Anecdotally, I have seen this happen with my own, ultra-conservative family. My mother works with an opennly gay man with a husband; my father doesn't have any gay acquaintances, to my knowledge....
Anecdotally, I have seen this happen with my own, ultra-conservative family. My mother works with an opennly gay man with a husband; my father doesn't have any gay acquaintances, to my knowledge. My mom, while not supporting gay marriage, doesn't make any homophobic comments anymore. My dad still likes trotting them out. Diversity really can work.
For anyone else that read this title and was concerned about causality:
For anyone else that read this title and was concerned about causality:
In a study, people who met and became acquainted with at least one gay person were more likely to later change their minds about same-sex marriage and become more accepting of gay and lesbian people in general, said Daniel DellaPosta, assistant professor of sociology and an affiliate of the Institute for CyberScience.
This makes sense. Bigotry is a lot easier when the "bad guys" aren't real human people who you know and you think of them collectively as negative stereotypes rather than as individuals who you...
This makes sense. Bigotry is a lot easier when the "bad guys" aren't real human people who you know and you think of them collectively as negative stereotypes rather than as individuals who you care about and interact with.
I think it's probably more like "people who know they have gay and lesbian acquaintances. . ." I suspect many communities where this is taboo are likely to have lots of members who are closeted or...
I think it's probably more like "people who know they have gay and lesbian acquaintances. . ." I suspect many communities where this is taboo are likely to have lots of members who are closeted or in-denial for understandable reasons.
This might also explain why those religions that really disliked sodomy might have been so keen to recommend severe punishments like exile or death. Seems like gayness isn't contagious, but tolerance of it is, which presents a problem for gay-hating fundies.
Well... yes. There wouldn't be any sociological effect from having a gay or lesbian acquaintance you didn't know was gay or lesbian. That's why there are a couple of paragraphs in the middle of...
I think it's probably more like "people who know they have gay and lesbian acquaintances. . ."
Well... yes. There wouldn't be any sociological effect from having a gay or lesbian acquaintance you didn't know was gay or lesbian. That's why there are a couple of paragraphs in the middle of this article which talk about coming out as a strategy to increase acceptance of gay and lesbian people: because it's all about people knowing gay and lesbian people who are out as gay or lesbian.
Kind of depends. With a lot of the super-conservative types I've interacted with, they often sort of know or suspect then people who might experience same-sex attraction. But they tend to think of...
There wouldn't be any sociological effect from having a gay or lesbian acquaintance you didn't know was gay or lesbian.
Kind of depends. With a lot of the super-conservative types I've interacted with, they often sort of know or suspect then people who might experience same-sex attraction. But they tend to think of being gay as a conscious performance of sexual preference rather than an orientation. So if people aren't "out" they don't really think of them as "being gay."
I'll caveat, this is mostly with conservative Indians and Arabs. You'll hear of guys kissing or even manually stimulating each other, but still saying bad things about gay people because they don't think of themselves as being gay/bi. So there is a process of "being" gay that's independent of just experiencing same-sex attraction that I think needs to happen for this to work.
Anecdotally, I have seen this happen with my own, ultra-conservative family. My mother works with an opennly gay man with a husband; my father doesn't have any gay acquaintances, to my knowledge. My mom, while not supporting gay marriage, doesn't make any homophobic comments anymore. My dad still likes trotting them out. Diversity really can work.
For anyone else that read this title and was concerned about causality:
This makes sense. Bigotry is a lot easier when the "bad guys" aren't real human people who you know and you think of them collectively as negative stereotypes rather than as individuals who you care about and interact with.
People can find this out for themselves by reading the article.
I think it's probably more like "people who know they have gay and lesbian acquaintances. . ." I suspect many communities where this is taboo are likely to have lots of members who are closeted or in-denial for understandable reasons.
This might also explain why those religions that really disliked sodomy might have been so keen to recommend severe punishments like exile or death. Seems like gayness isn't contagious, but tolerance of it is, which presents a problem for gay-hating fundies.
Well... yes. There wouldn't be any sociological effect from having a gay or lesbian acquaintance you didn't know was gay or lesbian. That's why there are a couple of paragraphs in the middle of this article which talk about coming out as a strategy to increase acceptance of gay and lesbian people: because it's all about people knowing gay and lesbian people who are out as gay or lesbian.
Kind of depends. With a lot of the super-conservative types I've interacted with, they often sort of know or suspect then people who might experience same-sex attraction. But they tend to think of being gay as a conscious performance of sexual preference rather than an orientation. So if people aren't "out" they don't really think of them as "being gay."
I'll caveat, this is mostly with conservative Indians and Arabs. You'll hear of guys kissing or even manually stimulating each other, but still saying bad things about gay people because they don't think of themselves as being gay/bi. So there is a process of "being" gay that's independent of just experiencing same-sex attraction that I think needs to happen for this to work.