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This post will document the changes in American cultural perspectives with respect to homosexuality. A later post will try to understand why this change has happened.
The data above are startling. In ten years the percentage of Americans who believe that homosexual marriage should be legal increased from 35% in 2006 to 55% in 2016, while those who don’t believe that same sex marriage should be legal declined from 55% to 35% over the same period. In other words, the net approval rating for acceptance of same-sex marriage went from -20% to +18% in ten years.
Over the same period acceptance of homosexuality increased by from 6 percentage points to 23 percentage points among Christian denominations (see graph below). Among evangelicals acceptability of homosexuality increases from 22% to 34% in ten years.
A Timeline of Increasing acceptability of homosexuality in America.
In order to better understand this change, let’s look at some of the key milestones in the process of homosexuality becoming more acceptable to American society. Some of these milestones are political, some legal and some cultural.
1969 – The Stonewall Riots (Police raid a gay bar in NYC) arguably serving as a catalyst for the Gay Rights movement
1975 –US Civil Service Commission states it will no longer bar homosexuals from government service.
1979 – 100,000 people march on Washington for Gay Rights
1981 – AIDS identified (first called Gay-Related Auto-Immune deficiency)
1982 –Wisconsin passes first ever anti-discrimination bill (prohibiting bias in employment and housing against homosexuals).
1986 – Supreme Court (in Bowers vs. Hardwick) allows sodomy laws targeted against homosexuals to stand.
1993 – Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell becomes policy for US military
1996 –President Clinton signs “Defense of Marriage Act,” denying federal benefits to same-sex spouse should gay marriage ever become legal.
1998 – Will and Grace becomes the first prime-time television series on U.S. television to star openly gay lead characters.
1999 –Medical profession holds that “homosexuality is not a mental disorder and thus not something that needs to or should be “cured.”
2000 –Vermont becomes first state to recognize civil unions.
2003 –Supreme Court rules sodomy laws are unconstitutional.
2003 –V. Gene Robinson becomes the first practicing homosexual to be ordained as bishop of the Episcopalian Church
2004 – Massachusetts legalizes same-sex marriage
2005 –Brokeback Mountain, one of the first major motion pictures to feature a love story with two leading homosexual roles, is released to critical acclaim.
2008 –California voters approve Proposition 8, eliminating right of same-sex couples to marry.
2010 –Proposition 8 is ruled unconstitutional
2011 – “Don’t Ask, don’t tell” is repealed, ending ban on openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military.
2012 –Tammy Baldwin becomes first openly gay person elected to US Senate.
2014 – Facebook introduces new gender options
2014 – The United States Supreme Court denies review in five different marriage cases, allowing lower court rulings to stand, and therefore allowing same-sex couples to marry in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin. The decision opens the door for the right to marry in Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.
2015 – Boy Scouts remove restrictions on openly gay leaders and employees.
2016 — A record number of “out” athletes compete in the summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
2017 –Virginia voters elect the state’s first openly transgender candidate to the Virginia House of Delegates.
Over 50 years, discrimination against sexual orientation has been widely prohibited, same-sex marriage widely accepted, homosexuals have been elected and appointed to important positions, and homosexuality has been increasingly depicted and accepted in books, cinema and television. We are now having conversations on the varieties of sexual orientation, on what and when we should teach our children about sexuality, on what our pronouns should be, and most important to me, what should be the church’s attitude to all this. Are we at a time when the two greatest commandments (“Love the Lord” and “Love thy Neighbor”) are in conflict? More to come in future blog posts.
