LGBT Attitudes Timeline Analysis
4 min readFeb 26, 2024
What does the table tell us? Remember the cultural traffic lights mentioned above? The color coding in the table tells a story of social value lights slowly changing over the decades. Public opinion has shifted radically more positively toward LGBT equality and inclusion over the last 50 years. Medical institutions were the first to shift but did not appear to directly impact public opinion. Media, on the other hand, has a strong correlation with public opinion while political institutions have lagged in their support. A more detailed analysis can be found with the below.
- The most obvious trend to note is that the attitudes toward LGBT have become radically more positive and inclusive in the last 70 years.
- Very little changed in the first two decades, public opinion-wise and institution-wise.
- That does not mean that nothing was going on. In fact, as captured in the more detailed timeline, activism was increasing and pressure was being placed on the institutions. However, none of those efforts shifted public opinion or shifted institutional positions within that decade.
- While nothing had overtly changed in those first two decades, the seeds for change were growing in each decade that would shift attitudes in subsequent decades. These seeds have both positive and negative impacts on LGBT equality and access.
- In the ’70s, the medical institutions moved ahead of public opinion when they removed homosexuality from the DSM, effectively removing the mental illness stigma.
- The medical institutions remained thereafter ahead of public opinion and other institutions. It appears that the medical institutions do NOT have a direct impact on public opinion but rather appear to ‘give permission’ to other institutions to shift in medical institutions’ direction.
- The next institution to shift was the media conversation, first shifting away from negative portrayal of LGBT characters and negative LGBT news to neutral to somewhat positive portrayals. The media, from the ’80s on also remained ahead of public opinion. The most interesting aspect of the media shift is that public opinion lagged but began to correlate with increasingly more positive LGBT character portrayals in entertainment and news media.
- The political/legal institutions have lagged and continue to lag public opinion in support of the LGBT community.
- While the political/legal institutions lag behind public opinion, these institutions have the strongest impact on the LGBT community as noted in the 2000s. While public opinion, media and medical institutions were trending positive, the political/legal institutions withheld equal treatment and access to the rights and freedoms available to the general population. Again in the early 2020s the political institutions regressed due to the Supreme Court Dobbs decision prompting Republican governed states to pass LGBT restrictive laws with the lion’s share focused on trans rights. We are currently living in a mixed model for LGBT support.
Detailed LGBT Attitudes and Events Timeline by Decade
