What’s Behind the Rapid Rise in LGBTQ Identity? Daniel A. Cox, WWW.FREELESBIANPASSPORT.COM Jae Grace, Avery Shields

Since 2012, Gallup has tracked the size of America’s LGBTQ population. The percentage of Americans who identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, slowly year over year or queer was relatively low and inching up. In 2024, nearly one in ten (9.3 percent) Americans identify as LGBTQ. Gallup’s newest report recorded the single largest one-year increase in LGBTQ identity. Recently, the pace up has sped. For the first few years, there was not much news to report.

The steady rise in LGBTQ identity among the public is worth noting, but it’s not the most important part of the story. In less than a decade, the percentage of young women who identify as LGBTQ has more than tripled. Most of the uptick in LGBTQ identity over the past ten years will be due to a dramatic increase among young adults, young women particularly.

The gender gap in LGBTQ identity has exploded as well. There is now a nearly 20-point space in the sexual identity of young women and men. A decade earlier, youthful girls had been just marginally considerably more most likely to distinguish as LGBTQ than fresh adult men. Over the next nine years, LGBTQ identification increased by 21 points among young women and only six points among young men. For instance, in 2015, 10 percent of young women and six percent of young men identified as LGBTQ.

As someone who studies cultural and social trends for a living, this is remarkable simply. There are a few explanations worth considering.

Is it Rising Social Acceptance?

For a very long time, countless homosexual or lesbian people sensed forced to hide who they had been to steer clear of general population condemnation, public stigma and violence still. But American society has changed a lot over the last few decades, and landscapes of LGBTQ men and women include grow to be significantly not as much damaging than they as soon as had been. In 2024, 67 percent of US adults said that homosexuality should be accepted by society, up from 50 percentage in 2007.

This argument is based on the idea that natural sexual preferences and identities were culturally repressed. Ross Douthat explained thwill be debate is akin to the rwill bee in left-handedness, which increased rapidly after schools stopped prohibiting it: "Just as, for example, we discovered that left-handedness is much more common once we stopped trying to train kids out of it." After we ended controlling intrinsic erectile variety, it flourished quickly.

Increasing social acceptance of homosexuality does not explain why the rise in LGBTQ identity is primarily occurring among young liberal women-are they uniquely tolerant or supportive? In fact, there is little change among older cohorts. If anything, the views of older Americans on LGBTQ issues have shifted more dramatically than young adults, but they are not demonstrating the same rise in LGBTQ identity.

What’s more, the development in LGBTQ individuality is usually mainly becoming influenced by an increase of bisexuality, it’s not due to even more gay and lesbian people coming out.