The acceptance of gay people in the United States has peaked around 2020 and has sharply reversed since then.
Americans’ bias against gay people did indeed decline faster than any other bias ever tracked in social surveys. Until 2020.
Research led by Professor Charlesworth published in 2022 detailed a decline. Drawing on 7.1 million responses from Americans collected from 2007 to 2020, the researchers tracked both explicit bias and implicit bias. Forecasting models suggested that, at that pace, anti-gay bias could hit zero as early as 2022.
But at that time, the Charlesworth research team was also analyzing new data showing that anti-gay bias had begun to rise. The analysis of an additional 2.5 million responses from Americans collected from the beginning of 2021 through 2024 revealed that progress had not only stalled; it had reversed. In just four years, anti-gay bias rose by around 10 percent.
Increases also appeared in bias toward Black, darker-skinned, older, disabled and overweight people, but not as starkly. Just as bias against gay people fell especially steeply before 2020, it has surged particularly sharply since.
These trends were distinctly robust among the youngest American adults — those under 25. This group increased its animus against marginalized groups in general and gay people in particular at a faster rate than older Americans did. And although anti-gay bias has risen faster among conservatives, it has also risen among liberals.
What explains this decline in tolerance? Evidence suggests that we can rule out two common hypotheses. The first is that the anti-gay backlash is a side effect, or spillover, of the backlash against the movement for transgender rights. If that were so, you would expect increases in anti-trans bias to be meaningfully correlated with subsequent increases in anti-gay bias — which the research does not show.
The second hypothesis is that the anti-gay backlash reflects the rise in panic about sexual grooming, the notion that gay adults are recruiting or influencing children to become gay. But the research shows no evidence of spikes in grooming discourse (measured through Google searches) that are meaningfully correlated with subsequent spikes in anti-gay bias.
The first idea is social instability. Starting around 2020, the United States experienced a sustained disruption consisting of the Covid pandemic, economic strain and intensifying political conflict — each of which has been linked to heightened intergroup hostility and scapegoating. This would explain the overall rise in bias against marginalized groups.
The second factor, which would explain the rise specifically in anti-gay bias, is anti-establishment sentiment. The sustained social disruption since 2020 has fueled resentment and a loss of confidence in institutions perceived to have failed — governments, corporations, the broader establishment.
By 2020, support for gay and lesbian equality had become an establishment position. Corporate America, for example, demonstrated a concrete commitment to gay rights, with companies donating hundreds of thousands of dollars for Pride celebrations and other efforts at gay and lesbian inclusion.
Gay and lesbian people, newly woven into the fabric of mainstream society, may have been collateral damage in a broader revolt against a system that felt broken, especially among younger generations grappling most intensely with uncertainty about their future.
The recent rise of anti-gay bias suggests that public attitudes and media representation are no longer moving in lock step. (An example is the exuberance surrounding “Heated Rivalry).
By all means, celebrate our media success but stay vigilant against homophobia.
Source: NY Times
