The latest Gallup survey found that 5.6 percent of Americans identify as LGBTQ. That compares to just 3.5 percent who identified as LGBTQ in 2012 and 4.5 percent in 2017.
Only 86.7 percent say they are straight and 7.6 percent didn’t answer the question.
Of those identifying as LGBTQ, more than half say they are bisexual. Almost a quarter identify as gay. Only 12 percent call themselves lesbian and 11 percent transgender. One reason for the lower number of women who identify as lesbian is that women are much more likely than men to identify as bisexual. Overall, more women than men self-identify as LGBTQ.
The biggest increase in people self-identifying as LGBTQ is among those who were 18 to 23 years old in 2020 when the survey was taken. In that group, one in six identifies as LGBTQ. That compares to just one in 50 who identifies as LGBTQ among those 56 and older. One reason for that lower number that Gallup fails to recognize is the number of mostly gay men from the older generations who died of AIDS.
The U.S. Census released new data on same-sex couples for 2019, the year before the latest census was taken.
For 2019, there were 980,000 same-sex couple households in the U.S. Of that number, 58 percent were married couples.
Among both married and unmarried couples, there were more female spouses than male.
The metro areas with the highest percentages of same-sex couples were San Francisco, Portland and Seattle.
Both same-sex and opposite-sex married couples were more likely to have children than unmarried couples. Opposite-sex married couples were twice as likely as same-sex marred couples to have children.
— David Taffet
