Whites have become much more accepting of homosexuality--blacks have not.

A gay reader of iSteve.com wrote about how blacks do not want to share a minority center at the University of Chicago with gay students. This got me interested in how much the trends in attitudes toward homosexuality differ between whites and blacks. The first graph above (1973-2004) shows that blacks' tolerance of homosexuality has not changed much in 30 years. The red line shows that the percent thinking that homosexuality is always wrong has hovered around 80%. Acceptance peaked in 1976 and 2000 (grey line) but at no time have 30% of blacks felt that being gay is okay.

By contrast, the second table shows that white acceptance rose significantly from the early 1990s until peaking in 2002 at 48%. Apparently, whites buy the whole idea of universal tolerance, while blacks believe in blacks.

Acceptance for both groups has dropped in the last couple years, perhaps as a reaction to the push for gay marriage.