[UPDATE: I'm afraid I misentered the data in the table when I first posted this; please see the revised information. The analysis remains correct — but the data now matches it.]
AEI has a useful compilation of poll data on attitudes about homosexuality and related topics. Here's one particular interesting item, from p. 3, reporting on what percentage of respondents to a National Opinion Research Center survey said that homosexual sexual relations are "always wrong" (as opposed to almost always wrong, only sometimes wrong, or not wrong at all):
| Age | 1973 | 2002 |
| Total | 73 | 55 |
| 18-29 | 56 | 48 |
| 30-44 | 74 | 48 |
| 45-59 | 75 | 55 |
| 60 and over | 89 | 68 |
There are three obviously striking items here: First, 55% of Americans still think homosexual sexual relations are always wrong. Second, public attitudes have shifted considerably (by 18%) on this in the last thirty years. Third, younger people have always been less likely than older people to say that homosexual sexual relations are always wrong.
But the fourth thing may be less obvious, and yet I think just as important: If you look at the 18-29 age range in 1973 and the 45-59 range in 2002, which represent pretty much the same people (18-29-year-olds in 1973 would be 47-58 in 2002), the percentages are statistically identical, 56% and 55%. If you look at 30-59-year-olds in 1973 and 60-and-over in 2002, which should also be pretty much the same people (since only a small fraction of the 60-plus in 1973 survive in 2002), the change is from 74-75% to 68%, a significant change but a relatively small one.
So the primary reason for the 18% change does not seem to be that adults are hearing more about gay rights claims, seeing more out-of-the-closet gays at work or in social circles, and thus changing their views. There seems to be a modest such effect among those who were over 30 in 1973, but only a modest one.
Rather, the main change is in the views of the new generations (the ones who are now 18-44). And this change started with those who came of age in the 1960s and early 1970s (note that the "always wrong" figure has declined only from 56% to 48% from 1973 to 2002), and therefore seems likely to have been caused by the Sexual Revolution, which predated 1973, more than by the gay rights movement.
UPDATE: Many thanks to reader Marco Parillo, who gave the quote that this reminded me of, but the details and the author of which I couldn't remember: It's known as Planck's Principle (after it's author, physicist Max Planck), and it is that
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.Naturally, the analogy is not intended to be perfect, and those who prefer to see tolerance of homosexuality as being more akin to new error than to new truth may feel free to replace "truth" with "error." The important point here isn't about truth as such, but rather about how public opinion changes.
Look at these Newsweek poll results:
1992-- 20% work with someone gay or lesbian
2000-- 32%
1992-- 9% have a gay or lesbian family member
2000-- 23%
1985-- 22% have a gay / lesbian friend or acquaintance
2000-- 56%
I know attitudes about homosexuality are not science, but the parallel struck me as obvious.
Extramarital sex always wrong
Generation Gap 1973-1997
SOURCE: “Changes in the Generation Gap, 1972-1998” by Tom W. Smith, National Opinion Research Center,
October 2000
Your column labelled 2002 is actually the 1974 table.
The correct 2002 column should be:
48
48
55
68
In the first place, I don't think there's any question that the sexual revolution movement was responsible for a huge shift in attitudes about homosexuality. If you read some of the other polls in your link, it shows that in 1977, half the adults polled didn't think homosexual relationships should be illegal, which is far more meaningful than whether or not they think it's "wrong".
But you seem to be saying there hasn't been a big shift since that point, and most of the other polls in that link contradict that. Look at some of the other polls.
Gay relationships "not acceptable": 59% in 1978 to 38% in 2004.
Important to have laws prohibiting gay relationships: 47% in 1976 to 25% in 2002.
"Gays should have equal job opportunities": support went from 56% in 1977 to 87% in 2005.
"Gays should be able to join the armed forces": support went from 51 to 76% in the same time frame.
All the other employment possibilities went up similar amounts (with teaching doubling in support but still the lowest).
So by the seventies, around half the population already didn't object much, and that number has steadily declined since then.
I do think that the shift is more likely due to movies and television than any gay rights efforts. The cute, sympathetic gay neighbor in the romantic comedy is far more appealing than the dykes on bikes at the parades.
So ask folks if it's "wrong", with no out, and they don't seem to have changed much. Get specific, or give them the "not a moral issue" option, and the change shows up.
