There is an article in the New York Times, June 5 of this year, by Charles M. Blow explaining a little noticed report from a Gallup poll on Americans' evolving views of homosexuality. Three main points he made are as follows, quoted from his column:

1. For the first time, the percentage of Americans who perceive "gay and lesbian relations" as morally acceptable has crossed the 50 percent mark. (You have to love the fact that they still use the word "relations." So quaint.)

2. Also for the first time, the percentage of men who hold that view is greater than the percentage of women who do.

3. This new alignment is being led by a dramatic change in attitudes among younger men, but older men's perceptions also have eclipsed older women's. While women's views have stayed about the same over the past four years, the percentage of men ages 18 to 49 who perceived these "relations" as morally acceptable rose by 48 percent, and among men over 50, it rose by 26 percent.

{end of quote.}

He goes on to explain three theories as to what is driving this radical change in men's views, and again I quote directly from the article:

1. The contact hypothesis. As more men openly acknowledge that they are gay, it becomes harder for men who are not gay to discriminate against them. And as that group of openly gay men becomes more varied - including athletes, celebrities and soldiers - many of the old, derisive stereotypes lose their purchase. To that point, a Gallup poll released last May found that people who said they personally knew someone who was gay or lesbian were more likely to be accepting of gays and lesbians in general and more supportive of their issues.

2. Men may be becoming more egalitarian in general. As Dr. Kimmel put it: "Men have gotten increasingly comfortable with the presence of, and relative equality of, 'the other,' and we're becoming more accustomed to it. And most men are finding that it has not been a disaster." The expanding sense of acceptance likely began with the feminist and civil rights movements and is now being extended to the gay rights movement. Dr. Kimmel continued, "The dire predictions for diversity have not only not come true, but, in fact, they've been proved the other way."

3. Virulent homophobes are increasingly being exposed for engaging in homosexuality... {Blow gives a couple of examples here - Ted Haggard and George Rekers, and discusses them a bit}...In fact, there is a growing body of research that supports the notion that homophobia in some men could be a reaction to their own homosexual impulses. Many heterosexual men see this, and they don't want to be associated with it. It's like being antigay is becoming the old gay. Not cool.

{end of quote from Blow's article}

There is much more to the article, and it is extremely interesting - I highly recommend looking it up online and reading the whole thing if you are interested. The title of it is "Whatever, Dude" or "Gay?  Whatever, Dude," depending whether you have the newspaper or look it up online.  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/opinion/05blow.html  (Thanks to Sonja for providing this link).

Dr. Kimmel, by the way, is Dr. Michael Kimmel, a professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and author or editor of more than 20 books on men and masculinity, who was contacted by Blow for help in speculating as to the cause of this apparent change in men's views. Another person who contributed in this regard was Professor Ritch Savin-Williams, the chairman of human development at Cornell University and author of seven books, most of which deal with adolescent development and same-sex attraction.

Barb