Morality aside, living as an intolerant is such a bad value prop. You're really just signing up to be mad your whole life, because the toothpaste does not go back in the tube. Gays are not going back in the closet. Just like interracial marriage is not going away, and women's suffrage is not going away. If you're mad about these things you're like a social footnote that people fifty years from now won't really understand because the things you're mad about will have inevitably become so normalized.
I mean, will it be normalized? By the way rates are going it seems quite the opposite.
And your other examples don't quite work. Interracial marriage has been allowed in many places (if not most places) throughout history, and even female suffrage was a thing in some polities. Homosexual marriage is not a something that's ever really been practiced in its current form until basically the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
> Interracial marriage has been allowed in many places (if not most places) throughout history, and even female suffrage was a thing in some polities.
You do understand that they were referring to the places it was disallowed? LGTBQ people and same sex marriage have also been tolerated in some times and places (even before the 70s).
And the church and its conservative patriarchal misogynist homophobic dogma ruled all our lives for centuries. But it turns out you can beat the church, if you prove to people that there's no invisible man in the sky watching everything you do, dinosaur bones weren't planted here 6,000 years ago, and gay people are actually normal people that are just slightly different. Conservatives may be depending on hate to keep their numbers up, but that's all they have now.
Once again, I'm not sure this is true. Perhaps the Catholic Church is beaten and relegated to the dustbin of history. The article fails to mention the real reason behind a lot of the LGBT acceptance rates going lower, which is that Muslim migrants have more kids and Islam is a very socially conservative religion.
So maybe you beat the Catholics but is there enough willpower to defeat the Muslims?
Again, you're assuming I'm sort of social conservative pariah. I'm not.
> and gay people are actually normal people that are just slightly different
Once again you're trying to convince me instead of the children of the Netherlands. Good luck.
There is no trend towards liberalism except in western nations, and even that is debatable. People operate under this assumption that everything magically becomes more liberal. It doesn't. There have been regressions and progressions. Progress is not guaranteed.
> Plenty of academic study backs this up, if you care to research it.
With all due respect to the academics, there is more to the world than the Western world and most academics in the West have no ability to comprehend the East. I say this as someone whose family is from 'the East' and so I think I have some more insight into it than many people do. The simple truth is that about 3.1 billion people alone live in India and China and the majority of people in the world live outside the West and these areas are not seeing any sort of great social progress. Sure, there's a lot of economic progress, but social progress in the Western sense is absent (progress in the non-western sense is continuing). There is no evidence that any of these countries are any more closer to embracing gay marriage than they were before. On the periphery of the west, such as the island of Bermuda, they actually repealed gay marriage. Even California, if they were to ask the voters, would repeal gay marriage due to the presence of Asians, Hispanics and blacks, who voted against it the last time they were asked.
how do you do a 'scientific' study on a historical question? Did they simulate multiple worlds and do statistical analyses to see how societies develop? Of course not... this is an archaeological/historical question not a scientific one.
> accurate knowledge than dozens of people
Yes, if you look at experts outside the main Western academic circles, they're pretty much in agreement about it.
> either you're a genius or you severely overestimate yourself.
Armchair experts assume they're right based on what they read. They never have to face reality - whether what they think is actually right or wrong by testing it in the real world.
You can believe whatever you want to believe. You can believe the moon is made of cheese. You can live your whole life with that idea and be perfectly fine. Doesn't mean the moon is actually made of cheese.
Intolerance, of any kind, does not care about praticality. It's the infinite scream of a child, saying "but I don't like it!".
I have no proof, but I really wonder how much of the current resurgence of recessive parties (the correct word would be "conservative", but it's truth is this is a phenomena we can observe across all the political spectrum) is the byproduct of the glorification of infantilization and nostalgia in our current society.
"I want my old movies, I want my old games, I want my old white neighbourhood, I want my parents, I want my old society, I want my youth back".
