Attitudes Toward LGB and TGD Rights in Latin America

Research on attitudes toward transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) individuals lags behind research on opinion on the lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) population, leaving open questions about public opinion on these two LGBTQ+ subgroups, in general and in particular in the Global South. While a sizeable gap exists in US public opinion toward TGD and LGB rights, we do not know whether that finding is generalizable to other contexts. With a focus on Latin America, we draw on a range of scholarship to identify factors that could result in a similar divergence of attitudes toward these subgroups or, instead, relative convergence. Our analyses focus primarily on novel survey data from representative surveys across thirteen Latin American countries. Our results demonstrate a fair amount of convergence in mean levels, item nonresponse rates, and predictors of views on LGB versus TGD rights. We present some notable differences across countries and issues, with results for the former (countries) varying by socio-political context and the latter (issues) varying across political and nonpolitical domains. We identify these patterns as constituting a future agenda for researchers of opinion on LGBTQ+ topics. We conclude that, in the contemporary period, the Latin American public holds fairly similar mental schemas toward LGB and TGD groups.