According to a new survey by Gallup, a fifth of Generation Z adults now identify as members of the LGBTQ community, while the number of LGBTQ people in the entire American population has doubled in a decade, reports 888.hu.
However, the increase is almost entirely due to many more people identifying as bisexual or transgender, rather than gay or lesbian.
Based on these results, Gallup estimates that 4.0 percent of the American adult population identifies as bisexual, 1.5 percent as gay, 1 percent as lesbian, and 0.7 percent as transgender.
- reports the Daily Mail.
"According to a Gallup survey, nearly 21 percent of Generation Z adults identify as members of the LGBTQ community, which is almost double the 10.5 percent of millennials. Almost one out of every sixth Generation Z LGBTQ adults identifies as bisexual".
Americans who identify as members of the LGBTQ community make up 7.1 percent of the population, up from 5.6 percent a year ago. In 2012, 3.5 percent of Americans identified themselves as members of the community.
The numbers are impressive considering that a much larger percentage of Americans are clearly not "born gay."
The increase can largely be explained by the fact that there are many more people who do not identify themselves as gay or lesbian, who still make up only 2.5 percent, but who identify themselves as bisexual or transgender.
This exemplifies that the massive increase in the number of people identifying as LGBTQ (or more specifically bisexual and trans) is largely driven by social lobbying. Summit News wrote
Glenn Greenwald pointed out that "The vast majority of Americans who now identify as "bi" are in long-term relationships with the opposite sex (33%), not same-sex (3.7%). So, ten times more people who identify as "bi" live in hetero-looking relationships than gay/lesbian people." According to the writer, one of the explanations for this is that
masculine girls are now encouraged to identify as trans".
