The Shifting Sands of the Public Perception of Homosexuality

The latest issue of Time has an article on homosexuality among teenagers. One of the significant aspects of the article is its discussion of how homosexuals and homosexual advocacy groups often misrepresent how homosexuals are treated by relatives and other people around them. Here are some of the other highlights:

last year's big UCLA survey of college freshmen found that 57% favor same-sex marriage (only about 36% of all adults do). Even as adult activists bicker in court, young Americans--including many young conservatives--are becoming thoroughly, even nonchalantly, gay-positive. From young ages, straight kids are growing up with more openly bisexual, gay and sexually uncertain classmates. In the 1960s, gay men recalled first desiring other males at an average age of 14; it was 17 for lesbians. By the '90s, the average had dropped to 10 for gays and 12 for lesbians, according to more than a dozen studies reviewed by the author of The New Gay Teenager, Ritch Savin-Williams, who chairs Cornell's human-development department....

Publishers like Arthur A. Levine Books (of Harry Potter fame) and the children's division at Simon & Schuster have released something like a dozen novels about gay adolescents in the past two years....But the preponderance of Savin-Williams' 20 years of research indicates that most gay kids today face an environment that's more uncertain than unwelcoming. In a 2002 study he quotes in the new book, gay adolescents at a Berkeley, Calif., school said just 5% of their classmates had responded negatively to their sexuality....

"We're gonna win," says Jennings, speaking expansively of the gay movement, "because of what's happening in high schools right now ... This is the generation that gets it."...

kids often see their sexuality as riverine and murky--multiple studies have found most teens with same-sex attractions have had sex with both boys and girls...

As a Mormon, says Randy [father of a homosexual], 53, "I don't believe that men should be together. I never will. But I love him as my son. And he and his partner are good boys." Randy says his first reaction to Bryan's teen homosexuality was, "I'm going to find him the best hooker I can." But he says he and his wife sent Bryan to Casa not because he was gay but because he was a "totally unruly kid"...

When their kids come out, many conservatives--just ask the Vice President--start to seem uncomfortable with traditionalist, rigid views on gays.

On this issue, as with others, children are suffering from the apathy and carelessness of their parents. The parents either don't know what to believe on such significant issues or do know what to believe, but aren't well prepared to explain and defend those beliefs. They're being blown about by every wind and wave of influence, whether from their relatives, their church, their co-workers, the media, or other sources. At any given time, the parents may have any of a wide variety of beliefs. They may have negative emotions about homosexuality and want to believe what their church says about it being sinful, but they also like some of the homosexuals they see on television and don't want to be perceived as hateful people. Instead of thinking through the issues as they ought to and doing the appropriate research, they hold a loose grip on their weak opinions and can be influenced to change in all sorts of ways under all sorts of circumstances.