As of June 2025, the Williams Institute at UCLA Law School estimated that more than 820,000 same-sex couples lived in the United States. The total population at that time? Roughly 340 million. I point this out because reports of heterosexuality’s demise have been exaggerated, and as much as I hate to interrupt the first week of Pride Month with straight business, I want to stress that, no matter what you’ve heard, heterosexuality persists as the national as well as global norm. We are not at threat level HETCON 1. Heterosexuals are not being chased out of villages like Frankenstein’s monster by mobs of LGBTQ citizens wielding torches, pitchforks and rainbow flags. Straight couples are not being forcibly separated and sent into the Gay Mines to extract and process homosexuality for mass consumption. Male-female pair bonding is in no danger of extinction.
That said, the confusion is understandable, given the amount of hand-wringing over dating recessions and falling birth rates we regularly hear about. Still, The New York Times might have flown a bit too close to the sun with one particular opinion piece published last weekend. Originally titled “Being straight is great, actually,” the headline changed when, presumably, someone noted the optics of running a piece with that title on Pride Eve; it now reads “There’s nothing wrong with wanting men.” But the message remains the same: The sad state of straightness can be fixed — but only if women stop reminding themselves and each other that heterosexual partnership is no longer something that stands between them and the lives they want to lead.
