The rapid increase in public support for gay marriage in the United States between 1988 and 2015 is unprecedented in modern polling. How and why did an idea that was once nonsense become a political reality supported by a majority of the population in such a short period of time? This book analyzes historical data, public opinion data, and qualitative interview data to explain the role of generational change in causing the legalization of gay marriage. Despite the evidence of generational change we see all around us, social scientists have struggled to document and explain generational change ... More

The rapid increase in public support for gay marriage in the United States between 1988 and 2015 is unprecedented in modern polling. How and why did an idea that was once nonsense become a political reality supported by a majority of the population in such a short period of time? This book analyzes historical data, public opinion data, and qualitative interview data to explain the role of generational change in causing the legalization of gay marriage. Despite the evidence of generational change we see all around us, social scientists have struggled to document and explain generational change thoroughly; this has allowed myths and stereotypes about generations to run amok in popular culture. This book corrects this shortcoming and explains America’s cultural revolution in attitudes about gay marriage. It argues that the rapid shift in public support for gay marriage was caused by a change in the social imagination of homosexuality. Americans coming of age during different historical periods developed understandings of homosexuality that were consistent with the cultural common sense of the era, thus making them more or less likely to support gay marriage. The story of gay marriage’s rapid ascent offers profound insights about how the continuous remaking of the population through birth and death, mixed with our shared history and culture and our individual life experiences, produces a society that is continually in flux and constantly reinventing itself anew.