"As Long as They Stay Away" : Exploring Lebanese Attitudes Towards Sexualities and Gender Identities

N. Nasr, T. Zeidan

This survey constitutes a main deliverable of a project entitled 'Lebanese Attitudes towards Private Liberties'. It is designed to fill a serious information gap in advocacy work relating to sexual and gender rights in Lebanon by providing critical and previously unavailable information by measuring and qualifying attitudes towards sexual and gender rights in Lebanon. With the groundwork knowledge acquired from our activist backgrounds, we had embarked on this project not knowing to what extent Lebanese public attitudes would reflect tolerance and acceptance towards this delicate topic, especially when looking at the national context, not just Beirut. While some results were expected, this project did yield promising and unexpected results on which future advocacy work could be based. Views on sexuality highlighted the importance of the right to sex for enjoyment, free from coercion, judgment and criminalization. While the Lebanese public primarily saw homosexual