This week, the New York Times published an article called “Americans Are Turning Against Gay People,” and if you’re wondering whether the paper has completely lost touch with reality, the answer is yes.
The piece opens with some gushing about a show I’ve never even heard of — and I suspect you haven’t, either — called Heated Rivalry, featuring gay hockey players, suggesting that its success proves “acceptance of queer love continues to grow.” The authors, Tessa Charlesworth and Eli Finkel, lament that this is not the case. “We wish we could share that optimism,” they write, before citing research showing that acceptance of gay people peaked around 2020 and has “sharply reversed” since then.
I’d be willing to bet that most people haven’t heard of Heated Rivalry, but even so, it’s irrelevant. Gay characters have been on television and in movies for decades, often as leads. These days, you’d have a tougher time finding a show or movie that doesn’t feature LGBTQ characters. If you watch game shows, you’ve probably wondered if they have quotas for LGBTQ contestants, and if they’re required to boast about their sexual orientation.
Nevertheless, the article expresses shock that anti-gay bias reversed course after two decades. Before 2020, they note, everything seemed to be moving forward together. Bigger Pride parades. Rainbow-lit landmarks. Federal legalization of same-sex marriage. Americans’ bias against gay people was dropping so fast, faster than any other tracked prejudice, that the researchers even predicted that anti-gay bias would hit zero by 2022. That’s possibly the dumbest prediction anyone could make about human nature and social attitudes. Bias hitting zero? Really? Heck, those who preach tolerance are some of the most biased people I’ve ever met. And these are supposed to be serious academics.
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In any case, by 2020, the trend flipped. Anti-gay bias rose more sharply than prejudice toward other groups. The uptick is extreme among Americans under 25, who ramped up their hostility toward gay people faster than older adults.
The authors claim they don’t yet have clear evidence for what caused this shift. They float two theories. First, social instability from COVID, economic problems, and political conflict starting around 2020 led to more scapegoating of marginalized groups. Second, they say they can rule out the idea that backlash against transgender rights spilled over into anti-gay sentiment, because their research shows no meaningful correlation.
That second claim is laughable. The transgender movement is absolutely the reason for the shift, and anyone paying attention knows it. When the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, conservatives warned it was a slippery slope, and we were right. Trans ideology got shoved down everyone’s throats at warp speed. Children started getting butchered with hormones and surgeries in the name of “gender-affirming care.” Males invaded women’s sports. Preferred pronouns exploded everywhere. Activists tried to redefine basic biology and erase the meaning of sex and gender. Schools began socially transitioning kids behind parents’ backs. Parental rights got trampled. We literally have a Supreme Court Justice who, during her confirmation hearings, couldn’t define what a woman was, because, as she said, she’s “not a biologist.”
But it’s more than that. Gay rights suddenly became a vehicle for depravity. Pride parades became a platform for adults to expose themselves to children. School libraries began stocking sexually explicit material that would have been unthinkable a generation ago. All of it gets justified under the slogan of “tolerance.” If this is what the left means by tolerance, most Americans want no part of it.
Same-sex marriage was sold to Americans on a foundation of libertarianism. What was sold as a simple “live and let live” compromise instead ushered in a relentless campaign of LGBTQ indoctrination that challenges fundamental truths about human biology and steadily erodes parental rights. Making matters worse, opposition to gender ideology got branded as bigotry. Anyone who questioned whether six-year-olds should be choosing new genders or whether biological males belonged in girls’ locker rooms was called a hateful transphobe. Failure to refer to someone by their “preferred pronouns” has been called hate speech.
So much for live and let live.
The Times wants to act as if it’s mystified about why acceptance declined. They want to blame COVID, economic anxiety, and some vague “anti-establishment sentiment.” But the honest answer is staring them in the face. The transgender ideology invaded the gay rights movement before the ink was even dry on the Obergefell decision, and most Americans reject that nonsense while simultaneously linking the two as inherently linked. And they are. Just look at the latest version of the pride flag.
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