There are two main reasons why this question appears hard to answer: 1) Opinions about the permissibility of same-sex relationships have been in flux in the industrialized world over the last several decades. This comic from XKCD is about public opinion in America, rather than Northern Ireland, but most OECD countries have roughly similar patterns (some with steeper slopes, some with shallower, some shifted earlier or later). The mouse-over text caption for the image says: "People often say that same-sex marriage now [2015] is like interracial marriage in the 60s. But in terms of public opinion, same-sex marriage now is like interracial marriage in the 90s, when it had already been legal nationwide for 30 years." The period from the 1970's until 2010's, in many places, we go from widespread disapproval for almost any LGBTQ rights question to widespread approval in OECD countries (and some others). Within this period, we see a lot of unevenness. In the American context, Alabama and Massachusetts look quite different. In the North Ireland today (but I haven't found clear data from the 1990s), Protestants and Catholics are notably different, those who finished university and those who didn't finish high school are quite different, the young and old old are quite different, even men and women are quite different. This makes it hard to pinpoint exact things that would be relevant to your question.

2. I am not an expert on opinion polling in Northern Ireland. In fact, when I first started this question I thought it would be easy because I figured I would just find nationwide UK polling and say "close enough". There's even a great article called "Public Opinion toward Homosexuality and Gay Rights in Great Britain" in the Public Opinion Quarterly (probably the top stand-alone public opinion research journal) that really runs down all the numbers... but notice how it say it's for Great Britain and not the UK. It seems as though, for sundry reasons, the norms of polling in the UK are to not poll the UK, and to poll Great Britain instead, omitting Northern Ireland. Which meant I had to specifically track down survey data from Northern Ireland; just using UK data was insufficient.

The most useful piece of polling seems to be the European Values Study [EVS] (part of the World Values Survey). We have waves in 1981/2, 1990, 1999, and 2008/9/10.

Looking at the first three waves, we can see consistently Northern Ireland, Ireland, Portugal, and Malta are consistently among the most conservative countries in Western Europe towards homosexuality, with clear majorities saying homosexuality is "never justified" in 1981 and 1990. Eastern European countries that were part of the Warsaw Pact are generally more conservative, but not entirely (in 1999, for instance, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic all had a lower proportion of people saying that homosexuality was "never justified", though I believe they all had higher numbers in 1990, just showing how complicated this can be depending on what exact timeframe we're discussing here). It's worth noting, though, that Northern Ireland and Ireland were more tolerant of homosexuality than many other Western Europe countries by the subsequent wave, becoming more accepting than countries like Italy and Austria by the 2008-2010 round of surveys. Basically, whereas most of Western Europe had their big change between 90 and 99, Ireland and Northern Ireland had their big change slightly later, between 99 and 08. During this 99 to 08 period some countries had essentially no further change during, allowing Ireland and Northern Ireland to "catch up" and not appear so notably conservative.

It should be noted that in the early waves of the survey, particularly those from the mid-90s and earlier, Northern Ireland and Ireland express perhaps the most sexually conservative opinions in Western Europe in general, and not just about homosexuality. Using a different international data comparative survey (the International Social Survey Programme [ISSP] conducted in 1994), among 24 somewhat random countries, Northern Ireland and Ireland had the second highest rates of always seeing sex before marriage as wrong (31% and 35%), being only below the Philippines (the only developing country included in the survey). In Western Europe, the next highest was Spain at 20% (outside of Western Europe, the US was also 29%). You see similar things for Ireland and Northern Ireland with sex before 16 being "always wrong", where they have the absolute highest among these 24 countries. With extramarital sex always being wrong, the two are again only behind the Philippines (and tied with the USA). On the specific of same-sex relationships, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland have company from the Philippines and some countries in Eastern Europe, but again, in 1994 Ireland and Northern Ireland were outliers among OECD countries.

#Answers to "Is homosexual sex wrong?" (1994)

Countries	Always	Almost Always	Only Sometimes	Not wrong at all
Australia	55	8	10	27
Austria	52	18	15	15
Bulgaria	81	5	4	10
Canada	39	5	10	46
Czech Republic	29	12	21	39
Germany (East)	51	9	10	30
Germany (West)	42	10	14	33
Great Britain	58	6	10	26
Hungary	83	8	5	4
Ireland	71	6	6	17
Israel	57	8	7	27
Italy	67	7	7	19
Japan	65	22	11	2
Netherland	19	4	12	65
New Zealand	56	5	8	31
Northern Ireland	80	4	6	10
Norway	47	6	11	37
Philippines	84	9	3	3
Poland	77	6	4	14
Russia	57	17	7	19
Slovenia	70	13	9	8
Spain	45	7	6	42
Sweden	56	6	6	32
USA	70	4	7	19
Overall	59	9	9	24

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[continued below, complicating this picture]

Unfortunately, no. Homophobia and discrimination was commonplace and endemic across northern Ireland, derry/Londonderry being amongst one of the most deprived and least economically or socially developed wards within ni. it was sadly probably particularly pronounced there.

Martin McGuiness did concede he was uncharitable to LGBT people at different points in his formative years when addressing the issue in later years. Add onto these realities the fracturing effects wrought by issues of sectarianism and the troubles .. the influence religious organizations wielded in society..

Also, consensual relations between same sex adult people remained a criminal offence until the mid 90s in the republic . It was a very conservative backdrop.

The depiction is how a family should react but.. it is largely revisionism and artistic license considering the time period and very sadly not reflective necessarily of reality as it was.