When you look at public opinion, one of the clearest markers of how dramatically things
have shifted is the number of people who say that they know an openly gay or lesbian person.
Back in 1985 it was 24 percent of Americans who said they knew an open gay or lesbian
person.
By last year that had shifted up to 88 percent.
And so, we actually dedicated the book—it’s a statistics book, but we dedicated the book
to an unknown number, which is the number of people who have had the courage to come
out.
And that’s an impossible number to document or quantify.
But I think it is the starting point for the revolutionary progress that has been made.
Harvey Milk and other pioneers of gay and lesbian liberation made that basic point that
coming out was a first step towards greater equality because visibility would lead straight
Americans to understand and accept and embrace and advocate for equality for LGBT folks.
And so this movement toward acceptance I think is completely intertwined with the growing
visibility and the openness and the honesty that LGBT folks have embraced.
I do think data collection and the dissemination of survey results and polls is really important.
At the same time I think if we’re talking about what the single most important factor
might be, in terms of the revolution toward greater equality for LGBT people, I think
you’ve got to look at the media and the idea that media portrayals have shifted so
dramatically.
That’s one of my favorite chapters in the book actually, the section on film and TV
and other forms of media, which when you look at early television portrayals in the '70s
and '80s there were occasional gay and lesbian characters, but generally the laughing stock
of any given show.
And the very first gay couple was on a Normal Lear series called 'Hot L Baltimore' about
this hotel in Baltimore.
That program wasn’t even broadcast in Baltimore and it was canceled after a handful of episodes,
and it was preceded by this warning, you know, to make sure parents didn’t allow their
children to be corrupted by the morally questionable content.
And so you fast forward from that to something like 'Will & Grace' or 'The Ellen DeGeneres
Show' where you have open gay and lesbian characters actually living their lives.
And people can quibble—and I think for good reason—with some of the portrayals, but
when you look at the overall trend, just the very fact that mainstream television and network
television is showing and embracing healthy, gay characters in committed relationships
and in a really positive light, I do think that has been fundamental to the changes we’ve
seen.
And then I also think that the ongoing collection of data through organizations like Gallup
and the Williams Institute is also fundamental in terms of reminding people that there is
this trend towards greater acceptance, and I think that growing acceptance, as reflected
by the numbers, leads people to be more open with pollsters so that if Gallup’s numbers
on “Should same sex activity be legal?”
As those numbers go up—or “Should same sex marriage be legalized?”—as those numbers
go up I think that reporting in turn encourages people to reveal their inner support.
So there is a trend and a cycle whereby growing awareness and growing reporting of this awareness
leads to greater acceptance.