USC freshman Jarod Wunneburger views 2006 as a breakthrough year for the gay community, with the popularity of Oscar-nominated films such as "Brokeback Mountain" and "Transamerica" and the public debate over states banning same-sex marriage.

So to Wunneburger, a UCLA report released today about the attitudes of college freshmen nationwide came as no surprise. Acceptance of same-sex marriage grew from 2005 to 2006.

Based on a paper questionnaire given to 271,441 first-time, full- time college students at 393 schools nationwide in 2006, the annual survey was conducted as part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program under UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute. The researchers statistically adjusted the data to reflect the demographics of the 1.3 million incoming freshmen entering four- year schools throughout the U.S. in 2006.