“Why Ricky Martin’s Coming Out Wasn’t Big News” - Julia Baird’s recent Newsweek article – makes the important point that nations with more progressive attitudes toward homosexuality are also happier and healthier. She writes:
Still, while it may have been a wrenching decision for Martin personally, there was something refreshing about eye rolling replacing homophobic invective. We should want his coming out to not be a big deal in whichever country we might live in. New research shows that tolerance of homosexuality is likely to mean we live in a democratic, developed, wealthy country. It should also mean we live in a well-educated country. And it may well mean we live in a relatively happy country.
She kindly cites my own recent research with Charlotta Mellander and Peter Rentfrow on happiness, socioeconomic structures, and tolerance. And she quotes Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute on findings from Ronald Ingelhart’s World Values Survey which looks closely at this issue.
As we’ve transitioned from an industrial to a service/information economy, education and the ability to make independent decisions has become more valuable and therefore more widespread. The need of the changing economy for increasingly educated, independent thinkers has helped create less conformist and more open, tolerant citizens.
But the real kicker is this comment from Wharton economist and Freakonomics blogger Justin Wolfers whose own research with Betsey Stevenson notes the close connection between income and the happiness of nations:
[Wolfers]believes that while there is clearly “something associated with economic development that appears to lead to more liberal attitudes to homosexuality,” it is not clear what that is. “I find it hard to believe that the link is simply ‘happiness,’ but one can easily see how development leads to a more enlightened public through all sorts of forces (democracy, education, time for reflection, less of a fight for survival, etc.).”
The key question remains to what extent more open social and cultural values affect economic development as well as being affected by it.
April 2nd, 2010 at 4:13 pm
Why is homosexuality percieved as the one special sort of sexual deviance ? It is really in the same category as other sexual perversions, like pedophilia, for example. There is such a push to make everyone “accept” homosexuality as normal, but it is a lifestyle choice, like the choice to be a hell’s angel, and there is absolutely no evidence that it is biological. The new eugenics is a bundle of philosphies that are designed to reduce the earth’s population and discourage the formation of families with children, and homosexuality is one of those philosophies.
April 3rd, 2010 at 3:00 pm
Jones,
There are no sexual deviances, only social ones.
Paedophilia has two “a”s in it, like paediatrician.
If around the world the prevalence of homosexuality remains fairly constant, then that can’t mean it’s a choice, can it?
Try reading “The Blank Slate” by Steven Pinker. It has long words in it, so it might not be your cup of tea, but it’s very good.
April 3rd, 2010 at 9:16 pm
Daniel, your spelling of pedophelia is the english spelling, we don’t use it in the USA…Your declaration that there are no sexual deviances says it all. You evidently approve of all perversions, including pedophilia… The world wide prevelance of motorcycle gangs remains constant too, so is that a choice? Try not to be too smug about your supposed enlightenment, and intelligence.
April 6th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Everyone knows homosexuality is wrong, but for some reason society’s values are being eroded (as follows):
.
1)First, ask for tolerance for acts that are wrong.
2)Second, ask for decriminalization of the acts that are wrong.
3)Third, marginalize and intimidate those who question the acts that are wrong.
4)Use the courts or other non-democratic means to impose the minority will on the majority.
5)Discriminate against and be intolerant toward those who remind the world that the acts that are wrong are still wrong.
6)Use criminal sanctions against the people who still say the wrong acts are wrong
7)Make illegal the institutions that still dare to teach that these acts are wrong.
8)Take away the property of those who dare to continue to insist that these acts are wrong.