We need straight answers for Gen Z gay explosion

Is America turning queer?

Usually, facts speak for themselves.

But not always.

According to reliable Gallup polling, there has been a volcanic explosion over two generational cohorts, or groupings, of Americans who declare themselves other than cisgender or heterosexual, which remain the overwhelming majority. That is 86.7%, says Gallup.

This does not mean they are “better” than anyone else. They are just more numerous, and that seems to be changing fast, so fast that it is hard to believe. 

In 2021, 5.6% of all Americans told Gallup they were gay, up from 4.5% in 2017 — an almost 25% increase in four years. Amazing — but that is nothing compared to the Generation Z gay boom.

Starting with research done by Kinsey in 1948, 4% or more of males were exclusively gay, 1-2% of females. (My guess is the numbers were on the low side.)

What Gallup found last year is that 15.9%, about 1 in 6 Generation Z people (those born between 1997-2012+), identify as non-binary, falling somewhere in the broad horizon of the LGBTQ+ alphabet string. This is an unprecedented high number. 

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 Millennials.

From 3.8% to 15.9% is a fourfold increase, so WTF is going on? Do the numbers reflect biology, psychology, or sociology? 

Pew Research opines that technology might play a role in it: “Technology, in particular the rapid evolution of how people communicate and interact, is another generation-shaping consideration. Baby Boomers grew up as television expanded dramatically, changing their lifestyles and connection to the world in fundamental ways. Generation X grew up as the computer revolution was taking hold, and Millennials came of age during the internet explosion.

Generation Z, it says, has always had all that in their lives. The iPhone launched in 2007, when the oldest Gen Zers were 10. “By the time they were in their teens, the primary means by which young Americans connected with the web was through mobile devices, WiFi and high-bandwidth cellular service….

“The implications of growing up in an ‘always on’ technological environment are only now coming into focus. Recent research has shown dramatic shifts in youth behaviors, attitudes and lifestyles – both positive and concerning – for those who came of age in this era. (Italics added)

Let’s check down through other possibilities, using the facts we know, plus reason.

Is America undergoing a vast sea change in biology, with people’s orientation actually changing? Is America turning queer?

I find no scientific evidence to support that, although sperm counts in the Western world have dropped 50% in 40 years.

That is scary, but does not seem related to sexual orientaion. 

That leaves psychological and social causes.

Before I turn to that, I remember the acronym LWIC that I first heard in the ‘90s.

It stands for Lesbian While In College, reflecting on women being more open to same-sex experimentation than men.

I know many straight women who confess to smooching — or more — other women, often with a mention that they were young, or drunk, or both. College is a hothouse of all kinds of experimentation. 

It doesn’t mean the women were lesbian. That brings to mind Anne Heche, the actress who was straight until 1997 when she moved in with Ellen DeGeneres, then decided three years later — nope, I’m not a lesbian after all. Almost as if to prove it, she married and divorced two men in succession. 

Not long ago, Katy Perry recorded, “I Kissed a Girl.” It was a hit.

Justin Timberlake had no cover called, “I Kissed a Boy.”

Straight men don’t make out with each other, although around puberty some may engage in experimental homosexual acts. It’s kept very private.

Lesbians have both female and male fans — Howard Stern, for example, would literally drool over lesbians on his show  — while gay males seem to attract only other males, plus “fag hags” such as Bette Midler. 

Since show biz often is divorced from the real world, let’s move on.

If biology has not changed, acceptance has.

Philadelphia Gay News founder and publisher Mark Segal points at two things — visibility and spectrum.

“Once you have visibility” — which gay people have in abundance in sports, entertainment and politics — “people are no longer believing all the myths against gay people,” he says. That makes it easier for people to come out.

His other point was spectrum — where on the sexual/political horizon you place yourself.

That calls for another brief diversion.

Facebook offers members a choice of 56 gender selections. 

Some sources list as many as 74.

That is a tough number for some people (like me) to swallow. It comes at the same moment that the woke are insisting the concept of race is nothing but a social construct.

Race is, and gender is not?

There were 2 genders when I was growing up, 12 about 20 years ago, now 74, a number that comes out of the addled groves of academia. Endless subdivisions can carry it forward until no one is cisgender.

I had thought about the acceptance angle myself, knowing that about 70% of Americans favor gay marriage. That would embolden many to leave the closet.

But wouldn’t that affect older gays as well?

Why wouldn’t the number of gay boomers be, well, booming?

Possibly because they have already arrived, they have their place in history, while kids have a need to belong, and increasing numbers are choosing to identify as members of a club that is  “different.” 

Youth also like to rebel. Maybe they adopt queerness as a way of rebelling? At least some of them?

Have I missed anything? 

Yes, and this gets even more touchy.

Two parents sued their Florida school district even before the recent Parental Rights in Education law was passed.

In a federal complaint filed last October, the mother, a licensed mental health counselor named January Littlejohn, claimed the school district made decisions about her admittedly gender confused 13-year-old daughter without her knowledge or consent, and interfered with her parental rights.

Covid lockdowns caused a decline in her three childrens’ mental health, she admitted.

Her daughter had “a friend group that was obsessed with anything to do with LGBTQ letters. Three of the children had come out as non-binary or transgender within three months time,” Littlejohn said.

Littlejohn was surprised when her daughter talked about gender confusion because she never had before. Mom suspected peer influence.

She arranged mental counseling for her daughter and told the school it could use a nickname her daughter had selected, but the school was not to engage in “gender affirming” action — which she claims it did.

The point that jumped out at me was the three peers “going gay,” almost like they caught a communicable virus. 

On Twitter, a teacher claimed 20 of her 32 students had come out, and she wanted to support them in any  way possible.

I can’t confirm that tweet, but it sounds plausible. 

20 of 32?

Almost two-thirds? Really?

What could account for such staggering numbers?

At the same time — probably unrelated, but worth mentioning — the rate of suicide among the young is going through the roof.

Each trend should have people asking why, but I am not hearing much of that. 

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

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? 

Impressionable kids are surrounded by favorable chatter about being queer, which has achieved almost a cult status.

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 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.

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.

In cases stretching back to the Salem witch trials, we have seen incidents of mass hysteria.

 Is this gay explosion another?

I am asking a legitimate question and hope it will be taken that way, although I fully expect to be called a “homophobe.”

There is something substantial happening to our children, and we are entitled to straight answers, pun intended.