We compare attitudes in 33 European democracies, plus the U.S. and Canada, and we have two main findings. The first is that that class does matter to attitudes toward homosexuality. Class matters, in that working-class people not only have lower levels of tolerance than professionals and managing classes, but they have very similar attitudes to other working-class people in other countries, regardless of GDP. Or, another way to say that is that the postmaterialist state of rich countries does not necessarily trickle down to working-class people, and neither do the tolerant attitudes that national wealth supposedly ushers in.

The second finding is that national economic inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is a significant predictor of overall levels of attitudes toward homosexuality. In fact, the effect washes out the significance of GDP as a predictor of attitudes in our models. In other words, rich countries that have high inequality are less tolerant than less wealthy countries with lower inequality.

How does inequality disrupt the development of tolerant attitudes toward homosexuality, something seemingly so unrelated to the economy? One idea is that greater equality breeds greater general trust in fellow human beings. Under conditions of high inequality, this general trust dissolves and is replaced by a more specific trust in people we know and people who are “like” us. Specific trust is more of an “us vs. them” mentality, allowing for the scapegoating of marginalized groups, such as lesbian and gay people.