Gallup: LGBTQ+ Identities Are Up in the U.S.

Either there are suddenly more gay people moving to the United States or the number of people feeling comfortable enough to live in their truth is on the rise.

As reported by a new Gallup report, LGBTQ+ identification in the U.S. has grown 7.6%, up 5.6% from four years ago and 3.5% in 2012, which was Gallup's first year of measuring sexual orientation and transgender identity.

According to Gallup, the results are based on aggregated data from 2023 Gallup telephone surveys with more than 12,000 Americans aged 18 and older. In the survey Gallup asks respondents about their sexual orientation, and overall 85.6% say they are straight or heterosexual, 7.6% identify with one or more LGBTQ+ groups, and 6.8% declined to respond.

According to the survey data, bisexual adults make up the largest portion of the LGBTQ+ population, with 4.4% of U.S. adults and 57.3% of LGBTQ+ adults identifying as bisexual. Gay and lesbian identities were next as most-common, with just over 1% identifying. Transgender adults made up less than 1% of the population.

So what does it all mean?

According to Gallup, more than 1 and 5 Gen Z adults 18 to 26 identify as LGBTQ+ and are twice as likely to identify as such. For millennials, aged 27 to 42, around one and 10 were likely to identify as LGBTQ+.

Read more about Gallup's findings.