A couple interesting new studies out this week on how straight people view gays.
First off, a new Gallup poll shows that 37% still believe being gay is a choice.
Queerty reports:
According to Gallup’s latest results, posted on Wednesday, 37 percent of Americans “believe people become gay as a result of factors such as their upbringing and environment,” while 42 percent are siding with Lady Gaga — people are born gay, y’all. What’s surprising is that people in the “born gay” camp are on the decline, if these stats are to be taken literally. The same poll conducted in 2013 showed that 47 percent of those participating believed people were born gay, which is a a full 5 percent drop that “halted the trend” of “born gay” beliefs on the rise for the first time since 2001.
Is the drop in people believing gays are born that way a fluke? We’ll have to wait until next year to see.
In a study out of Portugal, researchers found that many straight people want to wash their hands after having contact with gays.
Gay Star News reports:
Straight people still think gay men are ‘dirty’, according to new research. According to experiments undertaken across the world, the participants felt the need to ‘physically cleanse’ themselves after imagining contact with a gay person. Researchers believe it proves some people think gay men can ‘contaminate’ them in their subconscious mind. If the participant considered themselves to be conservative in their social views, then they were far more likely to need to consider gay men to be ‘dirty’.
So, taken together, these reports show that we still have a lot of work to do.
