A new Gallup poll shows our world getting better:
Currently, 86.7% of Americans say they are heterosexual or straight, and 7.6% do not answer the question about their sexual orientation. Gallup’s 2012-2017 data had roughly 5% “no opinion” responses.
The latest results are based on more than 15,000 interviews conducted throughout 2020 with Americans aged 18 and older. Gallup had previously reported annual updates from its 2012-2017 daily tracking survey data, but did not routinely measure LGBT identification in 2018 or 2019.
The identity question asked in 2020 offers a greater level of detail than the question asked in previous years. Now, respondents indicate their precise sexual orientation, rather than simply answering “yes” or “no” to whether they identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Majority of LGBT Americans identify as bisexual
More than half of LGBT adults (54.6%) identify as bisexual. About a quarter (24.5%) say they are gay, with 11.7% identifying as lesbian and 11.3% as transgender. An additional 3.3% volunteer another non-heterosexual preference or term to describe their sexual orientation, such as queer or same-gender-loving. Respondents can give multiple responses when describing their sexual identification; thus, the totals exceed 100%.
Rebasing these percentages to represent their share of the U.S. adult population finds 3.1% of Americans identifying as bisexual, 1.4% as gay, 0.7% as lesbian and 0.6% as transgender.
In addition to the pronounced generational differences, significant gender differences are seen in sexual identity, as well as differences by people’s political ideology:
Women are more likely than men to identify as LGBT (6.4% vs. 4.9%, respectively).
Women are more likely to identify as bisexual — 4.3% do, with 1.3% identifying as lesbian and 1.3% as something else. Among men, 2.5% identify as gay, 1.8% as bisexual and 0.6% as something else.
13.0% of political liberals, 4.4% of moderates and 2.3% of conservatives say they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Differences are somewhat less pronounced by party identification than by ideology, with 8.8% of Democrats, 6.5% of independents and 1.7% of Republicans identifying as LGBT.
There are no meaningful educational differences — 5.6% of college graduates and 5.7% of college nongraduates are LGBT.
They make the important point that nobody really knows if the increase in the younger generations identifying as LGBT reflects a real increase or whether it’s just greater social acceptance. I’m pretty sure it the latter. There have always been LGBT people, they were just forced to live in the closet or face a lifetime of intolerance and discrimination. And that means the numbers are probably a lot higher, it’s just that older people are still reluctant to identify as LGBT. The younger generation is showing the way.
I suspect this greater social acceptance will end up being one of the greatest advances in human happiness in history. People are able to be who they are, live their lives honestly and openly. It’s an astonishing step forward and I’m glad to be alive to see it happen.