What’s stranger, Carpenter and Eppink found that the pay gap between gay and straight men is wider for older men, who have likely faced worse discrimination over their lifetimes. It’s hard to explain why a change in attitudes towards homosexuality would boost gay men’s paychecks but still keep many of them out of the workforce. What’s more, the overall employment of gay men is still low. But Carpenter and Eppink have a hard time squaring that with the little change they see in the lesbian premium and the earnings penalty for bisexuals. It gets better. It’s possible a change in attitudes is translating into a change in fortunes, lifting old prejudices that once hampered salary negotiations for gay men.
