People from Hong Kong aged 18 to 40 are mostly supportive of LGBTQIA equality, according to a survey done by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute. Sadly, nearly half of the respondents said they experienced or learned of discriminatory acts done against the LGBTQIA community.
Commissioned by the LGBTQIA rights group Pink Alliance, the survey done in August involved 2,120 residents aged between 18 and 40. The survey’s findings included:
- 86% said they agreed that LGBTQIA people should be treated fairly and should not be discriminated against
- 63% said Hong Kong should implement legislation to prohibit discrimination against the LGBTQIA community
- 75% said same-sex marriage should be allowed in the city
- almost half of the interviewees experienced, witnessed, or heard about discriminatory behaviors against the LGBTQIA community
- nearly 60% of the discriminatory acts were in the form of verbal abuse, with three per cent involving physical violence
- 39% said they thought their employers or institutions had not “properly” handled these cases of discrimination
All the same, Suen Yiu-tung, the founding director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Sexualities Research Programme, said in a statement that this study showed that Hong Kong’s younger population “increasingly find unfair treatment of LGBT+ people in society unacceptable.” This may be because of the increasing contact between the general public and the LGBTQIA community, as well as the rise in media representation of LGBTQIA people.
