My UWI colleague Mahalia Jackman has done super interesting research on attitudes towards homosexuality. Using survey data for Barbados, she finds that Bajans have an "ambivalent" attitude towards homosexuality: they hold both positive and negative views at the same time!

The majority of Bajans surveyed wanted to maintain + enforce anti-gay laws. But when asked whether they two men or two women should be penalized for having sex in private, the majority of Bajans said "No!" In fact, a majority of Bajans held conflicting views!

Jackman: "Taken together, law support in Barbados appears symbolic: persons view intimacy between persons of the same sex as wrong and believe that laws should be in line with this perspective, but they do not actually want persons to be penalized for consensual acts in private."

As you'd expect, she finds that there's a tug-of-war between people's religious background and their interpersonal contact with gay/lesbian friends. Putting these two things together makes people more ambivalent. The truth is Barbados is a complex society.

If you want to read more, the paper is entitled "Religion, Contact, and Ambivalent Attitudes Toward the Rights of Gays and Lesbians in Barbados", and was published last year (2019). Feel free to DM if you can't access the paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2019.1601434