Gen Z Rebels Against “Gay Acceptance”

A recent New York Times opinion piece laments that “Americans Are Turning Against Gay People,” warning of a supposed slide back into the moral dark ages. But this interpretation misunderstands the spirit of the age, especially among Generation Z, where the shift reflects a resistance to an aggressive and demanding cultural regime.

The two authors, psychologists Dr. Tessa E.S. Charlesworth and Dr. Eli J. Finkel, cite their decades-long research into Americans’ implicit and explicit biases against gays and other minority groups. According to their findings, “Across every US state and demographic group, anti-gay bias plummeted” from 2007 to 2020. “Forecasting models suggested anti-gay bias could hit zero as early as 2022.” The researchers then abandon any pretense of neutrality, openly eulogizing the “decline of tolerance” and the world they were promised—one of peace, love, and universal gay acceptance. Young Americans see right through these games and are turning over the board. 

Coming of age politically during the Obama era meant being force-fed the Millennial-coded claptrap of political correctness, such as speech policing around pronouns and microaggressions, land acknowledgments, and corporate virtue signaling. Only by extracting the traditional views of the past could the new, enlightened generations herald the coming of the progressive Übermensch who will trumpet an authoritatively inclusive worldview. “Unfortunately,” say Drs. Charlesworth and Finkel, “the decades-long rise in the acceptance of gay people in the United States peaked around 2020 and has sharply reversed since then.” Toll the church bells, gay acceptance is dead.

To be sure, there is plenty of counterevidence to show that young Americans—especially young women—have grown far more accepting of gay people and their lifestyles. A 2024 nationwide survey found that “eight in ten respondents now say they approve of gay, lesbian, or bisexual individuals living their lives as they wish.” 

While the “live and let live” philosophy remains popular, the Times authors uncover how the tide is turning among those under 25, signaling a readjustment that could radically reshape politics and culture in the years ahead. To boot, the Public Religion Research Institute conducted a survey in 2024 suggesting that support for LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination laws and same-sex marriage among 18 to 29-year-olds has steadily declined over the past decade, down from early-2020s highs and continuing to drift lower. 

Why is this shift happening? The Times authors attribute it largely to Covid-era political polarization and anti-establishment sentiments, in which the same institutions pushing gay acceptance kept young people locked down and out of school, in some cases for nearly two years.

However, I believe this misses the point. Young men, in particular, were radicalized before the pandemic following years of cultural overreach and the moral bulldozing of Middle America, and many are responding by turning elsewhere—such as embracing traditional religion or the radical politics of white identitarians like Nick Fuentes. 

The data indicates Generation Z—those born in 1997 and after—now has the highest church attendance of any cohort, while Baby Boomers are in steep decline. Anecdotally, colleges and universities are seeing an explosion in the number of converts to Christianity. At my own Catholic parish, the converts during Easter (I was one of them in 2024) are overwhelmingly young men in their 20s. And for the first time, young men are now more religious than young women. The greatest antidote to the Obama-era progressive slop—many Gen Zers are discovering—is the true, the good, and the beautiful. In other words, God. 

Rejecting progressive dogma is now punk and subversive. This is why many are drawn to radical politics that are not bound to contemporary social standards. On the Left, streamers like Hasan Piker will praise Mao Zedong, and Nick Fuentes, on the Right, will lionize Adolf Hitler and his “aura.” Smashing the Overton window is exhilarating, though the Left only goes halfway. Only on the Right are anti-gay sentiments accelerating because the Left (or at least the politically lukewarm) have been culturally dominant for decades. 

Though much psychobabble in the media attempts to explain young men’s rejection of progressive values with talk of economic malaise and “white rage,” they fundamentally misunderstand this demographic. It’s simpler than they think. Every television show, every movie, every advertisement—everything promoted by Hollywood and the elite—pushes their preferred progressive vision. This makes its way off-screen and into the university and workplace. 

Jacob Savage’s poignant essay in Compact underscores this point with harrowing precision: “For white male millennials, DEI wasn’t a gentle rebalancing—it was a profound shift in how power and prestige were distributed.” In one of the myriad examples he cites: in 2011, white men made up 48 percent of lower-level TV writers but just 11.9 percent by 2024, while white men dropped from 39 percent of tenure-track humanities positions at Harvard in 2014 to 18 percent in 2023. These once-taboo topics now demand confrontation as the cultural regime systematically discards an entire demographic. 

Young men, particularly young white men, have been shouldered out of hiring pipelines and advancement tracks, often told—both implicitly and explicitly—that opportunity was no longer meant for them. With no path forward in the new system, radical rejection became the only logical choice. 

The findings, as laid out in The New York Times, are merely a trend in the repudiation of cultural progressivism. Equating gay relationships with straight ones, dismissing the complementary nature of men and women, and stigmatizing Christianity and white people—everyone is sick of it. Reality is making a comeback, good and hard. 

The authors then approach the end of their elegy: “Gay and lesbian people, newly woven into the fabric of mainstream society, may have been collateral damage in a broader revolt against a system that felt broken”—now we’re talking; “Especially among younger generations grappling most intensely with uncertainty about their future”—veering off course again. 

Because progressive thinkers tend toward materialism, their diagnoses of social ills reach for economic and political explanations rather than spiritual or ideological ones. When they say, “uncertainty about the future,” they are talking in substantive terms: a house, a family, retirement savings. Young people do worry that these are out of reach, but this only glimpses the reason why. They are not “turning against gay people” so much as turning against an ideology that expropriated gay acceptance and used it as a Trojan horse for a leftist crusade.

Progressive ideas about tolerance and inclusion demand the erasure of tradition and the softening of men. Young men have been told their instincts are toxic and that religion is backward, naturally spurring many to investigate it themselves. Some found the truth in religion, while many more came to see how “acceptance” and “inclusion” were wielded to quietly push them to the margins of society.

An open defiance of left-wing cultural norms has become one of the last acts of rebellion young men have.