[OC] American acceptance of same-sex relations fell seven points in 2024, according to the General Social Survey (NORC)

34 comments

1. Data source: General Social Survey, NORC at the University of Chicago, cumulative data file 1972–2024, survey-weighted. [https://gss.norc.org/](https://gss.norc.org/)

   Tools used: Matplotlib

   The GSS has asked Americans the exact same question since 1973: “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?” Identical wording for 51 years, which is what makes this trend line possible.

   Three eras are visible. From 1973 to 1991, hostility was stable or rising: 73% said “always wrong” in 1973, and 78% in 1991, with the AIDS epidemic years in between. Then a 30-year decline began in 1993. “Not wrong at all” became the most common answer in 2013 and passed 50% in 2016, peaking at 63% in 2022.

   In 2024 it fell to 56%, while “always wrong” rose from 29% to 34%. That is the first statistically significant decline since the climb began (there was a 1.4-point wiggle in 2004, well inside the margin of error; this one is nearly seven points on a sample of 2,125).

   The two middle answers (“almost always wrong” and “wrong only sometimes”) have stayed between 3 and 9% for the entire half-century.

   Gallup asks a similar question annually and shows the same turn, from 71% “morally acceptable” in 2022 to 62% in 2026, its lowest since 2016. The biggest drops are among the youngest adults.

   Full story: [https://chartnews.substack.com/p/american-acceptance-is-falling](https://chartnews.substack.com/p/american-acceptance-is-falling)

2. It’ll be interesting to see if this is an actual long-term trend reversal or just statistical noise / a single-cycle outlier. A 30-year upward trend rarely changes direction permanently overnight without significant demographic or cultural shifts.

3. Joe Rogan really fried people’s brains

4. I forsee a huge shift towards traditionalism and conservative “family values” in the mainstream. People will suffer increasingly from climate change and the migration crisis caused by it, economic collapse, and the dissapearance of the middle class – but they won’t be informed enough to understand the causes. The easy answer peddled by billionaires and grifters will be “we need to return to God and stop angering him with all the gayness” and people will eat it up because they are poor, scared, and uninformed.

5. I have a feeling that when a ***perceived*** thought of population decline amongst the public goes up, then so does homophobia. I wonder what the data would look like once the population starts declining

6. I kind of get the feeling that some of the larger LGBT+ movement is casting shadows on this question about gay marriage specifically.

7. Is the 1990 -> 1995 jump a function of movies like Philadelphia (one of my favorite movies of all time)?

   Other possible explanations:
   – Freddie Mercury death
   – AIDS epidemic de-stigmatized

8. The fact acceptance has gone down at all is…concerning.

9. Only 10% consistently answer some where in between “not wrong at all” and “always wrong”

10. Everyone who thinks this is news is delusional. What is much more true is that in the past 20 years, same sex relationships have become 100% more accepted(~30%->~60%)

    It’s a textbook example of manipulating the interpretation of statistics to ragebait and agendapost 

11. Told ya we had it better in late 2000s.

12. Echoing what others have said here, I think this particular survey result might reflect levels of LGBT acceptance as a social construct, as much (or more) as people’s personal beliefs. You see this is interviews with people during the Civil Rights Era. While people’s inherent racism was of course an ever present factor, they often defer to the prevailing sentiment of their church, school, and community as the source for push-back on integration. Whether this is a fig leaf for personal bigotry or an indicator that people just want to reflect the mores of their social group is sort of immaterial since the result is the same. However, I do think that a sharp decline in LGBT support like this reflects a change in the zeitgeist of the respondent’s community and content consumption.

13. The goal posts were moved.

14. Lot’s of people saying facism here. The thing with radical leftism is that if things go their way it’s democracy, but as soon as they get a no from the majority they start rolling on the floor like toddlers and calling everyone names. And when this happens, they get an even stronger push back.

    I really hope mature and reasonable people take the reigns of social movements in the next decades, our issues can’t be addressed by people with pre-school mentality and Karens.

    Just look at the insane progress that has been made during the early 90s, without the internet, big banks and main stream media backing us, when social movements preached tolerance and understanding instead of hate and prosecution against whoever disagrees with us.

    The woke movements from 2010 and 2020 threw in the trash the remarkable progress made by those between the 90s and late 00s.

15. Supporting gay marriage has always been easy to defend, because in America we let people live how they see fit, as long as it isn’t affecting others. It’s an easy sell to libertarian-minded people on the right.

    I have a suspicion that the recent backlash is tied to a reaction to trans activists pushing things past that line. I’ve always supported people’s right to live how they want (heck, I supported gay rights before Obama did), but am not comfortable with the small % of the left pushing trans women in women’s sports and transitioning for kids.

    It’s my opinion that they have done great damage to the LGBT movement as a whole, and pushed a few critical % of the population to MAGA.

