Taiwan Bachelor of Social Work Student Support for Marriage Equality Legalization

Social workers and social work students benefit from respecting cultural diversity and individual differences. Social work students’ degree of support for marriage equality could affect their attitudes toward same-sex couples after graduation and their assessment of same-sex couples’ needs, which could affect the rights of same-sex couples and their family members. This study surveys Bachelor of Social Work students in Taiwan about their support for marriage equality. In doing so it explores the factors affecting that support. Based on regression analysis, no evidence that traditional family values influence support for marriage equality was found. Evidence regarding the influence of education about sexuality is weak. However, there is strong evidence that sexual orientation, having close gay or lesbian schoolmates, exposure to parents’ openness, religion, religiosity, attribution of the cause of sexual orientation, and fear of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome all significantly affect student support for marriage equality legalization. Teaching and training should expose social work students to information on sexual identity development and sexually transmitted disease transmission, should increase the frequency of interactions between students and gay or lesbian schoolmates, and should provide opportunities for students to analyze distinctions between religious and legal perspectives of marriage.