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Younger generations are less likely to support homosexuality and more likely to exhibit “anti-gay prejudice,” according to Northwestern University scholars.
Professor Tessa Charlesworth released a preprint study which purports to find lower levels of acceptance of homosexuality in younger generations, even among liberals. She also commented on the results in a recent New York Times essay.
Although, in the past, there seems to have been a significant increase in support for the gay population, the support for this movement actually reached its peak in 2020 and has been subsequently declining.
Additionally, young people (those under the age of 25) are now more “anti-gay” biased, as the study found: “surprisingly, younger respondents (who had previously shown the largest decreases in bias) now showed greater increases in bias.”
The authors of the study said the change in support is unmatched compared to other social movements.
In a NY Times essay, Professor Charlesworth said that “social instability” and “anti-establishment sentiment” are the main drivers of the change in attitudes.
Charlesworth and co-author Eli Finkel said COVID and economic shutdowns led to “scapegoating” “marginalized groups.” They also said that corporate support for LGBT issues caused a backlash.
The College Fix asked Charlesworth if there were other issues where younger generations were more conservative than older generations.
Professor Charlesworth said she has seen “widespread” backlash against young people “across all social group topics we’ve studied: race, skin-tone, even age, disability, and body weight.”
The Fix also asked to clarify how gay individuals were being scapegoated if corporations were also showing increased support for the LGBT movement.
“The simplest form of the idea is that pro-gay support became mainstreamed and centered in establishments,” Charlesworth said via email. “Then, as anti-establishment rhetoric has grown, it has caught up gay support as well, possibly motivating the anti-gay movement.”
“In turn, this anti-gay movement has used many tools in their arsenal, including scapegoating,” she said.
But a fellow Northwestern researcher questioned the results of the study, saying that one issue is terminology may not have been clear to the respondents.
Forest Romm told The Fix via email that “declining support may reflect a changed understanding of what it means to be ‘pro-gay,’” rather than renewed animus toward homosexuality itself.” She is a social scientist who studies and writes about gender issues and is critical of transgender ideology.
She gave an example of how being “pro-gay” might encompass a variety of political issues.
Romm stated:
What does it mean to be pro-gay in the 2020s? By the transitive logic of intersectionality, disparate social issues are now framed as overlapping systems of oppression—for example, the many “Dykes for Gaza” signs I saw at various 2025 Pride parades, explicated by chants of “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Declining pro-gay sentiment may reflect discomfort with an expanded ideological package that demands alignment with morally suspect positions on highly contentious geopolitical conflicts and political flashpoints such as gender ideology.
The Northwestern researcher said “trans rights” means something different now than it did years ago, pointing out controversies surrounding men in womens’ prisons and playing on girls’ sports teams, for example.
That is why the Charlesworth study, which “relies on repeated cross-sectional data, with new samples drawn over time,” may not produce reliable results, Romm said.
“As sociocultural contexts evolve, respondents’ understanding of survey questions can change, making interpretive drift likely; stable wording does not guarantee stable meaning,” she said.
Social scientist questions ‘moral panic’ language used
Another researcher on LGBT issues questioned the premise of the study, calling the New York Times article “ridiculous.”
“They take for granted that ‘gay is good’ and being’anti-gay is bad,’” Jennifer Morse, president of the Ruth Institute, told The Fix via email. “This bias colors their interpretation of the data and the very questions they choose to ask of the data.”
Morse is a trained economist and former research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. She has written several books about sex and family.
Morse highlighted the researchers’ use of the term “moral panic” when it comes to the grooming of kids as an example of biased language.
“I am aware of many people who are extremely concerned about the oversexualized age-inappropriate material many children are being taught,” Morse said. “Framing the issue as ‘moral panic language’ as these authors do, preemptively dismisses people’s genuine concerns before they’re even addressed.”
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