LOUISVILLE, KY—At first glance, high school senior Lucas Faber, 18, seems like any ordinary gay teen. He’s a member of his school’s swing choir, enjoys shopping at the mall, and has sex with other males his age. But lately, a growing worry has begun to plague this young gay man. A gnawing feeling that, deep down, he may be a fundamentalist, right-wing Christian.

According to Faber, his first experience with evangelical Christianity was not all that different from other gays his age.

“Sure, I looked at the Book of Leviticus once or twice—everybody has,” Faber said. “We all experiment a little bit with that stuff when we’re growing up. But I was just a kid. I didn’t think it meant anything.”

The data supports the notion that younger people are more supportive of gay marriage than older people. I also think it’s interesting that, even in states that we normally consider quite hostile to gay rights (the ones at the bottom of the table), there is still a significant age difference: 18-29 year-olds in Alabama, for example, are more supportive of gay marriage than people 65 and older in Massachusetts. So, while we like to think about states as “liberal” or “conservative,” spreading out the data by age tells a much more complicated story.

Bob Cringely often points out how it generally takes a generation for the widespread adoption (80-85%) of any new technology or technological advances. How many of you had internet access (as opposed to AOL or CompuServe) or even an email account in the early 90s? (I did, but then I’m a “computer guy”… who likes to digress!) How many of you have parents and/or grandparents who still don’t?

Obviously, circumstances are quite a bit different when it comes to social change; for one thing, the time scales can be much, much greater. But, and I’m just spitballing here, I’ll bet that the graph showing support for interracial marriage by age and state would have looked very similar to this some 50-60 years ago.

Encouraging is the fact that only twelve states–sadly, most of them Southern states–show less than majority support for same-sex marriage among 18-29 year olds.

[via Daring Fireball]