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.
It is always a thankless position in a debate to tell people who say they have a problem that they don't. So I'm trying not to go there. But we have data on homophobia in different European countries, for example in the EU's 2012 and 2019 LGBT (LGBTI for 2019) surveys. ("Asking a gay guy" is never a better source than a survey or a report, because these ask multiple gay guys.) You can read them here:
This is a survey only of sexual minorities who are asked about their experiences of harrassment and discrimination. Hungarian respondents report about as much of these as the EU average for most measures, and I couldn't find a single one in which Hungary was the worst. So maybe it is a homophobic country, but this cannot explain the low rates compared to others which usually appear about equally homophobic.
There is a difference between the rates of violent acts, and the everyday discrimination they feel. Last time I checked, I compared HU to NL. The rates of violent attacks was roughly the same, but gays in NL reported far less everyday discrimination. Both things should be taken into account.
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.
Yes there are other online surveys as well. But this is not a great method for estimating rates: if you are a sexual minority, you are more likely to respond to a survey about sexual minorities, leading to an upward bias.
But then you still have a lot of explaining to do. In the IPSOS survey do you expect that US data are correct but the Hungarian ones are not? For some reason? The rate of homosexuality is not a full magnitude apart in that survey, for these two selected countries.
No, IPSOS data is inflated for all countries because of the methodology. You can compare the US rates to the CDC data I posted. Volunteer bias can be different across countries so we don't expect the real numbers to just get multiplied by a constant number if we do an online survey as opposed to a representative study.
Right, but then how do you know which one is inflated more in the IPSOS study? The US data or the Hungarian one? In either case you are making guesses.
You guess that the studies that you like don't underrepresent the true numbers, and you guess that some other studies do the overrepresentation. As far as I see, arguments can be made in both directions.
It's not a matter of liking or disliking. A nationally representative survey is just a better source of data than an online volunteer survey, this is why countries bother funding and doing these instead of just posting a link. Hence, CDC data and the two Hungarian surveys are more credible than IPSOS.
By the way, if you like online surveys, the Rahman et al paper I linked in the post relies on such a survey which is 10 times bigger than IPSOS and has much more geographical coverage (but of course with the same limitations).
I can accept that the representative surveys are more trustworthy. Question is why don't you think that there is information to be gained from other sources. Not saying that the IPSOS has more truth, but definitely a contribution. In the interpretation of the representative surveys you are making guesses, namely that the underrepresentation effect is not too big. Perhaps it is not, but I am not at all convinced.
For example, I would also say that a 10x underrepresentation is unlikely, but I don't know where would be the real number. Perhaps 2x, 3x? How would you know? A 3x underrepresentation would put the numbers closer to what IPSOS finds.
Also, if the IPSOS is overrepresenting the HU gay population, but not so much the US gay population, then there should be some arguments for this. The whole point of your post is that there is a large and real (meaning: truly existing) difference between countries. Then perhaps you should also explain why some studies don't see this difference, whereas they use the same methodology.
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.
It is always a thankless position in a debate to tell people who say they have a problem that they don't. So I'm trying not to go there. But we have data on homophobia in different European countries, for example in the EU's 2012 and 2019 LGBT (LGBTI for 2019) surveys. ("Asking a gay guy" is never a better source than a survey or a report, because these ask multiple gay guys.) You can read them here:
https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2013/eu-lgbt-survey-european-union-lesbian-gay-bisexual-and-transgender-survey-results
and here:
https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2020/eu-lgbti-survey-results
This is a survey only of sexual minorities who are asked about their experiences of harrassment and discrimination. Hungarian respondents report about as much of these as the EU average for most measures, and I couldn't find a single one in which Hungary was the worst. So maybe it is a homophobic country, but this cannot explain the low rates compared to others which usually appear about equally homophobic.
There is a difference between the rates of violent acts, and the everyday discrimination they feel. Last time I checked, I compared HU to NL. The rates of violent attacks was roughly the same, but gays in NL reported far less everyday discrimination. Both things should be taken into account.
Look at the EU surveys I linked about self-reported discrimination.
I'm willing to believe that Hungary is roughly as homophobic as everywhere else. Well spoken.
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.
An 2021 IPSOS survey found slightly different data:
https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2021-06/LGBT%20Pride%202021%20Global%20Survey%20Report_3.pdf
Yes there are other online surveys as well. But this is not a great method for estimating rates: if you are a sexual minority, you are more likely to respond to a survey about sexual minorities, leading to an upward bias.
But then you still have a lot of explaining to do. In the IPSOS survey do you expect that US data are correct but the Hungarian ones are not? For some reason? The rate of homosexuality is not a full magnitude apart in that survey, for these two selected countries.
No, IPSOS data is inflated for all countries because of the methodology. You can compare the US rates to the CDC data I posted. Volunteer bias can be different across countries so we don't expect the real numbers to just get multiplied by a constant number if we do an online survey as opposed to a representative study.
Right, but then how do you know which one is inflated more in the IPSOS study? The US data or the Hungarian one? In either case you are making guesses.
You guess that the studies that you like don't underrepresent the true numbers, and you guess that some other studies do the overrepresentation. As far as I see, arguments can be made in both directions.
It's not a matter of liking or disliking. A nationally representative survey is just a better source of data than an online volunteer survey, this is why countries bother funding and doing these instead of just posting a link. Hence, CDC data and the two Hungarian surveys are more credible than IPSOS.
By the way, if you like online surveys, the Rahman et al paper I linked in the post relies on such a survey which is 10 times bigger than IPSOS and has much more geographical coverage (but of course with the same limitations).
I can accept that the representative surveys are more trustworthy. Question is why don't you think that there is information to be gained from other sources. Not saying that the IPSOS has more truth, but definitely a contribution. In the interpretation of the representative surveys you are making guesses, namely that the underrepresentation effect is not too big. Perhaps it is not, but I am not at all convinced.
For example, I would also say that a 10x underrepresentation is unlikely, but I don't know where would be the real number. Perhaps 2x, 3x? How would you know? A 3x underrepresentation would put the numbers closer to what IPSOS finds.
Also, if the IPSOS is overrepresenting the HU gay population, but not so much the US gay population, then there should be some arguments for this. The whole point of your post is that there is a large and real (meaning: truly existing) difference between countries. Then perhaps you should also explain why some studies don't see this difference, whereas they use the same methodology.