Europe among top places for gays to live: Gallup

As the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 states Friday, Europe stands as the most hospitable place for gays to live across the board, according to a Gallup poll released in the same day.

Of the countries where more than three in four residents feel their areas are most accepting of gay and lesbian people, all but Canada, at 84 percent and Uruguay, at 79 percent, are in Europe. With the recent passage of a ballot initiative in Ireland, all of the countries where gay people are perceived as being most accepted have laws that allow same-sex marriage, the poll found.

Seventy-one percent of Americans say their communities are good places for gays and lesbians to live. Across 124 countries, hospitable attitude ranges from as high as 87 percent in Spain and the Netherlands to as low as 1 percent in Senegal, according to the poll.

These rankings do not include more than two dozen countries where the question was not asked, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Malaysia and a host of other nations in the Middle East and Central Asia, Gallup said.

Of the nations where less than 5 percent say their area is a good place for gay people to live, most are in the sub-Saharan Africa region. In most of these countries, homosexuality is outlawed.

In 2014, perceptions of gay acceptance climbed most in Luxembourg -- by 29 percentage points to its current reading of 79 percent -- where residents had recently elected the nation's first openly gay prime minister, Xavier Bettel. In 2015, Bettel became the first European Union leader to wed a same-sex partner.

In Asia, sentiments changed the most in Nepal -- one of the region's most accepting countries toward gays -- and Thailand, each of which saw an increase of 16 percentage points in those who said their areas are a good place for gay and lesbian people to live. Same-sex marriage has not been legalized in either country, but some legislative efforts continue to be made. Endite