One of the consistent features of the gay rights movement over the past five decades has been a belief in progress: Members of the gay community and their allies have insisted that, over time, attitudes about homosexuality will only change for the better. In part, this conviction is based on the power of moral suasion, but it also relies on sheer demographics: Younger people tend to be more supportive of gay rights. Even opponents of equality have conceded that the clock is ticking against them; as New York Times columnist and gay marriage opponent Ross Douthat recently said, “If I were putting money on the future of gay marriage, I would bet on it.”

One of the consistent features of the gay rights movement over the past five decades has been a belief in progress: Members of the gay community and their allies have insisted that, over time, attitudes about homosexuality will only change for the better. In part, this conviction is based on the power of moral suasion, but it also relies on sheer demographics: Younger people tend to be more supportive of gay rights. Even opponents of equality have conceded that the clock is ticking against them; as New York Times columnist and gay marriage opponent Ross Douthat recently said, “If I were putting money on the future of gay marriage, I would bet on it.”

A recent report published by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago seems to support this assumption. Surveying people in 31 countries periodically over 17 years on their attitudes toward homosexual behavior (“sexual relations between two adults of the same sex”), researchers recorded increased approval in 27 nations and a decrease of approval in only four. In some countries, like Norway and New Zealand, the increase in approval was dramatic. There is still a long way to go: According to the latest available data, majorities or pluralities in only 15 nations agree with the sentiment that homosexual behavior is “not wrong at all,” while majorities or pluralities in 20 believe homosexuality to be “always wrong.” Nevertheless, gay activists have trumpeted the poll as a positive development.

Yet there is one negative, and largely overlooked, finding: The Czech Republic was one of the countries where the number of citizens who disapprove of homosexual behavior has increased, and by 14 points. (The other countries are Russia, Latvia, and Cyprus, all of which are heavily influenced by the conservative Orthodox Church.) The fact that an increasing number of Czechs—people famous for their tolerance and liberalism, who brought the world the Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel, and the brothel that offers free sex in exchange for the intercourse be live-streamed on the internet—believe same-sex relations to be wrong is perplexing and worrying. If progress is stymied in the Czech Republic, could it be threatened in other, ostensibly “liberal” countries as well?

ACCORDING TO THE poll, while 34 percent of Czechs believed homosexual behavior was either “always wrong” or “almost always wrong” in 1994, that number jumped to 48 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, in 1994, nearly half of the population believed that homosexual behavior was either “wrong only sometimes” or “not wrong at all.” In 2008, that dropped to 40 percent.