SAN DIEGO, California, June 8, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – According to a new survey, twice as many Americans engaged in homosexual activity in 2014 than in 1990. Additionally, four times as many people now say they believe homosexuality is not immoral in any way.

Over 34,000 Americans, 18 to 96 years old, took the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (GSS) from 1973 to 2014, sharing their opinion of homosexuality. Of those, 28,000 also shared about their own sexual experiences. The results were published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.

In 1973, ten percent of Americans supported homosexual activity; by 2014, nearly fifty percent supported it. Among youth aged 18 to 29, 63 percent supported same-sex activity in 2014.

The survey found the number of Americans who have experimented with homosexual activity has increased from 4.25 percent to 8.5 percent in 24 years.

San Diego State Psychology Professor Jean Twenge, the study's lead author, concluded, "This data showed strikingly how quickly opinions on same-sex sexuality changed." She says the change is a positive one, "toward more freedom and the abandonment of previously strict social rules against same-sex sexuality."

However, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Peter Sprigg told LifeSiteNews, “The reduction of moral and social boundaries regarding homosexuality has led to a greater experimentation with homosexual conduct. Unfortunately, this means that more people are exposing themselves to the heightened health risks associated with such conduct, such as the greatly elevated rate of HIV infection among men who have sex with men.”

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, HIV is in “epidemic” proportions among men who have sex with men, and at the current rates, more than half of college-aged homosexual men will have HIV by the age of 50.

"Our public schools are loathe to teach the actual health risks associated with homosexual sex, and now they are embarking on another radical experiment by mainstreaming extreme gender confusion," Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth told LifeSiteNews.

The study also found that the number of bisexuals, those who had reported having sex with members of both sexes. more than doubled, from 3.1 percent to 7.7 percent.

One of the three main researchers, Widener University Professor Brooke E. Wells, attributed the dramatic increase to a "hook-up culture," and to pornography, which often features "lesbian sex."

"We love seeing women make out," Wells said. "We love the idea of threesomes and women engaging in sex with one another."

“Media outlets always say 'advertising works,' and this is sad proof,” Dan Gainor, Vice President of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center, told LifeSiteNews. “Hollywood and the news media have been promoting gay and bisexual relationships for decades -- making homosexuality and even threesomes 'cool' and traditional marriage seem outdated. The media love an ‘Anything-Goes’ morality because it excuses any misbehavior and trashes actual morals.”

“Look for the left to use this as one more way to marginalize traditional Christians in American culture,” Gainor predicted.

Sprigg agreed that “it is also no surprise that the acceptance of homosexual conduct has grown—given the relentless campaign of propaganda toward that end that has been waged for over four decade. Pro-homosexual ideology has a tight grip on several major social institutions—the news media, the entertainment media, higher education, and (increasingly) big business. Given these facts, what is perhaps astonishing is that the percentage of Americans who have capitulated to the LGBT movement’s key assertion—that same-sex sexual activity is 'not wrong at all'—remains a minority, at only 49 percent.”

The study may be cited to further normalize homosexual sexual relations, experts warned.

"There are two things going on with studies such as these. The first is that they're often used as a springboard for homosexual activists to essentially proclaim, 'Hey, we're normal; everybody is doing it!' which obviously isn't the case,” Sean Ryan, Director of Communications for MassResistance, told LifeSiteNews. “No matter how 'approving' the American public is towards homosexual relationships, most Americans quite naturally find the behavior itself repulsive. That hasn't changed."

"The second important aspect is how many young people now approve of homosexual relations," Ryan explained. "In the early 1990s the school systems in most parts of the U.S. were not inundated with homosexual propaganda, 'diversity training,' or 'Gay Straight Alliances.' Now, it's a much different story."

"Teenagers and young adults are now more supportive of this behavior because they've been conditioned to it for almost their entire education," Ryan concluded. "Homosexual indoctrination now stretches back as early as kindergarten in many districts. Young adults didn't suddenly become more accepting, they've been brainwashed for years by their school curricula."

The trend toward homosexual acceptance is not just taking place among Americans. South Korea and Canada, along with the United States, are the top three nations where homosexual acceptance has leaped at least ten percent from 2007 to 2013, according to a Pew Research Center study of 39 countries and nearly forty thousand survey participants. In the U.S., 49 percent surveyed approved of same-sex activity in 2007, but by 2013, 60 percent approved.

The Pew Research Center survey also found that homosexual activity is supported most in countries "where religion is less central in people’s lives," and among "the richest countries in the world." In poorer countries with higher spiritual priorities, the citizenry generally disapprove of sodomy and lesbianism.

"How can anyone be surprised by this tragic news?" Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth commented to LifeSiteNews. "We live in a culture where opinion-molding elites glamorize homosexualism and bestow upon it the nobility of marriage--in total defiance of God. We pretend that there's a moral equivalence between the perversion of homosexuality and natural and normal heterosexuality."

Sprigg told LifeSiteNews that the study undercut one of LGBT activists' strongest arguments.

“The increase in same-sex sexual experiences over recent decades thoroughly debunks one myth of the homosexual movement—namely, that there is no element of 'choice' involved in homosexuality,” he said. “While people with persistent same-sex sexual attractions do not 'choose' them, the most important aspect of homosexuality—the conduct involved—clearly is a choice.”

Peter LaBarbera said liberals are right about one thing: education is the answer.

"The way back to sanity is to start teaching the reality of homosexual behavior to young and old," LaBarbera urged, "the astonishingly disproportionate rates of sexually transmitted diseases like hepatitis C, HIV and syphilis -- the latter which has now become, effectively, the new 'gay disease.'"

"But teaching practical facts is not enough," LaBarbera said. "We also need to get back to the truth that God sets the boundaries because He made us. And God created the wonderful gift of sex to be enjoyed in a faithful marriage between a man and a woman, producing the miracle of children."

"It's time to get back to an old-fashioned truth: that any sex outside the bonds of marriage is to be discouraged because it dishonors our bodies and our Creator," LaBarbera told LifeSiteNews.