Support for civil rights for gays and lesbians has been increasing nationally. Changes in attitudes may be due not only to the influence of younger, more progressive cohorts, but also to the influence of other factors such as education, religious attendance, political identity, and attitudes toward women's roles. This thesis utilized General Social Survey data from 1977 to 2012 and examined changes in response to attitudinal questions regarding civil rights for gays and lesbians, as well as demographic factors predictive of changing attitudes. Between 1977 and 2012, attitudes became more accepting of civil rights for homosexuals in the United States. Results from multivariate regression models indicate that younger birth cohorts are more accepting of civil rights for gays and lesbians, as are those with higher education. Higher tolerance of non-traditional roles for women is associated with the support of civil rights for gays and lesbians. In addition, religious attendance is negatively associated with acceptance of civil rights for homosexuals, whereas political identity has no association.

The aim of this paper is to study generational differences in social conservatism. The research centered around three questions. Firstly, have levels of political social conservatism increased in the youngest generation as compared to previous. Secondly, does the presidential era a person was brought up in, explain differing levels of social conservatism. And lastly, does the results in the previous questions change when you look within the sub-group of subjects who self-identify as being conservative. To answer these questions, this study will analyse responses to question meant to operationalize social conservatism found in the General Societal Survey(GSS). And compare responses between generational birth-cohorts socialised under different presidents. Generally the results showed a decline in levels of social conservatism between generations and the youngest generation was no exception. The role of a presidential era in determining levels of social conservatism was practically non-existent. The results from questions one and two did not seem to change when looking within the subgroup of self-identifying conservatives.