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I think an insurmountable gap here is that it's easy to accept that gay people exist. Sodomy and homoeroticism has been documented since biblical times and even some animals do it. Meanwhile people wanting to chop off their own oragans and pump themselves full of hormones is a modern world.
Average people can also easily understand how it's possible to achieve sexual pleasure throug homosexual activity even if they do not personally want to participate. Meanwhile the average person cannot understand why soemone would gain satisfaction from severe genital and body mutilation. Therefore they can only conclude that it must be the result of either mental illness or brainwashing.
In the 70's conservative activists opposed laws banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring because it would permit gay teachers in public school. The logic behind the "Save Our Children" campaign headlined by Anita Bryant was that gay people could not reproduce biologically so they must "recruit" children into being gay and therefore could not be trusted to be teachers. I don't think the average person who opposed gay teachers intuitively understood "gay people exist" I think they were concerned about "brainwashing" or "recruiting" the way people now are concerned about kids being "transed".
The broader framework of "we're concerned sexual minorities are recruiting children" vs. "there's no recruitment people are just born a certain way" isn't at all new. There are other features of the debate, like the consequences of medical treatment differing from sexual experimentation being different, that are new. But, I don't think it's all accurate to say that people in the past intuitively grasped that gay people existed and were not concerned about children being brainwashed.
Were they wrong?
With the rise of gay identifying it’s obvious people can be gayed. And then there are lavender marriages which produced children meaning most men can still get off to women. And honestly I think most gays are happier in lavender marriages where they get all the benefits of being a father and their children get a mother (plus not having to do childcare etc).
The rise in LGB self-identification is driven women who only date men identifying as bisexual. They haven't been gayed, they are claiming an oppressed identity for clout. The much smaller risk in gay male self-ID is entirely consistent with less closeting over time.
Even the very strict gay/lesbian amount is double in Gen X than the Silent Generation. There is a lot more going on than people listing themselves Bi. The Bi thing explains only the last 10 years surge.
I haven't seen a good time series for men who have sex with men, but going back as far as Kinsey we know that the number of men who have had sex with another man is higher than the number of men who self-identify as gay or bi. There is a reason why early AIDS researchers used the term "men who have sex with men" and not "gay or bi men".
The people who tried to replicate Kinsey's work found that about 6% of men have had sex with another man. (Kinsey got a much higher number which is almost certainly bogus). A good modern meta-analysis gets about the same number.
That still sort of fits with can create gays. One thing I’ve found in dating is my taste of female body types seems to have some relationship to (1) earliest gf (2) who I currently have an emotional bond with.
I could see 1.8% of men being very gay and perhaps 1.8-6% having some fluidity. If you repress homosexuality then the extra 4% have less opportunity for gay sex so the gay sex attribute declines in them. They then develop relationships with females which develops emotional bonds and become more attracted to females.
Of course the LGBTQ people would say those people are gay. The bigots would say they can be straight.
From a traditional Christian conservative perspective or a public health perspective, the problem is sodomy, not gay self-identification. If all changing cultural norms does is causes men having sex with men to stop self-identifying as gay, you haven't really achieved anything.
From the traditional Christian conservative view changing a man from “has gay sex and identifies gay” to “has gay sex, identifies straight, married with 3kids suburbs” the problem is gay self-identification not sodomy.
And yes I’m using Christianity as more a fertility cult and developed behaviors that lead to male happiness than if you do “X” you go to hell. But also the latter person would be more likely to embrace Christianity and repent in a way that would lead to redemption in the Christian context.
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