated by the authors based on the LBTQ Equality index (https://www.equaldex.com/equality-index, accessed 2 January 2025).

	Croatia	Czech Republic	Hungary	Poland	Slovak Republic	Slovenia
1990	1	2	1	2	2	2
1999	2	3	3	2	2	4
2008	5	5	5	3	4	5
2020	6	5	4	3	5	6

).

Hypothesis 6 postulates that Hungary would occupy a distinctive position in countries with anti-gay campaigns, given that historical churches were not involved in government propaganda. This is also related to the fact that the gap between religious and non-religious respondents has not been opened here. In other words, it appears that the abstention of the churches may have contributed to the fact that for religious Hungarians, the anti-gay policy did not represent an opportunity for identification to the same extent as it did for religious Poles or Croats.

The strength of the impact on public discourse is supported by the fact that this kind of rearrangement in the countries of the region has strongly depended on the extent to which perceptions of gay people have become part of identity politics. A series of changes in smaller amplitude than in Poland, but parallel to it, can be seen in Croatia, where albeit without such a striking force, there are also voices against the acceptance of gay people in public discourse. Here, too, center-right parties and the church have opposed same-sex marriage, and the perception of gay people has become a public issue. Here too, this has apparently formed a kind of identification point for religious people, which can be seen as a set of values that is separate from non-religious people. Meanwhile, in countries where the perception of gay people has not become a prominent part of public policy, and where neither churches nor right-wing parties have made the issue of gay people a prominent element of their resolution or campaign, as in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Slovakia (Tižik 2017), the change experienced has not taken place.

5. Discussion

Like all research, this study has its limitations. While a comprehensive European questionnaire (European Values Study) greatly enhances comparability by using the same database and set of questions, it also imposes limitations on the analysis. A standardized set of questions is less sensitive to social changes. For example, shifts in the focus of homophobic attitudes (e.g., the way in which trans people have been targeted in recent years) cannot be analyzed with this questionnaire. As the questionnaire asks about attitudes towards gay people without specifying them, it is also not possible to obtain a picture of attitudes towards gay men and women and other sexual orientations that are part of the LGBTQ. Nevertheless, we believe that the EVS questionnaire gives a good indication of the general change in attitudes towards gay people.

Obviously, one of the limitations of the analysis is that there are competing definitions of religiosity, and it is inevitable that one has to choose between them when analyzing such a large database. This explains the somewhat different results of analyses using multiple dimensions (cf. Glock and Stark 1965). In addition to the definition of religiosity, justified in the previous section, one could have opted for a definition that better reflects church religiosity. On the other hand, we believe that the most appropriate dimensions for measuring religious values are those that focus most on the dimensions that express religious people’s relationship to the transcendent (prayer, belief, and personal classification). Perhaps more importantly, these conceptual differences do not have a decisive impact on the trend drawn by our analysis. Another limitation of the analysis is that the attitudes of religious people towards gay people are affected by other social influences (e.g., urbanization, economic development, and the size of the agricultural sector) and geopolitical factors, in addition to those examined in this research. All of these could be the subject of further analysis, as could the attitudes of different denominations towards gay people. (Again, there are differences between the more accepting Reform Judaism and the more conservative Orthodox Christians). Further research also offers the possibility of widening the scope of the country under study. Although the focus of the current research did not include the Baltic States due to their different socio-historical development and the higher proportion of Orthodox Christianity, future analyses could cover this region.

Our research has examined three decades of change in the values of Central and Eastern Europe in relation to the perception of gay people, its relationship to religiosity, and the changes in public discourse. There has been a significant shift in people’s relationship to gay people during the study period. At the beginning of the period under review, an almost uniform rejection has been replaced by increasingly accepting but still fundamentally skeptical attitudes. Thus, a trend towards social permissiveness that began in the West seems to have had a significant impact on attitudes towards non-normative private behavior, in general, and gay people, in particular, as can be observed in this region. We have also seen that a regionally uniform, growing acceptance of gay people has also depended on how close or distant the values of each country were to Western patterns. Acceptance increased most in countries (Czech Republic, Slovenia) that were least characterized by traditional values (Halman and Arts 2010).

