Lgbtq in usa now
What’s Behind the Rapid Climb in LGBTQ Identity?
Newsletter Protest 6, 2025
Daniel A. Cox, Jae Grace, Avery Shields
Since 2012, Gallup has tracked the size of America’s LGBTQ population. For the first few years, there was not much news to report. The percentage of Americans who identified as gay, lesbian, double attraction, transgender, or queer was relatively low and inching up slowly year over year. Recently, the pace has sped up. Gallup’s newest report recorded the single largest one-year grow in LGBTQ identity. In 2024, nearly one in ten (9.3 percent) Americans identify as LGBTQ.
The stable rise in LGBTQ culture among the public is worth noting, but it’s not the most essential part of the story. Most of the uptick in LGBTQ identity over the past decade is due to a dramatic increase among young adults, particularly young women. In less than a decade, the percentage of new women who identify as LGBTQ has more than tripled.
The gender gap in LGBTQ identity has exploded as well. A decade earlier, young women were only slightly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than young men. For instance, in 2015, 10 percent of young women and six percent of young men identified as
LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Rises to 9.3%
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Gallup’s latest update on LGBTQ+ identification finds 9.3% of U.S. adults identifying as lesbian, gay, attracted to both genders, transgender or something other than heterosexual in 2024. This represents an amplify of more than a percentage aim versus the prior estimate, from 2023. Longer term, the figure has nearly doubled since 2020 and is up from 3.5% in 2012, when Gallup first measured it.
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LGBTQ+ identification is increasing as younger generations of Americans penetrate adulthood and are much more likely than older generations to say they are something other than heterosexual. More than one in five Gen Z adults -- those born between 1997 and 2006, who were between the ages of 18 and 27 in 2024 -- determine as LGBTQ+. Each older generation of adults, from millennials to the Silent Generation, has successively lower rates of identification, down to 1.8% among the oldest Americans, those born before 1946.
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LGBTQ+ identification rates among young people contain also increased, from an average 18.8% of Gen Z adults in 2020 through 2022 to an average of 22.7% over the past two years.
Gallup has
LGBTQ+ Identification in U.S. Now at 7.6%
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. continues to expand, with 7.6% of U.S. adults now identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, gender nonconforming, queer or some other sexual orientation besides heterosexual. The current figure is up from 5.6% four years ago and 3.5% in 2012, Gallup’s first year of measuring sexual orientation and transgender identity.
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These results are based on aggregated data from 2023 Gallup telephone surveys, encompassing interviews with more than 12,000 Americans aged 18 and older. In each survey, Gallup asks respondents whether they identify as heterosexual, lesbian, gay, pansexual, transgender or something else. Overall, 85.6% say they are straight or heterosexual, 7.6% identify with one or more LGBTQ+ groups, and 6.8% decline to respond.
Bisexual adults make up the largest proportion of the LGBTQ+ population -- 4.4% of U.S. adults and 57.3% of Diverse adults say they are bisexual. Gay and dyke are the next-most-common identities, each representing slightly over 1% of U.S. adults and roughly one in six LGBTQ+ adults. Slightly less than 1% of U.S. adults and about one in eight LGBT
LGBTQ Rights
The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. Founded in 1986, the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does and has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every articulate, there is no other organization that can match our record of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.
The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and aggression toward transgender people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from creature undermined by a license to discriminate, and to safeguard LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.
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The ACLU Lesbian Queer Bisexual Transgender Proposal seeks to make a just world for all LGBTQ people regardless of race or income. Thr
Adult LGBT Population in the United States
This report provides estimates of the number and percent of the U.S. adult population that identifies as LGBT, overall, as well as by age. Estimates of LGBT adults at the national, state, and regional levels are included. We rely on BRFSS 2020-2021 numbers for these estimates. Pooling multiple years of statistics provides more stable estimates—particularly at the state level.
Combining 2020-2021 BRFSS data, we estimate that 5.5% of U.S. adults identify as LGBT. Further, we estimate that there are almost 13.9 million (13,942,200) LGBT adults in the U.S.
Regions and States
LGBT people reside in all regions of the U.S. (Table 2 and Figure 2). Consistent with the overall population in the United States,more LGBT adults live in the South than in any other region. More than half (57.0%) of LGBT people in the U.S. live in the Midwest (21.1%) and South (35.9%), including 2.9 million in the Midwest and 5.0 million in the South. About one-quarter (24.5%) of LGBT adults reside in the West, approximately 3.4 million people. Less than one in five (18.5%) LGBT adults reside in the Northeast (2.6 million).
The percent of adults who identify as LGBT