College Newspaper Reports Massive Rise in LGBT Students

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (ChurchMilitant.com) – An Ivy League school’s newspaper is reporting a boom in student body LGBT identification.

A June 24 article for The Brown Daily Herald revealed the number of students at Brown University who claim sexual orientations other than heterosexual has nearly tripled since 2010.

According to the paper, “The Herald’s Spring 2023 poll found that 38% of students do not identify as straight — over five times the national rate. Over the past decade, LGBTQ+ identification has increased across the nation, with especially sharp growth at Brown.”

Massive Growth

“The Herald first surveyed sexual orientation in its Fall 2010 poll, in which around 14% of respondents answered that they were not straight. That number has more than doubled since,” the Herald continues.

A 2022 Gallup poll found that 7.2% of U.S. adults identify as LGBT, but the percentage among members of Gen Z (born 1997–2004) was 19.7%.

To show just how much the numbers have increased, the student newspaper calculates, “Since Fall 2010, Brown’s LGBTQ+ population has expanded considerably. The gay or lesbian population has increased by 26%, and the percentage of students identifying as bisexual has increased by 232%. Students identifying as other sexual orientations within the LGBTQ+ community have increased by 793%.”

It’s hotly contested what has caused the increase in LGBT demographics, especially among younger people.

“Queer people haven’t been able to be open in their identifications for that long,” Brown student Josephine Kovecses told the Herald. “So it’s exciting that the numbers are growing and that queer people are able to be open in particular at Brown.”

‘Contagion’ Theory

But many in more conservative spheres have come to a much different answer.

Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, commented on the findings, saying, “Almost 40% of students at Brown University identify as LGBTQ+. Totally not a social contagion.”

The Babylon Bee’s page, Not the Bee, chimed in, “Almost 40% of Brown University students say they’re LGBTQ compared to 14% in 2010. Please tell me again how this isn’t a social contagion.”

The term “social contagion” refers to the idea that individuals are choosing the identification due to social influences such as peer pressure.

Even some homosexuals agreed with the designation as well.

The group Gays Against Groomers posted, “SHOCKING: There has been a 793% increase in Brown students identifying within the LGBTQ+ community, according the new data. But it’s definitely not a social contagion ��”

According to a 2022 NBC News article, “The ‘social contagion’ theory can be traced back to a 2018 paper published in the journal PLOS One.”

The paper noted in the article is titled “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria” by Dr. Lisa Littman, who was a professor at Brown University at the time and popularized the concept of “rapid onset gender dysphoria.”

Littman defines the concept as a “type of adolescent-onset or late-onset gender dysphoria where the development of gender dysphoria is observed to begin suddenly during or after puberty in an adolescent or young adult who would not have met criteria for gender dysphoria in childhood.”

One of Littman’s emerging hypotheses was that “social influences can contribute to the development of gender dysphoria.”

A similar notion is found in the work of Dr. Eric Kaufmann, author of the 2022 paper, “Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity.”

Kaufmann wrote, “When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification.”

He added, “Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women. It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal.”

In an email to The College Fix, Kaufmann further explained, “If this was about people feeling able to come out, then we should have seen these two trends rise together,” he noted. “What we find instead is that identity is rising much faster than behavior, indicating that people with occasional rather than sustained feelings of attraction to the opposite sex are increasingly identifying as LGBT.”

To Venerate or Treat?

In a video uploaded on July 3, U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy declared, “We need to end this mental health epidemic, not just with anger. I’m not angry at trans people. I’m not. I’m frustrated with the culture that venerates a mental health illness that we should be treating.”

Ramaswamy wrote that “5% of American adults under 30 ‘identify’ as trans. 5 years ago, 0.6% of 18–29 year olds said they were trans. That’s not ‘visibility.’ This is a social contagion of a mental health epidemic.”