A majority of Republicans now say same-sex relations are immoral after a year of 'groomer' attacks on LGBTQ people, poll finds

• Only 41% of Republicans in a new Gallup poll said gay or lesbian relations were morally acceptable.
• That's a 15-point drop from 2022, the largest one-year change since Gallup has asked the question.

The right-wing campaign to tar LGBTQ people with false allegations of pedophilia appears to be having an impact on Republicans, a majority of whom said in a recent poll that same-sex relations were immoral.

In the poll last month, the latest edition of a survey that Gallup conducts annually, just 41% of Republicans said gay or lesbian relations were morally acceptable, a 15-percentage-point drop from 2022. It was the largest single-year change for any political group since Gallup started asking a similar question two decades ago.

Democratic approval also fell to 79% from 85%.

The share of independents saying same-sex relations are morally acceptable has remained steady in the Gallup poll in recent years, with 73% expressing approval in 2023 compared with 72% the year before.

The sharp drop in support among some Americans follows an especially aggressive year of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and politics.

Over the past year, right-wing activists and politicians have increasingly attacked LGBTQ communities, 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-wing extremists had held at least 55 protests explicitly targeting LGBTQ people, with the rise in such actions correlating with a spike in violence against them.

The rhetoric has also been picked up by conservative news outlets, with Fox News 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 in the latest Gallup poll said gay or lesbian relations were "morally acceptable," still a considerable difference from 2001, when just 40% of respondents to the same poll expressed approval of "homosexual behavior," as the question was worded at the time.

Approval of gay and lesbian relations in the Gallup poll hit a record high last year, when 71% of Americans said such relations were morally permissible — including 56% of Republicans.

Correction: June 21, 2023 — An earlier version of this story misstated the change since 2022 in the share of Republicans who told Gallup that gay or lesbian relations were morally acceptable. It fell by 15 percentage points, not 15%.

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