A total of 79.4% of Ukrainian citizens favor the idea of legalizing same-sex marriage and only 4.6% of Ukrainians favor this idea, a study conducted by the company GfK Ukraine shows.

At the same time, 16% of the Ukrainians surveyed do not favor such unions, but find so-called common-law marriage between people of the same sex to be acceptable.

More than half of the respondents who oppose the legalization of same-sex unions (59%) find such relations to be immoral and perverted. Almost one-fourth of the respondents oppose such marriage because, if it is legalized, same-sex couples will want to adopt children, and the respondents are against it.

Almost 46% of the respondents do not want same-sex couples to set a bad example to children.

Forty percent of the respondents believe the legalization of same-sex unions contradicts religious or church principles.

Fifty-seven percent of Ukrainians would not let men who practice sex with men into the country and 55.5% would bar lesbians from the country.

The study showed that the people who have the most tolerance for same-sex marriage are respondents younger than 29 who live in Kyiv and other large cities and the least tolerant people are respondents older than sixty who live in villages and Western Ukraine.

Respondents with university degrees tend to back people's right to live in common-law marriage with people of the same sex.

The study was conducted in all regions of the country on April 3-23, 2013. It surveys a total of 1,000 respondents older than 16. The study has a margin of error of under 3.1%.