"The Homosexual in America"
The once widespread view that homosexuality is caused by heredity, or by some derangement of hormones, has been generally discarded. The consensus is that it is caused psychically, through a disabling fear of the opposite sex. The origins of this fear lie in the homosexual’s parents. The mother—either domineering and contemptuous of the father, or feeling rejected by him—makes her son a substitute for her husband, with a close-binding, overprotective relationship. Thus, she unconsciously demasculinizes him. If at the same time the father is weakly submissive to his wife or aloof and unconsciously competitive with his son, he reinforces the process. To attain normal sexual development, according to current psychoanalytic theory, a boy should be able to identify with his father’s masculine role.
Fear of the opposite sex is also believed to be the cause of Lesbianism, which is far less visible but, according to many experts, no less widespread than male homosexuality—and far more readily tolerated. Both forms are essentially a case of arrested development, a failure of learning, a refusal to accept the full responsibilities of life.
From a 1966 article in Time. I’ll pair this with a graph from the General Social Survey. The question wording is “What about sexual relations between two adults of the same sex—do you think it is always wrong, almost always wrong, wrong only sometimes, or not wrong at all?”
Comments
that’s one problematic wording… They never changed it into something that is less likely to evoke negative responses?
Posted by: Dubi | June 30, 2009 10:35 AM
Dubi: I think that GSS is very big on continuity in questions, often seeking to get better data on some questions in special modules. I can’t say I disagree with that overall approach, though, as you note, it does lead to bad questions lasting in perpetuity. Of course, the NES still has feeling thermometers in it, despite the famous tale of Phil Converse leaving the room saying “whatever you do, don’t put in a feeling thermometer!”
Posted by: Matt Jarvis | June 30, 2009 11:33 AM
Kind of an aside, but I recently came across somebody asking this question (no pun intended): if homosexuality is unnatural, then why is the prostate on the inside and the clitoris on the outside?
Couldn’t really answer that one…
Posted by: Dan Tarrant | June 30, 2009 02:25 PM
What the heck happened around 1990? Prior to that you have a fairly steady level to the responses, going back at least to 1972 (and likely further). And then, post 1990, an increasing amount of responses saying it is not wrong at all and a decreasing level saying it is always wrong. Was there a trigger? It seems too abrupt for generational replacement.
Posted by: Josh R. | June 30, 2009 08:01 PM
Josh, I’ve often wondered the same thing. One possibility is that the trend would have begun earlier, except that much of the broader discourse about homosexuality in the 1980s was dominated by AIDS, which helped maintain concern about homosexuality. Afterwards, of course, the 1990s began to see the emergence of more and more openly gay public figures and celebrities. But neither of these satisfies me as explanations for the abruptness of the trend. I would also be tempted to blame some survey artifact, except that the trend has continued at such a steady pace. Other thoughts are welcome.
Posted by: John Sides | June 30, 2009 08:37 PM
It’s also interesting to note that this appears to be an almost completely black/white question. The rate of ‘maybes’ is constant at about just 10-15%. No normal distribution here.
It may look like many people shift directly between extremes. It would be interesting if we could see behind the data and find out if this was the case with single respondents over time. The 1990 turn seems marked by a dip in the ‘maybes’, possibly indicating people coming ‘off the fence’ to accept gays a year before the most extreme shift kicks in.
Posted by: Sverre | July 1, 2009 04:00 PM
Regarding the sudden turn at 1990: “Love, Sidney” went into syndication?
More seriously: are there “tipping” theories, so to speak, in public opinion literature? Does reaction to other formely/still disfavored behaviors/groups also show any sudden dives or rises like this? Maybe the data doesn’t go back far enough, but what about reactions to inter-racial marriage (or more recently to mothers working or to divorce or contraception)?
Posted by: Doug Hess | July 1, 2009 04:16 PM
When did Will and Grace come on TV?
BTW this graphic reminds me something of teaching Schumann and Bobo first edition. Sure things have improved, but still 52% say “always wrong”? And I bet if you break that down by region, race, and age, you’ll find some groups in society responding “always wrong” at pretty high rates.
Posted by: paul g. | July 2, 2009 09:21 PM
MTV’s The Real World arrived on the scene in the very late 80’s, the AIDS quilt became prominent about the same time. Philadelphia, the first major movie to address homosexuality in a sympathetic light, was released in ‘92 or ‘93. I believe Will & Grace appeared in about ‘94 or ‘95.
Having been born in 1960, I do think this is largely a demographic shift. If you go back through data on attitudes toward homosexuality in America that have been systematically collected for a long enough period of time, and broken down by age cohort, you’ll see, very consistently, that those born after approx. 1972 (who would have been 18 in 1990 and so first showed up then in a poll like this one cited above) have a far, far more tolerant view of homosexuality than do those born before. Those born in the early 70’s were the first to come to adolescence during the age of AIDS. That meant they as children were far more aware of the existence of gay people than their older cohorts ever were. I believe that having grown up with this fact of life (instead of having it introduced to them in whispered snickers while adolescents) has forever changed their attitudes towards gay and lesbian Americans.
Posted by: oddjob | July 7, 2009 09:36 AM
Sure things have improved, but still 52% say “always wrong”?
Loving v. Virginia was decided in 1967, but it wasn’t until the 1990’s that a majority of Americans finally approved of inter-racial marriage.
Posted by: oddjob | July 7, 2009 09:39 AM