First published May 28, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.
There is no doubt that Americans are becoming more tolerant of, accepting of and/or comfortable with gays and lesbians. Virtually every public opinion survey shows small increases in support for gay equality over previous surveys.
The reasons seem not far to seek: the increasing visibility of gays in the mass media, popular culture and news stories; the increasing number of gay people coming out to family and friends; the presence of more open gays in the workplace, church, and neighborhood. More people are meeting gays personally, unlearning earlier impressions that gays are strange or threatening.
But is there a way to get a handle on how fast this change in attitudes toward gays is happening? Perhaps so.
The Gallup News Service recently released results of the gay-related questions in Gallup's 2003 Values and Beliefs survey and included some interesting comparative data from previous years.
The survey found that in 2003, 60 percent of voting age Americans think homosexuality should be legal. Back in 1977, when the question was first asked, the survey found that only 43 percent thought homosexuality should be legal. This is a 17 point change in 26 years.
The next question it asked was whether homosexuals should have "equal rights in terms of job opportunities." In 1977, 56 percent said they thought so, but now in 2003, 88 percent say they think so, a 32 point change over 26 years.
Clearly the rate of attitude shifts on gay issues depends on which issue. Gallup analysts suggest that change on the legality of gay sex is slower than that of employment discrimination because the legality issue taps into people's sense of public morality while the employment issue draws on people's attitudes about discrimination and fair play.
So perhaps the most significant question in the survey was the one that asked simply if homosexuality "should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle." More than the others, this question gets close to the root of public attitudes about our lives and loves and people's respect for our sense of who we are as people.
In 1982, when this question was first asked, barely 34 said yes, homosexuality is a legitimate lifestyle. Now, in 2003, 54 percent - more than half - say it should be considered legitimate. This is a 20 point rise in 21 years, about a percentage point each year.
That is what I think the average rate of gay progress has tended to be. You could even get roughly the same result if you averaged the 17 point change on the legality issue and the 32 point change on employment discrimination to get an average change of 24 or 25 points over 26 years.
To provide a double check, similar longitudinal data are available from the annual survey of 250,000 college freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA. In 1977, the survey found that 47 percent of freshmen thought it was important to have "laws against homosexual relationships." By 2002, only 25 percent agreed, a 22 point decline over 26 years, or not quite 1 point a year.
And on a question about civil marriage for gays, when the question was first asked in 1997, only 51 percent of the freshmen approved, but by 2002, 59 percent approved of it, an eight point increase in only five years.
Does all this mean that Americans as individuals are changing their minds about gay people and gay issues. No doubt some do: parents who discover they have a gay child, people who find a valued co-worker is gay, people who move into friendship circles where there are open gays.
But a larger part of the change probably stems from the plain fact that older people who grew up in more intolerant times and invariably hold the most negative attitudes about gays die and are replaced in the population by younger people who lack anti-gay attitudes because for them a visible gay presence in their lives and among their friends is an everyday matter.
Keep in mind, for instance, that while 60 percent of the adult population thinks homosexuality should not be illegal, 75 percent of the college freshmen agree. If the youngest age group is 15 points more gay supportive than the average, then the oldest age cohort is at least 15 points more anti-gay than the average, a 30 point divergence.
To be sure, college freshmen are more liberal on gay issues than non-college 18 years olds, but follow up surveys have shown that students become even more gay accepting throughout their college years and the age difference shows up in other surveys too, so the general point holds.
As young people grow older, the gay attitudes of each age group comes to resemble those of the one below it from a decade earlier, and because of the increased visibility of gays, people in the youngest age group keep becoming more gay accepting than the people previously in that age group.
The encouraging news here is that while the rate of change is no doubt variable in the short term, it seems fairly constant in the long term, and there seems little the religious right can do to slow or stop it.