Despite Brazil’s Supreme Court ruling unanimously to recognize same-sex civil unions as a "family entity" most Brazilians are against the formalization of a union between same-sex couples, a new survey has found.

IBOPE Inteligencia of Brazil released a survey last week that revealed 55 percent of Brazilians were against same-sex unions, which was ruled on in Brazil in May and gave homosexual couples the same rights as married couples.

The ruling made the largely Roman Catholic country one of a few countries in South America to allow a form of legal union for homosexual couples.

The IBOPE survey found that men were more likely to reject the Supreme Court's legalization of gay unions. 63 percent of men said they were against the decision, whereas among women the figure was only 48 percent.

The court ruling was greatly disapproved among people aged 50 and over (73 percent), whereas among young people aged 16 to 24 years only 40 percent disapproved the decision.

The survey also revealed people's views according to their level of education; forty percent of people educated to a Higher education level said they opposed the ruling.

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By regions, southeastern Brazil, where the two major cities Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are located, presented the least resistance to the gay union decision (51 percent).

São Paulo is the city where one of the world's largest gay pride parades takes place every year. The proportion of disapproval is higher in the Northeast / North / Midwest regions (60 percent) and 54 percent in the South part of the country.

Among religious people in Brazil, 77 percent of Protestants Evangelical Christians were against gay unions, compared with 50 percent of Catholics. Among atheists, 51 percent said they were against.

Despites the results, IBOPE Intelligence executive director of marketing and new business, Laure Castelnau, said that the majority of Brazilians accept homosexuals as their friends in daily life and in the workplace.

"The data presented in the survey shows that, in general, Brazilians feel no prohibitions in dealing with homosexuals in their daily lives, such as professionals or friends who reveal themselves as homosexuals,” said Castelnau.

The vast majority (73 percent) said that they would not reject a friend who revealed themselves to be homosexual, while 24 percent said they would back-off a little.

55 percent of Brazilians said in the survey that they were opposed to adoption by a gay couples.

Men were more likely to oppose adoption by homosexuals (62 percent) and 70 percent of people over 50 years of age rejected the idea.

67 percent of people with primary school until fourth grade education were also against it.

In terms of region, it was found that the southeast part of the country was the one that presented the least resistance to adoption of children by homosexuals (52 percent).

IBOPE conducted 2,002 household interviews in 142 municipalities of the country between 14 and 18 June. The margin of sampling error is two percentage points.