At the same time, our study highlighted the role of religiosity in influencing the perceptions of gay people.2 In agreement with other research, we found that religiosity in this region was associated with a higher probability of rejection of gay people. However, one of the novel findings of our research is that religiosity itself is not an obstacle to the acceptance of gay people. This is indicated by the fact that in the six countries studied in the region, religious people also became unambiguously more accepting of gay people. That is, in their value system, albeit more slowly and with different traits, they follow the more permissive value system of the modern public in terms of privacy. This transformation in the region has just shown one of the most significant changes in the perception of gay people, with those who define themselves as religious becoming decidedly more accepting of gay people. This suggests that religiosity is no longer emerging as a factor against the values of the secular world but as part of a new secularism (Willaime 2004) that results in a plurality of views and opinions and a more tolerant attitude toward otherness.

Our study of the region confirms that the relationship between religiosity and its impact on values is not necessarily congruent (Chaves 2010; Van Droogenbroeck et al. 2016; Whitehead and Perry 2016; Perry and Whitehead 2016). We see again that religiosity induces different value orientations and actions at the intersection of different social identities (Read and Eagle 2011; Sherkat and Lehman 2018). In the present case, therefore, religiosity does not necessarily imply traditionalism and, in this context, a rejection of the acceptance of gay people. Rather, we can talk about the fact that changing trends in the wider social environment shape the content of religiosity, and these factors may also result in new religious identities. Signs of this emerge from three decades of research in the region. Religiousness is accompanied by a growing acceptance of gay people, reflecting the social changes that give more room to the values of Western civilization.

Another novel result of our research is that the changes in the region also show an opposite trend. The question of the perception of gay people in public discourse did not simply result in questioning traditional values that have been present for centuries. As trends in both Western Europe and the United States show (Village and Francis 2008; Glass 2019), political discourse also influences the value judgments of religious people. The discourse on gay people in some countries has become a tool for political mobilization and, as a result, a topic through which some people have sought to establish their individual and collective identities. Right-wing populist parties, and in some cases churches, have seen the growing acceptance of gay people as a threat to society and their national identity. Religious people addressed through this discourse have partially identified with this point of view in Poland and, to a lesser extent, Croatia. This, in turn, has led to an increase in differences in the perception of gay people between religious and non-religious people in these countries. The data thus suggest that where party politics and, in part, the anti-gay policies of the churches have intensified, the perception of gay people has become an identification point for religious people.

Two trends that can both be observed within this region suggest that religiosity alone does not determine the relationship to values, such as sexual orientation. Rather, different social force fields result in different directions of identification. Thus, beyond tradition, the contents of religious identity are at least as much about the identities offered by the struggles within the discursive field. In this sense, therefore, beyond the stable core of identities, there are always factors that can shape the contents of identity. If we interpret the relationship of religious people to gay people in these fields of power, we can arrive at an explanation for the differences that have been observed between countries with similar traditions in the region over the past decade.

There are clear differences in the attitudes of religious people towards gay people in countries where the public thematicization of the issue of sexual orientation has not been exploited as a national political issue. In these countries (in the Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Slovakia) this public discourse has logically increased the acceptance of gay people and has not sharpened the differences between religious and non-religious people. In countries where traditionalism and homonegativity, which are opposed to Western influence in the discursive field but have been weakening for decades, have been strongly confirmed by both churches and major political parties, such values have become an identification point for the religious, while among the non-religious, it has led to a stronger stance against homonegative traditionalism.

Our research thus draws attention to the fact that in interpreting the perception of religion and gay people, we must also take into account the social influences that can shape the relationship between the two factors. These are all the more important because, like the perception of gay people, the content of religiosity is constantly changing. This is because religious identity also changes as a result of discursive spaces and the games played within them. Religion is thus able to reinforce subjective or group identity, even in a changed social environment. However, these general traits do not in the least determine how the new contents of religiosity relate to gay people. The exciting and changeable region of Central and Eastern Europe shows the ways in which either a new type of homonegativity or a more accepting religious identity can result. Which identification is strengthened in the region depends, among other factors, on the success or failure of the region’s EU integration. Depending on whichever direction is strengthened, new trends will only emerge more clearly from the new wave of EVS that lies ahead. However, identifying future trends does not depend on recent quantitative data alone. Qualitative analysis, which can refine our research findings by capturing the lives of religious people in a more detailed and complex way, is also very much needed to capture the issue more validly.