Such a monumental shift in public attitude is not without precedent. Between 1960-5 the Civil Rights Movement drastically changed societal attitudes towards race: within a few years all major cultural institutions as well as public opinion decisively renounced Jim Crow segregation in the South. A few years later global corporations did the same in their push for diversity and inclusion. The USA had become systematically anti-racist in all major instituions, with residual holdouts, especially in the South, of course. In the late 60s there was an immense change in Catholic practice and attiude in the wake of the Council. During those very same years the Sexual Revolution exploded, with the availability of contraception: sexual mores were relaxed, sex was unbound from marriage and fertility, authority and tradition largely dismissed, and feminism demanded equality in the work place along with "reproductive freedom."
This recent change about homosexuality has strangely been more pronounced among young women. For instance,a recent poll shows that from 2011 to 2017 the percentage of Catholic males who reported a sexual attraction only to women declined from 94 to 93%, an insignificant change. By contrast the percentage of Catholic females reporting exclusive heterosexual attraction declined from 87 to 77%, quite substantial in such a short period. More striking still, among young females with no religious affiliation the decline was from 70 to 48%. Startling: a majority of young, non-religious women report some same-sex attraction! What is happening?
First, a summary of the root causes of lesbian attraction. The 2019 Scientific American report (authored by some gay activists) found a lack of scientific evidence for genetic/biological causes of the attraction and thereby cast doubt on the "born-that-way" doctine and led credence to psychological roots. These involve a wound to feminine-self-worth that comes from a variety of sources:
1. abuse, neglect or betrayal by men may leave distrust and a transfer of the need for affection and intimacy to women.
2. a negative body image can leave a sense of unworthiness that can urge one to physical intimacy with a more feminine person.
3. poor connection with the mother can inhibit the interiorization of a sense of innate femininity and again awaken a need for intimacy with a woman.
4. poor connection with a father can leave a girl with an inadequate sense of her own worth in her femininity as well as an incapacity for trust in and intimacy with men.
5. Failure to form strong, deep friendships with women can leave a hunger that becomes physicalized.
But: why the sudden change among our young women in something so deep and basic?One explanation would be that there is not such a significant change but with broader acceptance more women are honestly reporting feelings that have been present all along but not admitted because of social stigma. There may be something to that; but I doubt it explains the change fully. A number of factors come to mind.
1. The Demise of Masculinity. Our young men have been deprived of the "itinerary of formation into virility" and are increasingly incapable of commitment, stability, fatherhood as their own male identity is fragile. The culture of promiscuity and pornography have heightened this crisis.
2. The Decline of Fatherhood. This relates to the prior factor but refers to the previous generation: with so many young women deprived of a close, strong paternal relationship their sense of their own femininity as well as their trust and understanding of men is wounded.
3. Culture of Contraception. This development is a delayed but inevitable result of the culture of sexual sterility and recreation that flooded us in the 1960s and 70s. If sex if merely romantic/recreational and not spousal/fecund, why not experiment with the same sex?
4. Fluidity of Feminine Sexuality. Woman's sexuality is less hardwired biologically and more emotional and therefore more fluid. It is sensitive and responsive and therefore reactive to the traumas that are described here. It also seems easier for women to move in and out of both kinds of intimate relationships.
5. Mimetic imitation. Notoriously among adolescent females, the dynamics of mimetic contagion can be overwhelming. The human being as such is mimetic: 99% of us are mimetic 99% of the time. But the young woman seems to be especially vulnerable. So we see plagues of eating disorders, cutting, promiscuity, and such. The omnipresence of social media heighten this tendency as we see that entertainment and the elite culture vigorously normalizing homosexuality So lesbianism has become trendy, fashionable: it seems edgy, creative, unconventional, even it has the full blessing of the Woke Established Religion.
6. Loss of God. As noted above, young women NONEs (without religious affiliation) are more inclined to the lesbian attraction. This suggests that lack of rooting in a faith tradition pushes in this direction. This would also apply, obviously to those who retain a religious affiliation but are weak in practice and belief and in facting increasing secular in style of life.
7. The Demise of Femininity as Form. As virility has declined as a form, an ideal, a norm, so has femininity. Mainstream femininism sought to deconstruct gender to reconstruct the human person as a de-gendered, androgynous monad. It required equality as sameness with masculinity, in the work world and sexual playground (therefore "reproductive rights") and largely disparaged femininity as maternity and compassion/generosity not to mention chastity and virginity. Since 1970 women are indoctrinated in a million ways to believe: you are only of worth if you are either attractive-popular-sexy or you are successful. Otherwise you have no inherent worth as a woman!
Finally, how are we as Catholics to respond to all this? I will speak for myself. I have had close, enduring friendships with many homosexual and gay men, but few with Lesbians so they are a mystery to me. But I feel a tenderness for them. I certainly am not phobic, nor hateful, not really displeased by them. Puzzled? yes! Interested? Yes! Mostly I am sad. The wound to one's sexuality is the deepest, most tender, sensitive and sacred of sufferings. For me lesbian women are above all women...precious, worthy, delightful, admirable in their very selves...and deserving of nothing but reverence and tenderness.
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