The world is going gay, fast?

The biggest con game going on in America is not the Nigerian prince, not the Power Ball, not the call from a fake kidnapper who claims to have your child.

It is the scam convincing “open-minded” (and empty-headed) youth that they are not cisgender, or, if you prefer, straight. (Some say “normal,” and others say that word is pejorative.)

The latest evidence is provided by Brown University, that elite, Ivy League school in Providence, R.I., of all places. Tuition tops $62,000 a year, despite it never having  won a national football or basketball title.

And the way things are going, its teams will be getting even worse.

Why?

The student newspaper, the Brown Daily Herald, just polled the student body and found that 38% of students do not identify as straight, a number that has doubled since 2010, and is five times the national rate.

The poll was taken in June, you know, Pride Month. It may be that that celebration influenced the respondents.

What else might have generated responses so far removed from reality?

Yes, I believe in evolution, that our bodies and minds change over time, but not over one or two generations. That is not biology, that is self delusion. 

The results are just unbelievable — not that the students didn’t self-identify that way, they did. I find it unbelievable they are actually that way.

It is preposterous, but not completely out of line with other findings, showing that non-binary responses are blowing a hole in the roof. 

Back in April, I reported on Gallup polling that recorded an explosion of LGBT responses from Generation Z, who were born between 1997 and 2012. There are 68 million of them.

What Gallup found last year is that 15.9%, about 1 in 6 Gen Z people, identify as nonbinary, falling somewhere along the broad horizon of the LGBTQ+ alphabet string. This is an unprecedented high number, and completely unbelievable.

By contrast, only 9.1% of Millennials, the previous cohort, were queer-claiming, but that is gigantic when contrasted to the tiny 3.8% of Generation X that preceded the Millennials, a figure that seems in line with traditional estimates that 4-7 percent of the population is gay. I use “gay” to cover all the possible non-straight varieties and there are more of them than Heinz, which has 57. 

Some people with medical degrees find as many as 72, maybe more. There is no limit to creativity. Gay and lesbian used to be enough. Now it is just a starting point.

So here’s the obligatory “I have nothing against gay people” line, because I am sure some will call me a homophobe for questioning stats that defy reason.

I also have nothing against religious people, but if they tell me the Bible is literal truth, I call bullshit.

I also call bullshit on 72 gender possibilities. This is manufactured in sociology department faculty lounges at Ivy League universities.

The Brown student newspaper gave respondents only eight gender choices. Wow! What a bunch of haters the editors must be. That’s a joke, but maybe not much of one if you believe there are 72 flavors to choose from. What about the missing 64? Student Council ought to investigate.

One student quoted said the explosive gay growth at Brown is because “queer people haven’t been able to be open in their identifications for that long, so it’s exciting that the numbers are growing and that queer people are able to be open.”

There is more gay acceptance. That’s for sure. We have gay governors, gay mayors, TV anchors, athletes, soldiers… In most places, the closet is empty. More than 70% of Americans accept gay marriage, a number that would have been impossible two decades ago.

So if acceptance and openness is so prevalent, why has there been no corresponding great increase in “gayness” among the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, and Gen X?

Surely they are feeling the openness, too. Why aren’t the Boomers, well, booming with gender shifting?

Among the young, maybe it is not openness, but peer pressure and mass hysteria, such as the type that created the Salem witch trials, where neighbor bore false witness on neighbor in a community descending into madness. 

The greatest gender changes reported are among the young, and three things we know about youth:  They are most agreeable to change, they have a great need to belong, and they have the least ability to process information.

I’m not saying they are stupid. I am saying they are products of their environment, as are we all.

And when they see — during Pride Month, let’s say — the virtues of being non conforming celebrated on every rooftop, that can seem very inviting.

The Brown newspaper reports “Brown’s LGBTQ+  . . . gay and lesbian population has increased by 26% and the percentage of students identifying as bisexual has increased by 232%. Students identifying as other sexual orientations within the LBGTQ+ community have increased by 793%.”

793%!

I. Just. Do. Not. Buy. It.

America is not turning queer. I find no scientific proof of that. The Brown poll, and even the Gallup poll, have people self reporting, not subjecting themselves to serious scientific scrutiny. Remember, too, college is a hot house of all kinds of experimentation. I remember the half-funny acronym LWIC —  Lesbian While In College. College-age women make out with each other for fun, often while drunk. Guys don’t. 

My suspicious reporter’s nature tells me if I rounded up 10 male students who claimed to be bisexual, and I ordered them to have sex with each other, they’d turn straight right quick.

I suspect most of the youth “going queer” are trying to gain acceptance by signing up for a club that has achieved a certain level of chic, especially along the coasts. I have a very strong feeling the “gay” results would be far different at Oklahoma University, or the service academies.

Another “why” might be that youth love to rebel, and what could be more dramatic than rebelling against your own gender?

That’ll get a rise out of your parents, who are paying your tuition.

Many conservatives and deeply religious people think the gender confusion comes from indoctrination in the schools, but I don’t think that is it. Not all of it, anyway.

It may be “indoctrination” from a society that not only accepts gay people, but celebrates them in a manner heterosexuals are not. (Not that there’s anything wrong with affirmation, in itself.) 

With slight exaggeration, I say almost every popular TV series has a gay character who is charming, funny, lovable, and loyal. Who wouldn’t want to have a friend like that, or be like that?

In almost every entertainment awards show, someone praises God and someone else makes reference to their non-binary status. 

When do straight people go popping off about their sexuality?  Spoiler alert: No, they don’t.

Impressionable kids are surrounded by favorable social media chatter about being “other,” which has achieved cult status. Dylan Mulvaney is one example.

Even the word gay sounds like fun. 

What I am suggesting here is the power of suggestion.

Are you old enough to remember the McMartin pre-school child sexual abuse scandal in the early ‘80s?

In what was then the longest and costliest trial in American history, charges were brought against California teachers for sexually molesting their students, based on testimony from children.

It was a monstrous lie.

The children were either mimicking what they had heard from their peers, or were deliberately or accidentally coached by police detectives, supported by so-called sexual abuse experts, who were desperate to break up what they thought was a ring of raging, raping pedophiles.

There was no ring of pedophiles. It was groupthink.

I don’t want to draw too close a parallel between McMartin and Brown.

I am suggesting we shouldn’t accept these skyrocketing numbers as reality without asking a lot of questions.