"Cohort replacement" is the technical term for the phenomenom AEI is describing and it's generally pretty powerful. The consensus is that the late teens are a particularly formative period for people's attitudes. You can find a lot of articles on the subject in the journal Public Opinion Quarterly.
The phenomenon you identify is called "Cohort replacement." It is standard to try to separate a cohort effect (one age cohort dying and a new one replacing it) from a period effect (people changing their views from one period to the next).
As I recall, the new release of 2004 GSS data still shows that most people think gay sex is always wrong.
Jim Lindgren
i'm most likely unusual in this respect, but it seems possible that young people are less tolerant of adultery because they've assimilated a ‘just be honest about it and get a divorce!’ or ‘if you wanted to screw around, then why did you get married?’ sort of attitude.
of course, there must be a backlash effect in play too, but by itself the data you provide doesn't do much to establish its extent.
Why does the cause have to be either the sexual revolution OR the gay rights movement, and not other cultural and social phenomena that may only be loosely linked to either of those two things, including those cited by previous commenters: more people out of the closet, and thus more personal acquaintance among hetrosexuals with people they know to be homosexual; more discussion and sympathetic portrayals of gays in media and popular culture, etc.
That definition obviously encompasses adultery, but it isn't just limited to it. I
I'm not sure why this would be so. "Permissive sexual climate" means that generally speaking that 1) sex is ok -- something to be enjoyed, not condemned, and 2) no one really has standing to complain about anyone else's actions in relation to #1. Marital vows negate the second premise (and not, witticisms aside, the first, one hopes), but only for the people who are a part of the marriage.
To put it another way: I'm quite confident than everyone I have known who was married in the last 5 years had sex "outside of" marriage with their intendeds. Does that mean that after they were married they would countenance their husbands and wives to continue to have sex "outside of" marriage? Not by a long shot.
But I think the biggest question is why the new cohorts of the young have become much less anti-gay, which I suspect is due to TV and other culture and more openness among gays, etc.
So it appears that Jim's numbers actually are about adultery.
Here's the exact wording of exmarsex:
What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner--is it always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all?
This is striking only to those who are unaware that some 80% of the population are members of religious groups that hold that view (Conservative Protestant, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Catholic, Othodox Jewish, Islamic).
There seem to be two powerful counterarguments thus far. First, Cal Lanier's clarification that: views on *morality* were changed more by the sexual revolution, but views on *acceptance* were changed more by the gay rights movement. Second, the more direct problem (raised by several commenters) of: Why is the younger cohort less likely to morally oppose homosexuality even as they get more traditional on some other sexual questions.
It seems that the synthesis of all this data is:
Coming out and the gay rights movement seems to increase acceptance of homosexuals among those who disapprove of it morally, and to decrease the number of youths that consider it immoral, *but* is completely useless in terms of changing the underlying moral views of grownups.
Does anyone disagree with this synthesis?
It's a fascinating book if you can find it.
Jerry
As for why the attitudes have shifted, aside from the truism that that's what new generations are for (there's an evolutionary advantage for children to deviate from parental patterns), I expect the origin is in the complex of poorly-understood environmental factors that mold personality during childhood.
Indeed, Mr. Volokh's first conclusion -- that there has been little change in people already adults when these two "movements" came along -- supports this interpretation, by suggesting that political movements have in the end only a modest affect on personal attitudes formed in childhood.
The 45-59 y.o. set would have lived through the beginning of the gay rights movement in the 60s and 70s (to the extent that they may have been paying attention to it at all) when it was its most radical and, arguably, most unappealling.
People find gay marriage a radical proposal now, but in the 1970s gay activists routinely scorned the institution of marriage and mocked 'mainstream' values rather aggressively. Today's gays generally make much more palatable and less threatening claims, wouldn't you say, by arguing to be included and treated fairly?
I think coming out has a lot to do with it and meeting different kinds of openly gay people. I don't think my dad (who's in the 45-59 cohort) would be likely to recognize or even wonder if someone is gay if they didn't come out and say so explicitly. But I think I probably would.
And, as hinted above, it's the basic Dan Savage advice column: do what you want, but be honest about it with the people involved.
