A GLAAD study claims that the number of young Americans comfortable with LGBTQ people has fallen from 53% to 45%, the second consecutive annual drop.
Variety:
Scenarios for the survey included learning a family member is LGBT, learning my doctor is LGBT, having LGBT members at my place of worship, seeing an LGBT co-worker's wedding picture, having my child placed in a class with an LGBT teacher, seeing a same-sex couple holding hands and learning my child has a lesson on LGBT history in school.
The Index comes amidst a number of anti-LGBTQ violence and discrimination incidents. Just last year, reported hate crimes rose 17 percent, making it the third consecutive year that such crimes increased.
Here's an executive summary of the poll, but it doesn't offer much to chew on in terms of how shaded or teleological the methodology is with respect to GLAAD's activist aims.
Nonetheless, the conclusion:
While young people are identifying as LGBTQ in higher rates than ever before, there has also been an uptick in non-LGBTQ young people pushing back against acceptance. The younger generation has traditionally been thought of as a beacon of progressive values. We have taken that idea for granted and this year's results show that the sharp and quick rise in divisive rhetoric in politics and culture is having a negative influence on younger American
Trumpism involves endless mendacity and manipulation. But these new conservatives have definite enemies and aims. They offer an inspiring message of division and disgust for the youth of today.
The liberal and Democratic mainstream, on the other hand, claims to support LGBTQ folk but remains spineless and vague. They spoke of principles as long as it yielded a political return on investment, but their voices are trailing off and their eyes are drifting to the gains made on the right, where strange trial balloons already float into the mire. Compromising with anyone is to instantly lose in the nightmare game theory of Trumptime. So the only thing that's left to do is to take the fertile ground before the alt-right does.
Better get cracking!