16. Everyone who’s not Trans (and some that are) knows this is backlash to the Trans movement. Barely anyone’s mentioning it in the comments but I guarantee it was the first reason many thought of.

    Accepting that person’s gay is very different from accepting that person’s not a guy in a dress but is instead a different gender but also gender doesn’t really exist. Those are two very different things to accept for the wider public.

17. I’m always wondering if in such polls people honestly say what they mean/mean what they say, or a part of our conformist nature is to agree more with what’s expected in the general populace

18. TIL 34% of Americans need to mind their own fucking business

19. Yeah, but it’s all accounted for by national disapproval for Scott Bessent

20. It’s the magnetic power of virtually every person’s transphobia spreading to other queer people bc of anti-trans public discourse.  

    If you didn’t grow up trans or with a very close trans relationship, idk how a cis person would ever be able to understand the trans experience and to empathize with trans people. In my experience growing up there were maybe 2 or 3 girls my age who “got it”, and 1 or 2 teachers. Parents raised me wrong on purpose and I stopped feeling genuine love by the time I was 12.

    And by the time trans people are old enough to be visible to others, they’ve largely been traumatized and abused out of any semblance of a normal life, so they read as poorly-adjusted neets or traumatized sex perverts. It’s victim blaming the whole way down, and the sensitive trans girls kill themselves long before they have a chance to become functional women. 

21. Maybe it’s because it went from “we just want to marry” to “if you don’t let us have drag shows in front of your kids, we are gonna get you fired and threaten you”

22. I’ve noticed that a lot of late gen Z and early gen Alpha are trending toward social conservatism and traditional values.

23. The pre 90’s numbers are so crazy to me. I can’t ever imagine myself giving that much of a fuck about what two adults do or don’t do in the bedroom.

24. What about those who are indifferent? Does that fall under accepting.

25. (This comment is NOT intended to be anti same sex marriage, its explaining what I have seen that shifted the line in the other direction.)

    I live in conservative land so I get to see this first hand. When same sex stuff first came there was a TON of push back of course, but then people kind of accepted it as a “meh.. its not like this impacts me” kind of mentality. They were okay with it at arms length. But then came the constant references in media, especially kids media. Schools started introducing the concepts earlier and earlier and parents were suddenly fielding questions they were not prepared for from children with no concept of how challenging it was and so the parents started lashing out. It wasn’t a arms length issue anymore it was impacting them daily. Worse they started telling their kids how “wrong” and “bad” this was which just propagated the mentality to kids that would have otherwise not cared.

    As a parent picture how you would feel if your 2nd grade child came home from school and told you that they read a whole book on how great Trump was, and then every show suddenly had a Trump supporting main character who was hailed as a hero. That’s functionally how conservative religious people were seeing the mass inclusion of LBGTQ in media and schools.

    What’s worse is that I am seeing parents specifically teaching their kids at very young ages to hate LBGTQ people/issues which sticks with the kids as they get older, making them even more opposed than their parents were when same sex marriage was legalized. =(

26. It’s a conservative backlash but the overall trend is towards more acceptance. I am sure the trend will reverse back to more acceptance soon

27. I have seen similar study that showed this effect is almost entirely from a drop in right wing acceptance with left and independents holding steady.

28. What consenting adults do behind closed doors is none of my business

29. A) I don’t buy the data before the early 90s on this graph…. same sex relations went thru a period of acceptance in the 70s but the early 80s AIDS crisis and transmission of AIDS & other stds amongst same-sex partners caused a lot of antagonism against primarily the gay community at the time (which also proved to be a rallying point for advocates & supporters)

    B) A good comparison here would be inter-racial couples which was generally taboo into mid-60s but then experienced a strong push by baby boomers & genx against older generations resistance through the late 60s and 70s ….there was a plateau in the late 80s that aligns with the crime/drug epidemic and then the breakthrough in acceptance in the early 90s as the WWI & WWII generations passed away.

    https://preview.redd.it/2mdicn83zwmh1.png?width=720&format=png&auto=webp&s=b66d0adf67d53c0c72c22188f3bec49e27c96d9d

30. I would like to see how this correlates with all of the push for trans women in women’s’ sports. My guess is this is backlash to that.

31. Hiw was the survey completed? How do they account for bits and trolls?

32. Presumably these are the cowardly bigots – the ones who only feel safe demeaning others if someone else stands up and does it first.

33. The real question is, who tf cares if they care? No one should have to ask permission from someone on who they love. So agree with it or don’t, but your opinion is irrelevant.

34. This isn’t terribly surprising, the pendulum always swings. It seemed like one side of the culture war pushed miscegenation like it was a religion, with every commercial being an interracial couple. The other side of the culture war reacted by putting a spotlight on an “an epidemic of abused single mothers.” Now here we are, the land of stupid

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