Prague, July 21 (CTK) – Czech secondary-school students tolerate lesbians in their class much more than gays, they have said in a questionnaire that more than 1000 of them have been filling for two years within “rainbow seminars,” daily Pravo writes yesterday.
It also shows that girls are more tolerant of gays than boys. A mere 3 percent of girls would mind a gay classmate compared to 22 percent of boys. On the contrary, 12 percent of girls, but only 6 percent of boys would mind a lesbian in their class.
Almost a half of the polled have expressed fears of transexuals, Pravo writes.
Rainbow seminars to educate schoolchildren on the problems of the LGBT community (gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals) have been held at secondary schools by the PROUD (Platform for equality, recognition and diversity) organisation since 2013.
Zdenek Sloboda, executive of PROUD, explains why both adults and children mind homosexual men more than women.
“It is caused by the construct of masculinity in the western world in a typically chauvinistic way, in which everything girlish is negated, for instance ‘boys don’t cry.’ Boys are being raised mainly not to behave unmanly. While girls are being educated to be beautiful and become mothers,” Sloboda told Pravo.
“As soon as a gay appears in the class, the other boys face three problems. First, his orientation threatens masculinity, weakens them… Second, the boys fear that he will make a move on them at once and will be sexually harassing them. And third, they have nothing to talk with him about as pubescent boys’ bunches are dealing with sports, technologies and girls, in which a gay is not interested in their opinion,” Sloboda explained.
On the contrary, girls are considered sexually passive in the eyes of their schoolmates, he added.
Pravo cites a survey conducted by the CVVM polling institute. It shows that adult women are also more tolerant than men in this respect. However, similar to children, personal experience plays the most important role in their view of and approach to homosexuals.
Women, young people under 29, respondents who assess their living standards as good and right-wingers generally more tolerate homosexuals, Pravo says.
In the past ten years, Czechs have become considerably more tolerant of registered partnership and possible marriages of same-sex couples.
In 2005, 61 percent of respondents in a CVVM poll were for registered partnership and 30 percent were opposed to it, while in May, 74 percent supported it and 22 percent were against it.
The Czech Republic was the first post-communist country to legalise same-sex partnership. The respective law took effect in July 2006.
Most Czechs (59 percent) also agree with the adoption of a child of one partner in a same-sex couple, while 33 percent are against it, Pravo writes, referring to the latest CVVM poll.
On the contrary, only 44 would strongly or fairly agree with the adoption of children from institutions by homosexual couples, while 49 would oppose it, the CVVM survey shows.
According to the latest census in the Czech Republic in 2011, 925 children were raised in same-sex families of gays or lesbians in the 10.5-million Czech Republic. However, the real figure is probably higher, Sloboda told Pravo.
The Czech LBGB community will take part in its largest festival, Prague Pride, to be held in the capital city on August 10-16, for the fifth time in a row, Pravo writes.
