In today's New York Times Charles Blow reports on some interesting findings by the folks at Gallup about perceptions of same-sex relations.

While there's been a general trend toward acceptance of gay relationships, this year, according to Gallup, "Americans' support for the moral acceptability of gay and lesbian relations [has] crossed the symbolic 50% threshold."

[T]he shift is apparent in a record-high level of the public seeing gay and lesbian relations as morally acceptable. Meanwhile,support for legalizing gay marriage, and for the legality of gay and lesbian relations more generally, is near record highs.

"However," the pollsters note,  "the change is seen almost exclusively among men, and particularly men younger than 50." 

The change  (14 percentage points since 2006 for  men as opposed to an anemic 2 points for women) has resulted in the number of American men who think it's OK to be gay to, for the first time, exceed the number of women who think so.

Um, sounds like a party to me, boys.

While it's mostly younger men (a twenty percent increase in the 18-49 bracket), attitudes changed for the better by  a healthy 9% among men over fifty, too (as opposed to a measly 2% of women the same age).

Research has also found that when gay men in particular are referred to as "homosexual" the level of acceptance plummets.  Blow conjectures that "the inclusion of the root word 'sex' still raises an aversive response to the idea of, how shall I say, the architectural issues between two men."

He may be right.  The most virulent opponents of gay rights often use graphic descriptions of what they imagine to be the gory sex practices of gay men to whip up hysteria among their base.  In Vanguard's recent documentary "Missionaries of Hate" (must-see TV), Correspondent Mariana van Zeller goes to Uganda, where a virulent anti-gay movement inspired by American evangelicals and headed up by savvy political opportunists is sweeping the nation.

Uganda has, of course, been the subject of extreme criticism of a bill that would make not only homosexuality punishable by death, but not reporting homosexuals a punishable offense.  It's a recipe for a witch hunt.  But what is most shocking about the documentary is the way Pastor Dr. Martin Ssempa whips his audiences into a homophobic frenzy with his by now world famous "poo-poo" powerpoint presentations. 

Somebody needs to give that man an enema.

People get weird ideas when left to themselves.  I remember coming out to a couple of females friends years ago.  This was in Hungary, and these were both women I'd been trying to fend off for some time.  When I finally had "The Talk" with them, they both (separately, of course) looked stricken, and both said the same thing:

"But you're not 'the woman', are you?"

I was like: "um, the point is, there is no woman in the equation here.  I want to be very clear about that."

Even my mother, bless her, who met The Ex and still raves about him, shudders at the thought of our sexual life together.  "I don't want to know!" she says with a flurry of girlish giggles. 

Good, 'cause I don't want to tell you.  Weirdo.

When people see people, and not acts — many of which, like Pastor Poo-poo's, are far-flung fetishes that have no demonstrable association with sexual orientation (if you only knew how finicky gay men are about cleanliness and hygiene you would understand the absurdity of Pastor Ssempa's claims) — they seem perfectly willing to live and let live. 

And that's what seems to be happening these days in America.  More men know more men who have sex with men.  Which may or may not mean more men are having sex with men, although, according to Blow, "current research reveals that the fastest-growing group along the sexuality continuum are men who self-identify as 'mostly straight' as opposed to labels like 'straight,' 'gay' or 'bisexual.'"

Guys: Sean Cody is REAL!!!

Blow hints at the reason for this sea change in sexual attitudes and identities: the "contact hypothesis". 

And we're not talking about that new "sack-tapping" craze. 

Be gentle, boys, and they'll come around.