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Asahel Curtis's avatar

The Hungarian gay men I've known talked about getting fired from jobs and being unable to talk with their families. Skinheads beat up people coming out of Pride, which happens under strong police presence with barricades a block away to prevent counter protesters from throwing things, and that is in Budapest, which is much more cosmopolitan than the countryside, and a representative national sample will be predominantly rural. You chose an extremely weak source for your section on Hungary not being that homophobic, if you ask any gay guy you will get a completely different answer.

Is homophobia enough to explain a 10x difference? I have no idea. But Hungary actually is very homophobic.

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David's avatar

Much like ‘there are no gays in Iran’, the issues with this kind of estimate are actually clear in the Rahman paper. 1% identifying as gay in India, but 3% report predominant same sex attraction. Plenty of tales from the lab at northwestern university, they find men who call themselves ‘straight’ but only get aroused to men. Hungary sounds like a place where those things happen. I know of at least 3 guys who went to my school in a liberal western country, who had liberal parents, who were so bizarrely self hating they claimed to be straight and had beard relationships. The majority of the gay guys were in the closet and this was a very progressive school.

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