Adoção de crianças por homossexuais: crenças e formas de preconceito.

Abstract

This research tried to understand what the students of Goiás University think about the children's adoption by homosexuals. This is anchored by some nets of social representations such as the homosexuality, what the best form of educating our children and what it is a really family. We believe that the possible rejection of the children's adoption by homosexuals is linked to the levels of existent homosexual aversion in the Brazilian society. In the first study (n=288) was verified that students had different attitudes toward the children's adoption by homosexuals depending on how they represented the homosexuality and their social belongings. In the second study (n=134) was verified that religious values are preponderant to understand the students´ position in relation to the homosexual marriage. Moreover, the majority evangelical doesn't agree with the homosexual marriage because they believe it is against the principle formulated by God. In the third study (n=297) was verified that the spiritualist university students, who agree with the homosexual marriage, are favorable to the children's adoption by homosexuals. However, most of the students that consider the adoption by homosexual couples wrong are the psychology students and also those that explain the homosexuality as immoral behavior or behavior linked to hereditary problems. The results would allow to classify the students in three groups of individuals: flagrant prejudiced, subtle prejudiced and no prejudiced. The most representative group is flagrant prejudiced, corroborating to the fact that there is a high index of homosexual aversion in Brazil (Mott, 2003). Those results point to the need to discuss the tolerance against social minorities in the popular education and they also intend to supply scientific data for the debate about the adoption by homosexual couples.