It’s hard not to feel like America is getting gayer: It isn’t just the plethora of LGBT characters on TV, or the apparent boom in straight girls living for RuPaul’s Drag Race. There’s a persistent feeling that the citizenry as a whole are more accepting of the homos among them. Even here in the heart of the South—where I’ve been living for the past six months—folks seem mostly curious when I tell them I write about gay culture. (They almost never chase me down the street with torches and pitchforks.)
According to a study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, this newfound atmosphere of toleration toward all things homo isn’t simply in our imaginations, it’s a scientific fact. In their snappily titled paper, “Changes in American Adults’ Reported Same-Sex Sexual Experiences and Attitudes, 1973–2014,” researchers Jean M. Twenge, Ryne A. Sherman, and Brooke E. Wells dug into data from the General Social Survey (GSS), a long-running and wide-ranging, semiannual inquiry into Americans’ evolving cultural outlook.
In 1973, when the GSS began collecting data on Americans’ attitudes regarding “same-sex sexual behavior,” only 11% of respondents said it was “not wrong at all” for two consenting adults to do whatever the heck they want to do in the privacy of their own home (or bathhouse? leather bar? secluded park?). Acceptance for homosexuals actually dipped in the ’80s before climbing up to 13% in 1990. Two points in two decades, not great, but with the specter of AIDS hanging over those decades we’re probably lucky the needle moved that much.
Between 1990 and 2014, acceptance for gays and lesbians exploded—jumping to 49%, a quadruple increase in less than 25 years. It should be noted that the kumbayas were not evenly distributed—the West showed the most acceptance toward homosexual behavior and the South the least, at 22%.
Americans aren’t just more accepting of homosexual behavior, though, they are having more homosexual experiences—a lot more. Between the early 1990s and early 2010s, the number of adults who had at least one sexual partner of the same sex doubled, from 3.6 to 8.7% for women and from 4.5 to 8.2% for men. A huge bump in bisexual behavior made up the lion’s share of this increase, jumping from 3.1 to 7.7% nationwide. (There was very little change for those getting down exclusively with members of their own sex.)
Additionally, more growth in homosexual experiences was seen in women than men, and was almost non-existent among African-Americans.
Interestingly, while the South saw the smallest growth in acceptance for homosexuality, it was home to the second highest increase in same-sex behavior (from 5 to 8.2% for men, and from 3.4 to 8% for women) after the Midwest (from 3 to 13.1% for men, and from 2.5 to 7.6% for women). That’s a massive shift, especially when compared to the East and West, which saw changes of only a few points.
So what’s behind this explosion of homosexual activity? Twinge and company have a few theories.
The first and perhaps most obvious explanation is that the unprecedented visibility of non-heterosexuals in the media and everyday life has led Americans to see homosexuality as more socially acceptable. With long-held stigmas rapidly eroding, people may be more willing to act on feelings they may have otherwise denied. But the researchers controlled for social acceptance (using some complicated mathematics) and found that this only partially accounted for the rise.
Technology is almost certainly a factor: From ’90s chatrooms to the cornucopia of sexual networking apps today, same-sex exploration has become as easy as ordering a pizza. That ease of access can explain at least some of the increased prevalence of homosexual encounters.
The rise of “hook-up culture” among teens and young adults may be another element, providing opportunities and (researchers speculate) pressure to engage in same-sex contact, particularly for women.
But my favorite theory—which is backed up by a bunch of anecdotal history—is that maybe America has always been pretty queer, and it’s just now coming out of the closet.
