Although political ideology is widely understood to predict tolerance toward homosexuality, existing research often assumes this association operates uniformly across social groups. This assumption may not be tenable in multicultural contexts like Canada, in which high levels of formal LGBTQ equality coexist with persistent and uneven patterns of sexual discrimination. Drawing on the social dominance and intersectionality perspective, this study examines the link between political ideology and attitudes toward homosexuality in the context of social location among Canadians. The author analyzed the seventh round of the World Values Survey ( N = 4,018) for this study. It was found that conservative ideology is not uniformly linked with lower tolerance toward homosexuality; its influence varies by gender, income, and immigrant status, which produces non-linear and counterintuitive patterns. Some of these counterintuitive patterns are shown among men and higher income respondents. The findings provide nuance to mainstream findings that see political ideology as a significant influence on attitudes toward homosexuality. By integrating the intersectionality and social dominance perspectives, this study shows that attitude toward homosexuality can function as a hierarchy-maintaining position, depending on one’s social location, especially within a progressive country like Canada.
Chow et al. (2026) studied this question.