RESEARCH carried out as part of the 2018 Social Attitudes Survey led to headlines that ‘Liberal Britain may have reached its peak’.
The survey asked 3,000 people a variety of questions related to sexuality, lifestyle and religion and found that 66 per cent said that same sex relationships were ‘not wrong at all’. This is down two per cent from the 2017 research. To put this into perspective, there has been a remarkable change in attitudes regarding same-sex relationships that only received full support by 11 per cent of those asked in 1987. If this research is accurate, we have moved, in the space of a generation, from around one in 10 people thinking same sex relationships are not wrong at all to today when two thirds of people think this. But the suggestion is that this trend may be coming to an end.
On the matter of the liberalisation of attitudes regarding the transgender community, the researchers say there is still some way to go, with only 49 per cent of those asked saying that they viewed prejudice against transgender people as ‘always wrong’.
One of the difficulties and indeed confusions with this research is the use of the term liberalism. When the survey began in 1983 it was both liberal and radical to support gay rights. Lesbian and gay people continued to face police harassment, political and media condemnation, and pressure to remain in the closet. Consequently, gay liberation embodied a sentiment and a politics of liberation and freedom – freedom from the authorities, the censors and the police.
Today in comparison, LGBT issues are often experienced as a form of outrage and offence taking – less a form of freedom than an imposition of ‘correct’ attitudes, of the censoring of speakers and academics, of Twitter storms demanding sackings and resignations, indeed as a matter of policing of words and attitudes with the full support of the political establishment. If there is a slow down in support for same-sex relationships, it may be less to do with the re-emergence of traditional views than a reaction against the illiberalism of today’s diversity campaigners and police.
In this regard, the fact that only 49 per cent of those surveyed said prejudice against transgender people is always wrong is of note. One would think this means there is a high level of bigotry and intolerance towards trans people. But on the contrary, despite this figure, 83 per cent of people also said that they are not prejudiced at all towards transgender people.
When being liberal not only means allowing people to live as they please but being forced to accept something you do not believe, like the idea that men can be women and women can be men, then liberalism loses its meaning and we find that those who call themselves liberal are experienced as the new oppressors. In this respect many of these reactions in this survey do not reflect a loss of liberalism but a more genuine and liberal reaction to the new authoritarians.
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