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I’m positive that in the formative years where their sexualities and preferences and philias develop (remember it’s not unusual for people to have fetishes they trace to childhood), that these things are causing some percentage of boys to become gay:
Having special days where you show only the positive role models of gays, no evil members, and no positive straight members, which artificially increases gay positive valence
Having a colorful flag for gays and no colors and no flag for straight people. For children, color = objectively better. Color is an objective “attractive marker”
Giving special esteem, attention, and “interesting points” to gays
I note that this is very different from your original claim, which was specifically about the rainbow flag. But regardless, the things you list are going to change what causes them to become sexually aroused, and what doesn't? That seems quite unlikely.
I’m expanding on my comment because you asked a question, and in any case the rainbow flag is a symbol of the whole LGBT enterprise. The question is whether childhood experiences and culture can influence sexuality. There’s evidence that it does:
gays are more likely to have been molested in childhood
boys like the bachi bazi culture in Afghanistan, who are picked regardless of orientation in childhood, grow up to be gay: According to Khan et al. (2009, p. 24), bacha bereesh appear to predominately “grow up to follow a sexually active pattern as receptive males, self-identifying with their femininity and receptive role” as a “third gender” within a trinary gender system of man/woman/non-man
it’s common knowledge that childhood experiences can result in lifelong philias, whether this be the appearance of a mate or a sexual activity
So, IMO, it is established that childhood sexual experiences mold adult orientation. The remaining question is whether reinforcement of sexuality in childhood molds adult orientation. This needs to be studied, but I am positive that it does to some degree, because that makes sense based on what we know about reinforcement.
Right. You made a comment specifically about the flag, and I asked a comment about the flag, but you chose to respond about something else.
There is a huge difference between having sexual experiences during childhood, or even having sexuality being reinforced, and seeing displays of gay pride flags.
Five years ago, before this topic was as heavily discussed in the culture, I took my then-14yo daughter to a concert. Each of the two opening acts and the main act did a "gay" song that involved the waving of rainbow flags, and the 25,000 14 year olds in the arena went apeshit each time. The energy in that place during the rainbow parades was off the chart.
Kids are very susceptible to fads (I myself wore a "Frankie Say Relax" t-shirt in junior high having no idea of its connotations...) and peer pressure. Whether or not the Rainbow flag actually turns kids gay is separate from the idea that this kind of mass celebration reinforces ideas of what is "good," and there probably isn't a wide distance between a kid feeling encouraged to try gay over their innate disgust tendencies, and then forming intimate bonds following experimental gay contact, especially if it's a first sexual experience. If you close your eyes and try real hard to think about how rainbow flags make you special, a mouth is just a mouth, as David Rabe wrote. And maybe there's no looking back after that point.
Exactly
I am curious what percentage of kids who have those innate disgust tendencies (aka, straight kids, as opposed to "curious" kids, who by definition are not disgusted) you think "try gay," flags or no.
Kids have very robust disgust tendencies. Kids find pretty much all foods disgusting unless they are introduced early. Broccoli is famous for this. Kids find all romance icky and disgusting at about age 6. This lasts until some time in the teens. I imagine this is a biological remnant to separate boys and girls to prevent the incest taboo from kicking in. Either that, or girls have cooties (This is a weird Americanism which I did not know the etymology of until I looked it up just now.)
As a more relevant example, 92% of women now claim to enjoy fellatio, whereas it showed up as cruelty in courtrooms in the 1950s. Did women change, or did they just get habituated to it?
The legalisation of no-fault divorce might be a confounding factor....
Did the campaign for no-fault divorce argue that it would lead to oral sex being commonplace? If so, it was prescient.
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