Page 12 - GEORptSep21

Georgia’s South Caucasus neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan were not part of the survey.
The responses seen in the gathered data also vary by age and sex. Young people tended to be less homophobic than older people and women tended to be more homophobic than men, with the exception of men and women in the 35–54 age range, who were equally homophobic.
The active role played by priests in the recent riots in Georgia was perhaps unsurprising given that priests also engaged in violence in the homophobic riots that hit the country's 2013 International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia. Furthermore, the church in Georgia established the ‘Day of Family Purity’ in the years following the 2013 riots to prevent events marking the international day from being held.
In this regard, the data tends to suggest that Orthodox Christian countries are more homophobic than others. The only exception to this pattern was that the one Muslim country in the dataset, Turkey, was more homophobic than Orthodox countries on average.
While Orthodox countries appeared to be more homophobic overall than countries where other religions predominate, how strongly someone evaluates the importance of religion in their lives was not correlated with whether or not they held a homophobic view. This suggests that religious belief is not necessarily the issue; rather, that generalised homophobia in society is.
A conclusion is thus that the riots seen on July 5 underlined that Georgia has a problem with homophobia, to put it mildly. The data suggests the problem is
12 GEORGIA Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com