Lindsey Graham has still not publicly admitted-- weird word to use-- that he's gay, or, to update the parlance, a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Democratic electeds tend to-- even conservative Democrats like Kyrsten Sinema-- while Republicans tend not to, unless they get caught and leave office. Lindsey is 66. People in his age group have been brainwashed with self-loathing.
Lindsey was born on July 9, 1955, which makes him a Baby boomer, like yours truly. In Gallup polling released yesterday, only 2.6% of Baby boomers copped to being gay. That's absurdly low. Maybe they don't recall. Maybe they're sexually inactive and don't relate to the idea of being gay. Or maybe they're still ashamed and lying-- to themselves and /or the pollsters.
Coming out-- liberation-- was a big deal before the hard work that was done in the '60s and '70s to make it OK, and-- alas-- to remove the outlaw stigma attached to being gay and make it seem "normal." (God, who wants to be normal?) But look at this chart that Axios put together yesterday:
21% gay among people born after 1997... that seems high. Back in my day, the assumption was that between 5 and 10% of people were more on the gay side of the spectrum than on the non-gay side. I always assumed not enough people were reading Jean Genet, John Rechy, Hubert Selby and James Baldwin or even just watching Kenneth Anger films. Would this have liberated a closeted little prig like Lindsey Graham back in 1963? Too young.
No? How about Pink Flamingos in 1972?
Erin Doherty notes in the Axios story that "People who identify as LGBTQ could make up 10 to 15% of the adult population 'in the not too distant future' as Gen Z and millennials comprise of an increasing share of the adult population... The percentage of U.S. adults who identify as LGBTQ has doubled over the past decade, from 3.5% in 2012 to 7.1% in 2021... Gen Z women are roughly 3 times more likely than men to identify as LGBTQ and Millennial women are about two times as likely than men to identify as such, according to Gallup." The men are lying. "The increasing number of young adults self-identifying as LGBTQ underscores changing societal norms. The kids are growing up now ... in a very different environment. [LGBTQ young adults are] much more likely because of their environment to acknowledge that and to accept that compared to people in the past who were in a similar situation."
Aside from the activists, the writers and filmmakers, credit musicians... like the Bronski Beat for the cultural revolution.