The LGBT identity explosion

An estimated 20 percent of Americans under 30 identify as LGBT.   That’s roughly double the percentage of the previous generation.

Now this could be an exaggeration.  Also,  sexual identity is changing at a faster rate than actual sexual behavior.  But the trend is clear.

Click to enlarge

LGBT identity is celebrated by almost every major institution in society, so it shouldn’t be surprising that LGBT identity is becoming more popular.

Strangely, many people who only engage in heterosexual sex still identify as LGBT.  Most of the increase is in the B for bisexual category.  You can live the life of a straight cisgender person, and still call yourself a “B.”  Make of this what you will.

Click to enlarge

A study of the rise of LGBT identity by Eric Kaufmann has just been published by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.  Here is his executive summary.

• The last decade has seen a precipitous rise in the share of Americans identifying as LGBT, particularly among the youngest adults. Today, among those under 30, a wide range of surveys converge on a number of around 20 percent.
• Government data from Canada and the UK indicate that surveys might be overestimating the extent of the rise in LGBT identity. This caveat must be kept in mind in understanding this report.  Nonetheless, these government sources indicate that the trend is real, even if less reliable surveys might exaggerate it. The UK’s Office for National Statistics finds that 7.6 percent of those 16-24 identify as LGBT, which can be taken as a low-end estimate for that country.
• The most popular LGBT identity is bisexual, which is significantly more common among women than men.
• When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification.  Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96 percent exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92 percent exclusively heterosexual in 2021.  Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
• The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30.  Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior.  The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.
• Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women.  It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal. The most liberal respondents have moved from 10-15 percent non-heterosexual identification in 2016 to 33 percent in 2021. Other ideological groups are more stable.

White Clinton voters and the racial divide

Public opinion polls indicate that white liberals feel more warmly toward other races than they do toward their own, which seems unusual.

Political scientist Eric Kaufmann cited the following survey data in an article in the New York Times.  It’s on a scale with 0 as completely unfavorable, 50 as neutral and 100 as completely favorable.

Black Clinton voters

85 percent favorable opinion about their own race

59 percent favorable opinion about other races.

White Trump voters

80 percent favorable opinion about their own race

69 percent favorable opinion about other races.

Black Trump voters

77 percent favorable opinion about their own race

72 percent favorable opinion about other races.

White Clinton voters

70 percent favorable opinion about their own race

80 percent favorable opinion about other races.

Now you can’t say that white Clinton voters are self-hating, because they have a favorable opinion about their own race.  And you can’t say that black Clinton voters are “reverse racists” because they have a favorable opinion of non-black races.

Note also that none of the four categories of voters has a net unfavorable view of other races. That’s important, because I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t have been true 50 or 60 years ago.

But it’s interesting that the white Clinton voters are the least favorable toward their own race and the most favorable toward other races, while black Clinton voters are the reverse.

Kaufmann wrote in his New York Times article—

Since 2012, white liberals have moved considerably left on questions related to race, reflecting both a campus- and online-driven cultural awakening that has accelerated in response to Mr. Trump.  

On the American National Election Study’s scale measuring how respondents feel about a group — white liberals are warmer toward minorities than their own racial group.

[snip] This has happened as liberal thought has changed its focus from class to identity issues since the 1960s.  

During the civil rights era, African-Americans rallied strongly behind racial liberalism, which was a communal issue.  But the connection between race and racial ideology has weakened considerably: People of color are not the driving force behind most of today’s forms of racial liberalism.

I think he underestimates the amount of both open racism and unconscious racial prejudice in the USA.  And I don’t think the change in white liberal thinking is a response to Donald Trump’s election.  If anything, Trump’s election is a reaction to the change in white liberalism that began about five years ago.

Populism, immigration and white majorities

2.1 children per woman is the replacement rate.  Click to enlarge.

I recently read WHITESHIFT: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities by Eric Kaufmann (2018, 2019)

It’s about the response of white people in North America, western Europe and Australasia to the fact that their birth rates are below the replacement rate, and that the likely sources of immigration are all from non-white countries with higher birth rates.

Kaufmann, a professor of political science at the University of London, said white fears of immigration are the driving force behind the election of Donald Trump, the exit of the United Kingdom from the European Community and the rise of right-wing populist parties throughout western Europe.

He sees four white responses to population shifts:

• Fight.  Reduce or eliminate immigration from non-white countries.
• Repress.  Avoid thinking about the issue and suppress discussion in the name of anti-racism.
• Flee.  Retreat to white enclaves and avoid diverse neighborhoods, schools and social networks.
• Join.   Assimilate and inter-marry with non-whites to form a new beige majority.

I wrote about the fourth possibility in a 2012 blog post.  I noted how, in the USA, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority evolved into a white majority that includes Catholics and Jews.  I speculated on the possibility of a further evolution into a new “non-black” majority including white Hispanics, mixed-race people who identify as white and possibly Asian-Americans.

The great danger, as I saw it,  is that the new majority would be as much, or maybe even more, prejudiced against black people as the old majority..

Kaufmann, who grew up in Vancouver, hopes for a more benign evolution—a inclusive majority based not on ancestry, color or facial features, but on loyalty to the nations’ original European cultural roots, but also tolerant of minorities who reject that culture.

He’s an example of what he advocates.  He is by ancestry one-fourth Latino and one-fourth Chinese, but identifies as white.  (The fact that he “identifies” rather than “passes” as white shows progress that has occurred in my lifetime.)

I have long believed that American patriotism should be based not on race, religion or national origin, but on loyalty to the Constitution and the ideals of equal rights contained in the Declaration of Independence.

Kaufmann thinks such civic ideals are too thin to command strong loyalty.  A nation can and should have principles of good citizenship, but real national identity requires a sense of being part of a community with a shared history, whether defined by language, religion, ancestry or culture and customs.

∞∞∞

The politics of the USA, the UK and many other countries are defined by a revolt of an anti-immigration Populist Right  against what Kaufmann calls a Left-Modernist cultural and political elite, which defines opposition to immigration as racist.

Exceptions include the English-speaking parts of Canada, where no Populist Right has emerged, and nationalistic countries of Eastern Europe, where Left Modernism has never gained a foothold.  In Quebec and Scotland also, the cultural elite is on the side of French Canadian and Scottish ethnic nationalism.

Left-Modernism, as Kaufmann sees it, originated among bohemian intellectuals of a century or so ago, who rejected the conventions of the conformist middle-class majority.  In the USA, this was a revolt against the Puritan heritage and an embrace of everything anti-Puritan, from sexual freedom to  jazz music.

Over time these values came to dominate academia, the news and entertainment media and the political elite.  Along the way, though, the Left Modernists ceased to value radical individualism and self-expression and developed a kind of reverse Puritanism, based on conformity and guilt.  Nowadays it is the Populist Right that is transgressive and provocative.