Exploring the perceived discrimination of individuals in same-sex couples in Europe: The ‘buffering’ role of marriage

This study seeks to determine whether being legally married or in a recognized civil union – as opposed to living together without any legal recognition – is protectively associated with a reduced perceived discrimination among same-sex individuals. Perceived discrimination reflects individuals' subjective interpretation of their experiences as rooted in prejudice or bias. This subjective dimension matters because the same objective event may be experienced and interpreted differently depending on context, prior experiences, and social identities. For this purpose, we individualize a sample of same-sex couples using data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and focus on the buffer role of marriage against minority stress. Our results show that individuals in legally married same-sex relationships report significantly lower levels of perceived discrimination based on sexuality than their cohabiting peers. This association holds after controlling for a wide range of demographic, household, socio-economic, and contextual variables. Predicted probabilities confirm that, for both genders, being married reduces perceived discrimination based on sexuality. IPW estimates – aiming to correct for possible biases arising from non-random inclusion and response in observational and survey-based research – confirm the existence of a clear cohabitation gap in perceived discrimination between married and cohabitors without legal recognition, and show that this gap becomes even larger once potential selection processes and sample composition issues are taken into account.