Read the preceding comments. Fornication and adultery are clearly distinguished in the survey questions. The trends are not caused by survey respondents conflating the two issues.
http://webapp.icpsr.umich.edu/GSS/
Click search and enter words (eg, "sexual") or variable names (eg, HOMOSEX).
Some of the questions people might want are:
XMARSEX
PREMARSX
HOMOSEX
TEENSEX
Jim Lindgren
From a logical viewpoint, the first sentence is a fact. However, I don't believe the second is a warranted conclusion, unless you have data that shows that was tested.
In fact, people answer questions sequentially; the first appearance of a word can often be interpreted with a broader meaning than intended, until the survey-taker reads further down...and, by then, they may've forgotten their (likely unconscious) conflation.
It's just an artifact of surveys and tests. Did the questionnaire, for example, define all the terms before the first question, or were the distinctions discovered by participants as they proceeded through the form?
I think, but am not sure, that the GSS is a CATI (Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview) poll.
This means that order can be pretty easily accounted for across the sample by varying the order of the questions.
Max Planck was trained in classical, not to say Victorian, physics, and indeed his entire youth functioned to embed in his personality a singular conservatism and respect for orthodoxy. (He was later to reap personal tragedy from this, as he struggled during the war to reconcile his natural loyalty to his country with his disgust for the National Socialists. His son Erwin was suspected of involvement in the 1944 plot to assasinate Hitler and executed in 1945 by the Gestapo.)
Despite his youth and training, Planck not only recognized but himself proposed the earliest pieces of quantum mechanics, which radically overthrew existing physical theory. He did so with considerable personal reluctance, as some of his comments demonstrate, viz.:
I tried immediately to weld the elementary quantum of action somehow in the framework of classical theory. But in the face of all such attempts this constant showed itself to be obdurate ... My futile attempts to put the elementary quantum of action into the classical theory continued for a number of years and they cost me a great deal of effort...
...the whole procedure was an act of despair because a theoretical interpretation had to be found at any price, no matter how high that might be.
(Emphasis mine.) The price for Planck was indeed high. Arguably he went into thermodynamics research precisely because his love of orthodoxy and order resonated with the implacable Second Law as it was then known. In order to accept where experiment and his own remorseless logic led him, Max Planck at age 42 needed to set aside his own personal preferences, and much of the key scientific training (not to mention unconcious prejudice) he'd received in his youth, and reject the classical interpretation of the Second Law.
Planck contributed only the modest beginnings of quantum theory, and indeed it was left to a younger generation to build the complete edifice on his foundation. But it is certainly the case that Planck himself was an excellent counter-example to the philosophy of men expressed by this quote, an illustration of the fact that many men with intellectual integrity do exist, men who will discard error when the facts demand it, whatever the personal cost and however personally fond they may have been of the error.
Coming out and the gay rights movement seems to increase acceptance of homosexuals among those who disapprove of it morally, and to decrease the number of youths that consider it immoral, *but* is completely useless in terms of changing the underlying moral views of grownups. "
I think this is absolutely correct.
I also think that 2002 isn't a recent enough date. The data in the last few years have been volatile....support for gays dropped after Lawrence and Goodridge, but has now climbed in some polls to significantly higher levels.
Finally, I think moral views -- right and wrong -- are very interesting, but only one piece of the puzzle. Lots of people will say something is "always wrong" but will still oppose discrimination on that ground. To me, that seems inconsistent, but polls reveal it over and over again (gay marriage, abortion, even interracial marriage and interfaith marriage, practice of non-christian religions or of any particular religion within christianity....all these things may be considered "always wrong" by many people, but those people might also still support equal rights (or privacy rights)).
you're absolutely right that question order can skew responses. there's a notorious example of this in GSS in that one year self-reported happiness shot up for no apparent reason. they quickly deduced that this was a question order effect since they placed the "how happy are you w your marriage" question right before the "how happy are you" question and most married people tend to derive a lot of happiness from their respective marriages.
so it's possible that asking people about something particularly unsavory and vicious, like adultery, could prime them to be more prudish even on fairly acceptable acts, like fornication. however in the codebook the fornication question comes first so if, and this is a big if, the interview is in the same order, then adultery couldn't possibly prime prudish answers for fornication. however, gay sex comes after adultery in the codebook so this could prime lower tolerance for gay sex, again, assuming that the codebook order matches the interview order.