“We rural kids learned to think for ourselves at an early age and weren’t easily manipulated.”
From what I remember about growing up, nobody had to teach me or my friends to be heterosexual, and nobody could have taught us to be gay, and I didn’t grow up in a rural community. I suspect there’s more to being gay than what you’re taught at school.
The fact that the numbers seem to be increasing could be because they are now not so afraid to come out of the closet, or perhaps it has to do with plastics or contaminants in the food/water supply which impede normal fetal development.