Have Young Americans Turned Against Gay Rights?

No, not really...but something has changed

There is a growing consensus that young adults have bucked recent trends towards greater acceptance of LGBTQ people and have become less tolerant than previous generations. Young men have become notably less supportive of gay rights, a fact regularly attributed either to their growing religiosity (wrong) or their growing conservatism (also wrong).

A recent New York Times article by psychologists Tessa E.S. Charlesworth and Eli J. Finkel argues that there has been a rapid increase in anti-gay biases among the public. The authors note not only how rapidly the change has occurred— “In just four years, anti-gay bias rose by around 10 percent,” — but that the increase was especially robust among the youngest adults.

Public polling tells a somewhat different story. First, the views of Gen Z men and women are quite different. In fact, the gender gap on a number of cultural questions is larger among this age group than any other. (If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, this is not news …