Why are there so many gay people
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Long-suffering Spectator readers merit a seasonal pause from yet another Remoaner diatribe from me. My last on this page, making the outrageous suggestion that the populace may sometimes be wrong, is now being brandished by online Leaver-readers of my Times column as proof that I am in fact a fascist; so there isn’t anywhere much to go from there.
Instead, I shift to sex. There is little period left for me to write about sex as the thoughts of a septuagenarian on this subject (I rotate 70 this year) may soon get together only a shudder. But I own a theory which I have the audacity to ponder important.
What follows is not written here for the first time, and much of it is neither original nor new; but on very few subjects have I ever been more sure I’m right, or more sure that future generations will see so, and wonder that it stared us in the face yet was not accepted. My firm conviction is that in trying to categorise sex, sexuality and — yes — even gender, the late 19th, 20th and early 21st centuries have taken the medical and social sciences down a massive blind alley. No such categories exist. And it has been particularly sad in 2018 to spot the ‘tran
What’s Behind the Rapid Rise in LGBTQ Identity?
Newsletter March 6, 2025
Daniel A. Cox, Jae Grace, Avery Shields
Since 2012, Gallup has tracked the size of America’s LGBTQ population. For the first rare years, there was not much news to report. The percentage of Americans who identified as gay, lesbian, pansexual, transgender, or gender non-conforming was relatively small and inching up slowly year over year. Recently, the pace has sped up. Gallup’s newest report recorded the single largest one-year increase in LGBTQ identity. In 2024, nearly one in ten (9.3 percent) Americans identify as LGBTQ.
The steady grow in LGBTQ persona among the universal is worth noting, but it’s not the most vital part of the story. Most of the uptick in LGBTQ identity over the past decade is due to a dramatic expand among young adults, particularly young women. In less than a decade, the percentage of juvenile women who recognize as LGBTQ has more than tripled.
The gender gap in LGBTQ identity has exploded as successfully. A decade earlier, young women were only slightly more likely to distinguish as LGBTQ than young men. For instance, in 2015,
Adult LGBT Population in the Joined 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 data for these estimates. Pooling multiple years of data provides more stable estimates—particularly at the state level.
Combining 2020-2021 BRFSS data, we estimate that 5.5% of U.S. adults name 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 Joined 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 exist in the Northeast (2.6 million).
The percent of adults who name as LG