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.

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 blame the "queer" contingent to a large degree. Why? It is a political identity rather than sexual orientation and isn't about gay & lesbian civil rights and is casting a long shadow over our hard-won acceptance in society.

If you're a gay man in your 50s, "queer" is the last word you heard before you had your head bashed in.

I think everyone would be better off if the queer and the trans communities don't continue to latch onto the gay and lesbian (i.e. homosexual) community. For they splice not on sexual orientation but on something else and we do not share the same interests or concerns.

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.