Many liberal Americans often put Europeans on a pedestal, commenting how socially progressive society is in the nations across the Atlantic. While its true that Europeans have more social programs, that doesn’t necessarily translate into a more tolerant society.
The Advocate reports that residents of the United Kingdom are less supportive of same sex marriage and adoption rights than their counterparts in the US. The Advocate reports, “45% of Britons said they believe “homosexual marriages should be allowed throughout Europe.” That number is slightly lower than that in recent surveys in the United States that show support for marriage equality is at about 50% or a bit higher.The British government is considering upgrading legal same-sex civil unions to unions referred to as marriages; that could be complicated by the tepid support from the British public.”
You can read the full article here.
BosGuy 
As a UK resident I’d be quite sceptical of this report. The Advocate has picked this story up from the Mail, the UK’s most right-wing tabloid. The say that the research was published by the Office of National Statistics (a respected body) using data from the British Social Attitudes Survey and The EU Eurobarometer survey and other sources. Well I’ve looked on the ONS and Eurobarometer websites and can’t find this research…if the Mail has been a bit casual with it’s reporting standards I wouldn’t be surprised.
Even if the article does report the questions and answers accurately I think that it’s likely that the responses were skewed by the mention of Europe in the questions. The European Union is very unpopular in the UK and it seems quite likely that some respondents would give a negative answer to these questions purely because of the EU link.
It is true that the Muslim population is very conservative on gay issues and it is a growing sector of UK society however it is still only a few % of the population.
Whilst all is not rosy in the UK in terms of gay rights – we’re some way behind some of our European friends I still think we are some way ahead of the US (although it doesn’t make me happy to say so).
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Part of the problem in Britain is the influx of Muslim culture. That has a dramatic effect on it.
The thing about the U.S. is that we have a pluralism of religious beliefs. That tends to balance things out.
But there are things about Europe in general that I like. Yes their social welfare and worker policies are much to my liking. Who wouldn’t like six weeks of paid vacation in the U.S.? Or nationalized medical and surgical.
And Europeans are an odd mix. For example, they’re not all that uptight about the human body. Even to the point of full frontal MALE nudity in some of their movies. Bravo!
Even Italy – with it’s False Papacy, doesn’t have as screwball a notion on nudity as we have. In the U.S. it’s the crowd that says “If God had meant you to be naked you would have been born that way!”
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