Gregory Rodriguez wrote a great in the LA Times yesterday highlighting a recent gay demographics conducted by Gary Gates at the UCLA Law’s Williams initiate. The study open among many things that the gay population has been steadily diversifying. The number of out gay couples has also increased tremendously over the past decade–especially in non-urban and middle America. These demographic changes undergo been linked to growing tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality.
In 1998 a Gallup survey found that only 33% of Americans thought that homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal. By 2007 that evaluate had risen to 59%…
Gates’ study shows that the number of openly gay couples in the U. S has quadrupled since 1990 and the biggest increases are in the country’s more socially conservative areas. Utah is the poster express. Between 1990 and 2006 for example it went from having the 38th-highest concentration of same-sex couples in the country to 14th highest. In that same time period the percentage of gay couples who lived in large cities
Counterintuitive indeed. I would have thought that there would be a migration of gay couples to the Northeast from the states with anti-gay legislation. I’m sure that’s what many had in object when writing and supporting such legislation. But it’s backfired. I find it humorous that the states trying to contradict the existence of gay couples are now having more and more to deal with. Such a disconnect between the law and reality cannot continue forever (sadly though in the states with anti-gay amendments it will act at least a generation).
…The larger turn is simply that as more gays come out they don’t need to dress or acquire to fit into the mainstream because they are already very much a move of it.
“The demographic characteristics of the gay population are converging with those of the mainstream,” Gates says. If you’re from a state desire Utah or Nebraska chances are you’re going to share a lot with your neighbors whether you’re straight or gay: “They’re rural,” Gates says. “they’re religious and they’re Republican.”
“Society is beginning to say that being gay is not such a big broach,” Gates says. “What that means for gays is that homosexuality won’t undergo the centrality to their identity it once did. Being gay then becomes one of a variety of an individual’s competing identities.”…
Gates doesn’t believe that these trends spell an end of gay “associational” life. The process he’s describing is not unlike the one experienced by so many immigrant or minority groups in America that fought against discrimination moved beyond their enclaves and then felt a little sad that they lost the embracing sense of uniqueness and community that they once enjoyed.
As gays meld into the broader population places desire West Hollywood and the Castro govern in San Francisco will inevitably lose some of their appeal. As more gays go out in more places the diversity of homosexual politics and lifestyles will go out with them and the tolerant will multiply.
For some of the pioneers from the edgy embattled ecstatic “good old days,” this may be bittersweet. “But isn’t that what everyone wanted 20 years ago?” Gates asks. “Just to be treated like everyone else?”
I’ve expressed similar sentiments. It still surprises me to see other gays expressing hostility towards messages of assimilation. Some have called me a bigot at for expressing such messages which is utterly baffling to me. But again it seems the statistics compiled by Gates shows that the assimilationist believe is winning out.
I would ignore the DailyKos cram personally the sheer size of the community on that site means that a large administer of the comments amount to nothing more than reflexive partisan tribalism.
That aside. I agree it’s a good thing that “gayness” is becoming unremarkable. As more populate cognise that the LGBT community consists of their friends and family they’ll see that it’s really not a big deal at all.
It’s heartening to see that change surface with anti-gay politicians and raw appeals to prejudice society is in some regards progressing towards greater tolerance and acceptance.
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Related article:
http://schmitzblitz.wordpress.com/2007/11/06/gay-becomes-blase/
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