Military officers are less tolerant for homosexual individuals

The survey, carried out by the Ministry of National Defense of the Republic of Lithuania in order to examine the current attitudes in the Lithuanian army, indicates that military officers are far less tolerant for gay men, people with mental disabilities, refugees and Jews than the rest of the civil society.

According to Jūratė Novagrockienė, a senior researcher at the Strategic Research Centre of the General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania, the survey seeks to analyze how the army reflects upon social trends, discrimination and intolerance in the context of growing social tension as a result of antinational rhetoric of V. Tomaševski, a leader of Polish Electoral Campaign, nationalist march and Baltic Pride event to name but a few.

The respondents were asked to express their willingness or unwillingness to live next door to various social ethnic, social and other groups. The military officers would not like to live near homosexual people (71.5%) and individuals with mental disability (59.9%). The numbers in the rest fo the civil society are 44.9% and 51.5% respectively. Both homosexuals and people with mental disabilities are seen as the least preferred co-workers (70 % and 62.5% among military officers and 35.6% and 45.8% among the civil society).

The survey was carried out between January 2011 and March 2012 and surveyed 687 people, 145 of them were military officers on field.

Read more at delfi.lt