Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership: Perceptions of the LGBTQ in Turkiye

Murat Ergin () and Fatos Goksen
Additional contact information
Murat Ergin: Department of Sociology, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkiye
Fatos Goksen: Department of Sociology, Koc University, Istanbul, Turkiye

Journal of Economy Culture and Society, 2023, vol. 67, issue 67, 97-118

Abstract: Sexual minorities consistently rank as the most disapproved of group in Turkey although the LGBTQ community remain largely invisible. To explain this disparity, we examine private and public responses to homosexuality along four dimensions: demographic factors, social context, religion and religiosity, and public morality. The data come from a nationally representative survey (N=1893). We tested four sets of variables to explain the persistence of mistrust toward sexual minorities. The first two, demographic factors and social context, show limited explanatory power. The third dimension of personal morality is also limited, because boundaries against LGBTQ individuals also cut across religion and religiosity. The fourth dimension, public morality, a vision of moral values shaping public life and political discourse, explains the particularity of the views toward non-straight sexual orientations as the specific alignment of a moral worldview with exclusionary cultural membership. Results are significant in two ways. First, they show that the mistrust of sexual minorities is high. Second, the public displays of mistrust are different from the forms of prejudice expressed toward other groups, such as ethnic minorities. The symbolic boundaries drawn vis-Ã vis LGBTQ individuals tells us more about the core values of belonging and solidarity in Turkish society.

Keywords: Moral boundaries; religion; religiosity; public morality; Turkey (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cdn.istanbul.edu.tr/file/JTA6CLJ8T5/E26AE9D1389041D3B2D8D408328B71F2 (application/pdf)
https://iupress.istanbul.edu.tr/en/journal/jecs/ar ... the-lgbtq-in-turkiye (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ist:iujecs:v:67:y:2023:i:0:p:97-118

DOI: 10.26650/JECS2022-1068689

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economy Culture and Society is currently edited by Veysel Bozkurt

More articles in Journal of Economy Culture and Society from Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Istanbul University Press Operational Team (Ertuğrul YAŞAR) ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).