Men, political moderates and Catholics increasingly cool with the gays

According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans are becoming increasingly likely to deem homosexuality “morally acceptable.” Lisa at Sociological Images has a full breakdown of the findings, but here are some of the most surprising (and encouraging) gains since Gallup last conducted this poll in 2006:

  • In the last four years, the number of Catholics polled who called gay and lesbian relations “morally acceptable” increased by 16%.
  • In the same time period, the number of self-identified political moderates who called gay and lesbian relations “morally acceptable” increased by 14%.
  • When the data were analyzed by gender and age group, the most rapidly growing rate of acceptance is among men between the ages of 18 and 49. In 2006, 42% of people in this group deemed gay and lesbian relations “morally acceptable.” Now, it is 62%, a whopping 20% increase in only four years.

Keep it up, Catholics, political moderates and men between the ages of 18 and 49!

There’s more analysis by Gallup here, and further discussions of how the numbers change when a poll asks about “homosexuality” vs. “gay and lesbian relations” here.

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Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia. She joined the Feministing team in 2009. Her writing about politics and popular culture has been published in The Atlantic, The Guardian, New York magazine, Reuters, The LA Times and many other outlets in the US, Australia, UK, and France. She makes regular appearances on radio and television in the US and Australia. She has an AB in Sociology from Princeton University and a PhD in Arts and Media from the University of New South Wales. Her academic work focuses on Hollywood romantic comedies; her doctoral thesis was about how the genre depicts gender, sex, and power, and grew out of a series she wrote for Feministing, the Feministing Rom Com Review. Chloe is a Senior Facilitator at The OpEd Project and a Senior Advisor to The Harry Potter Alliance. You can read more of her writing at chloesangyal.com

Chloe Angyal is a journalist and scholar of popular culture from Sydney, Australia.

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