What does it mean to have “a positive view of homosexuality”? Did they ask them to rate homosexuality out of 10? This is one of those infuriating articles that is worth almost nothing without the specifics of the survey, which, inexplicably, are never given.
Edit: This seems to have the questions on p. 93: https://www.trimbos.nl/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/TRI-52-007... J is boys and M is girls, and the questions are things like “I could be friends with gay kids”, “It’s gross when two boys kiss each other” and “I can talk about homosexuality at school”, so a drop is indeed concerning.
I think we tend to forget about the importance of reversion to the mean, socially.
We think: Germans are like this, the French are like this, the Dutch are like this... without thinking that, when one moves out of sync w/the others, its likely, statistically, to move back into line w/the others.
This has nothing to do with left or right specifically. It means that, whatever the mean is, if a country is not there, it's likely to move in that direction over time. It's more likely to move closer to that than away from that, measured over years.
The Dutch were very liberal and still are in many ways, but in such a situation, they are more likely to move in the "less" than "more" direction. And this is probably such a case.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 41.1 ms ] threadAnd your other examples don't quite work. Interracial marriage has been allowed in many places (if not most places) throughout history, and even female suffrage was a thing in some polities. Homosexual marriage is not a something that's ever really been practiced in its current form until basically the 1970s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage
You do understand that they were referring to the places it was disallowed? LGTBQ people and same sex marriage have also been tolerated in some times and places (even before the 70s).
So maybe you beat the Catholics but is there enough willpower to defeat the Muslims?
Again, you're assuming I'm sort of social conservative pariah. I'm not.
> and gay people are actually normal people that are just slightly different
Once again you're trying to convince me instead of the children of the Netherlands. Good luck.
> Plenty of academic study backs this up, if you care to research it.
With all due respect to the academics, there is more to the world than the Western world and most academics in the West have no ability to comprehend the East. I say this as someone whose family is from 'the East' and so I think I have some more insight into it than many people do. The simple truth is that about 3.1 billion people alone live in India and China and the majority of people in the world live outside the West and these areas are not seeing any sort of great social progress. Sure, there's a lot of economic progress, but social progress in the Western sense is absent (progress in the non-western sense is continuing). There is no evidence that any of these countries are any more closer to embracing gay marriage than they were before. On the periphery of the west, such as the island of Bermuda, they actually repealed gay marriage. Even California, if they were to ask the voters, would repeal gay marriage due to the presence of Asians, Hispanics and blacks, who voted against it the last time they were asked.
> accurate knowledge than dozens of people
Yes, if you look at experts outside the main Western academic circles, they're pretty much in agreement about it.
> either you're a genius or you severely overestimate yourself.
Actually, my main superpower is reading
You can believe whatever you want to believe. You can believe the moon is made of cheese. You can live your whole life with that idea and be perfectly fine. Doesn't mean the moon is actually made of cheese.
I have no proof, but I really wonder how much of the current resurgence of recessive parties (the correct word would be "conservative", but it's truth is this is a phenomena we can observe across all the political spectrum) is the byproduct of the glorification of infantilization and nostalgia in our current society.
"I want my old movies, I want my old games, I want my old white neighbourhood, I want my parents, I want my old society, I want my youth back".
Edit: This seems to have the questions on p. 93: https://www.trimbos.nl/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/TRI-52-007... J is boys and M is girls, and the questions are things like “I could be friends with gay kids”, “It’s gross when two boys kiss each other” and “I can talk about homosexuality at school”, so a drop is indeed concerning.
We think: Germans are like this, the French are like this, the Dutch are like this... without thinking that, when one moves out of sync w/the others, its likely, statistically, to move back into line w/the others.
This has nothing to do with left or right specifically. It means that, whatever the mean is, if a country is not there, it's likely to move in that direction over time. It's more likely to move closer to that than away from that, measured over years.
The Dutch were very liberal and still are in many ways, but in such a situation, they are more likely to move in the "less" than "more" direction. And this is probably such a case.