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A new Gallup survey discovered that 5.6% of adult Americans identify as a member of the alphabet soup of sexual confusion — a rise of 2% in just eight years.
The survey also noted that 7.6% of people declined to answer questions about their sexual orientation, which is also higher than the 5% recorded in surveys done from 2012 to 2017.
Of the adults self-identifying as LGBT, more than half (54.6%) identify as bisexual. About a quarter (24.5%) say they are gay, with 11.7% identifying as lesbian and 11.3% as transgender. An additional 3.3% volunteered another non-heterosexual preference or term to describe their sexual orientation, such as queer or same-gender-loving.
One of the main reasons LGBT identification has been increasing over time is that younger generations are far more likely to consider themselves to be something other than heterosexual, the survey noted.
There’s no surprise in that considering younger people are traditionally non-conformists and being a different sexual orientation is considered “cool” today among the millennial and digital native generations.
Future surveys should grow increasingly complicated now that Healthline defines 63 different “genders” from which people can self-identify. That’s a rise of seven new gender types in a year considering Facebook gave people a choice of 56 genders to choose from in 2020 when indicating their partner preference.
