> To me the biggest thing driving acceptance of gay people is the realization that being gay is not a choice, but rather something you are born with. I'm not s

> To me the biggest thing driving acceptance of gay people is the realization that being gay is not a choice, but rather something you are born with. I'm not sure that it is the case that sudden realisation of the etiology of sexual orientation is the cause of increasing tolerance. I think it is far more likely that acceptance and tolerance has come from the fact that lots of people have come out (and partly because of pop culture). Wind back to Turing's time and nobody knew that they knew a gay person. Gay people were kept in the shadows of society, and myths, rumours and slanders spread with no check on them. Now, precisely because so many people have come out, when I tell someone I'm gay, they don't immediately think "well, he must be some kind of sick, child abusing, creepy pervert who does unspeakable things in the bedroom". Reasonable people will simply conclude "okay, he likes dudes" because it fits with their experience of other gay people. The malicious stereotypes fail to live up to reality. In Britain, the official statistics say that 1 in 16 people are lesbian, gay or bi. Most people know more than 16 people, therefore most people know an LGB person. When the vast majority of them don't turn out to be immoral creepy sex abusing pervert freaks, it becomes rather more difficult for crazy people to keep the stereotypes going.