Dear Tessa Charlesworth and Eli J. Finkel: Would you have have made the same assessment in 2006, 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012, and/or 2019? Best, Retiring Guy

Let's take a look at the big picture here, folks.

According to Gallup polling in 1996

• 68% of respondents replied that marriages between same sex couples should not be recognized by the law as valid
• 27% replied that they should be

In 2025

• 29% of respondents replied that marriages between same sex couples should not be recognized by the law as valid
• 68% replied that they should be

The numbers flipped in less than 20 years.

Graph:  Gallup

Headline:  New York Times, 1/19/2026

Tessa Charlesworth and Eli J. Finkel opine:

We wish we could share that optimism. Unfortunately, new research that one of us, Professor Charlesworth, helped conduct reveals a darker truth: The decades-long rise in the acceptance of gay people in the United States peaked around 2020 and has sharply reversed since then. The popularity of “Heated Rivalry,” it seems, is a welcome burst of enthusiasm for gay life in a new era of anti-gay prejudice.