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Category: Hypothesis

Description: Despite legal changes toward greater equality, lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) people still face structural inequalities and discrimination, which can lead to detrimental health outcomes. At the end of 2020, the Swiss parliament took a step forward toward greater equality by voting in favor of marriage equality and artificial insemination. Yet, this decision was not unanimous, and marriage equality and artificial insemination has been subject of a national referendum resulting in campaigns for and against equality and reproductive rights. The first goal of this research is to investigate how the no-campaign around marriage equality and artificial insemination has affected those targeted by the no-campaign (LGBTIQ+ people) compared to those who are not targeted (cis-heterosexual people ) and if the yes-campaign may have buffered against these effects by using data collected before and during the campaign (i.e., directly before the voting). The second goal is to make further use of this quasi-experiment by using data collected directly before and after the voting to assess how the novel status of marriage equality and artificial insemination affected LGBTIQ+ people compared to cis-heterosexual people. To address these goals, we rely on a large-scale longitudinal study in Switzerland, which consists of survey (Study 1) and biological data (Study 2) that were collected before (Time 1), during (Time 2), and after (Time 3) the national referendum on marriage equality.