The collapse of cultural Christianity and the rise of cultural queerness

This column was first published at The European Conservative. I have a number of essays and columns coming up at several publications, and will send a newsletter with a collected roundup when they’re up. As always, thank you for reading and subscribing—leave any feedback in the comments!

How do nations become post-Christian? To quote Ernest Hemingway: Gradually, and then suddenly. 

For decades, the United States has been a bastion of religiosity, bucking the trend of secularization, but in recent years, the needle has begun to move. According to a 2019 poll, between 20% and 25% of American adults now identify as ‘nones’ (meaning that they do not identify with any religion), a percentage that is higher among younger adults than older adults and likely indicative of a long-term trend. According to a 2020 Politico/Morning Consult poll, 49% of voting-age Gen Z (those born after 1996) respondents identified as either agnostic or atheist—a sea change in religious identification.

To unpack those numbers a bit further, consider that a 2017 survey found that only 11% of Americans claimed to have read the entire Bible—meaning that a whopping 89% have not. Thus, it is no surprise that even Americans who still identify as Christian are abandoning any semblance of orthodoxy, with 40% of American Christians claiming that the Bible is ‘ambiguous’ on abortion, 34% rejecting the biblical definition of marriage, and another 34% claiming that abortion is morally acceptable. 

There are many reasons for the ‘rise of the nones,’ but one is that many who had merely identified as Christian as a nod to their heritage or culture without actually believing any of its tenets are now abandoning the label as it becomes socially inconvenient. Until recently, identifying as some sort of Christian was a net positive; that’s why elites such as Barack Obama did so. But as it becomes a net negative, many are switching their allegiance to the new cultural elites. This is especially true of younger Americans, who have come of age cut off from their civilizational inheritance and deformed by the public education system.

For example, around a quarter of Gen Z identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or ‘genderqueer’—while just a few years ago, less than 3% of the population identified as on the LGBT spectrum. Politico reported in 2020 that “a third of Gen Zers say they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns to refer to themselves and nearly 6 in 10 say forms or online profiles should allow more options than ‘man’ or ‘woman’” and that consequently, “religious liberty, particularly as it relates to discrimination against LGBTQ people … does not at all resonate with younger Americans.”

In short, the upcoming generation of Americans increasingly views religious freedom as overt bigotry. Identification with the LGBT movement is undergoing an astronomical rise; identification with Christianity is plummeting.

Indeed, dozens of new sexual and gender identities have recently been invented, allowing straight people to claim LGBT status as well. In 2023, 38% of Brown University’s student population identified as LGBT—with many simply identifying as ‘other’—up from 14% a decade earlier. An overwhelming majority of those identifying as non-heterosexual in name, however, are only interested in relationships with the opposite sex in practice. As gay rights activist Andrew Sullivan observed, most of those claiming to be bisexual were, in fact, only in relationships with the opposite sex. They’d adopted the label, not the lifestyle.

The reality is that people are claiming to be LGBT because it is trendy and popular to do so. Indeed, Dr. Eric Kaufmann of the University of London has noted that although LGBT activists like to claim that a more accepting culture has allowed more people to come out of the closet, the data tell a different story. The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology has tracked data that confirm what Sullivan noted: LGBT identification has risen sharply, while same-sex activity has not.

“If this was about people feeling able to come out, then we should have seen these two trends rise together,” Kaufmann told one media outlet. “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.” What is even more likely is that vague terms like ‘queer’ are allowing straight kids to obtain the status and privilege that now come with identifying as LGBT without actually engaging in same-sex behavior. 

Exhibit A is Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, daughter of former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In 2021, she came out as ‘queer’; less than a month later, she announced that she is ‘demisexual,’ which is defined as—I’m not making this up—“a sexual orientation in which a person feels sexually attracted to someone only after they’ve developed a close emotional bond with them.” In an Instagram Live, Kennedy-Cuomo described her journey: “When I was in middle school, I came out to my family and close friends as bisexual. When I was in high school, I discovered pansexuality and thought, ‘That’s the flag for me.’ And I’ve recently learned more about demisexuality and have believed that that identity resonates with me most.”

The older generation of Kennedy-Cuomos were culturally Catholic. The younger generation is opting to be culturally queer—and for the same reasons.

Some have argued that the skyrocketing rates of young people identifying as LGBT indicates a social contagion. There is truth to that analysis. But these stats also indicate the sheer scale of the LGBT movement’s near-total victory in not only mainstreaming their ideology but achieving cultural dominance in key institutions. A crucial sign of that dominance is the fact that so many young people desperately want to identify with their movement. 

Cultural Christians are rapidly disappearing. Cultural queers are replacing them.