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Only 41% of Republicans say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable, according to Gallup.
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That is a 15% drop from 2022, the largest single-year change since Gallup began asking the question.
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The drop comes amid a right-wing campaign to link LGBTQ people with “grooming” and pedophilia.
The right-wing campaign to tar the LGBTQ community with false allegations of pedophilia appears to be having an impact on Republican voters, a majority of whom now say that same-sex relations are immoral, according to a poll by Gallup.
In the survey conducted last month, just 41% of Republicans said that gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable, a 15% drop from 2022. It was the largest single-year change in the past two decades.
Democratic approval also fell from 85% to 79%.
Independents who say same-sex relations are morally acceptable has remained steady in recent years, with 73% expressing approval in 2023 compared to 72% the year before, according to Gallup.
The sharp drop in support among some Americans follows an especially aggressive year of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and politics.
Over the last year, right-wing activists and politicians have increasingly attacked the LGBTQ community, claiming that public school teachers are “grooming” students by acknowledging the existence of gay or transgender people.
The attacks have led school districts across the country to pull books from libraries over claims that depictions of gay or transgender relationships are “pornographic.”
Last year, the crisis monitoring group ACLED found that right-extremists had held at least 55 protests explicitly targeting LGBTQ people, with the rise in such actions correlating with a spike in violence against the community.
The rhetoric has also been picked up by conservative news outlets, with Fox News last week reporting last week that “critics” were accusing the Biden administration of promoting “grooming and pedophilia” for flying a transgender-inclusive Pride flag at the White House.
Overall, 64% of Americans still say that gay or lesbian relations are “morally acceptable,” including 79% of Democrats and 73% of self-described independents, according to the Gallup poll.
Americans have come a long way since 2001, when just 40% of respondents to the same poll expressed approval of same-sex relations.
Approval of gay and lesbian relations hit a record high last year, when 71% of Americans told Gallup that such relations were morally permissible — including 56% of Republicans.
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