A recent poll is showing that US support for same-sex marriage is on the decline for the first time in decades. According to a new poll from The Economist and YouGov, although the majority of Americans still support same-sex marriage (54%), that is still down from past statistics. A recent Gallup poll in June found that 65% of respondents supported same-sex marriage, with 32% opposing it. That is down from the record high of 71% support in 2022 and 2023. That percentage had increased 44 points since 1996, when it was at 27%.

However, there have been signs that LGBTQ+ issues are beginning to fall out of favor, especially amongst conservatives. In 2021 and 2022, 55% of Republicans said they favored legal same-sex marriage, but the Gallup poll showed that support down to 37%. Seeing such relationships as morally acceptable also dropped down amongst Republicans from 56% to 35%. That brings Republicans’ views to similar numbers from between 2005 and 2014.

Support for transgenderism has fallen even more. Sixty-three percent in the YouGov poll opposed trans athletes playing on teams that match their gender identity. The Gallup poll showed that the percentage of Americans who viewed changing one’s sex as morally acceptable had declined eight percentage points since 2021 to 38%.

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, wrote an op-ed about the decline, pointing at aggressive gender ideology and Pride events as cultural impetus’s that softened American support for LGBTQ+ issues. Perkins noted that conservatives like himself had pointed at the “slippery slope” of redefining marriage and how that would invade every facet of life. “The debate was never about its impact on my marriage. It was about the impact it would have in our schools, our laws, our institutions, and ultimately in the lives of the next generation,” he wrote. “Time could have proved those concerns unfounded. The promise of ‘marriage equality’ was that it was simply about allowing committed same-sex couples to formalize their relationships. Americans were assured that nothing else would change.”

That promise, noted Perkins, failed. He pointed to Pride parades with full nudity where children were present, drag queen story hours in libraries and preschools, and the decline in marriage and birth rates. “Americans have also watched biological males enter girls’ locker rooms, compete in girls’ sports, and gain access to spaces long reserved for women. Millions of Americans are now connecting the dots. They are seeing the fruit of abandoning God’s design for marriage, family, and the two sexes,” wrote Perkins. “Increasingly, the American people are rendering their own verdict. The great experiment of redefining marriage and reinventing the family has produced its results. Americans are no longer judging promises — they are judging outcomes.”