SINGAPORE: The proportion of people in Singapore who think gay sex and marriage are wrong has fallen over the past decade, according to an Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) study published on Thursday (Aug 28).
Between 2013 and 2024, those who disapprove of gay sex fell by about 27 percentage points, while those who disapprove of gay marriage dropped by around 23 percentage points.
After the decreases, slightly over half of the respondents view these acts as wrong: 52.9 per cent disapprove of gay sex, while 50.8 per cent disapprove of gay marriage.
Less than half think it is wrong for gay couples to pursue adoption, surrogacy or assisted reproductive technology (ART), after disapproval of such same-sex family formation pathways also dropped.
IPS’ survey gathered responses from 4,000 citizens and permanent residents in 2024. Findings on religiosity, identity-based prejudice and racial and religious divides were published earlier this year.
For this study, researchers tracked moral attitudes on a variety of issues, comparing them across different religious groups and against previous findings in 2013 and 2018.
Views on same-sex issues liberalised the most among the issues in the poll, noted study authors Dr Mathew Mathews, Mr Hanniel Asher Lim, Dr Teo Kay Key and Dr Melvin Tay.
The survey found a strong moral consensus against extramarital sex and gambling, with 75.1 per cent and 74 per cent disapproving respectively.
A majority of people in Singapore – 58 per cent – also disapproved of pregnancy out of wedlock, but attitudes have liberalised substantially, with disapproval falling by about 15 percentage points.
