Gallup Special Report: 3.4% of U.S. Adults Identify as LGBT

Nearly double among younger people...6.4% of people 18-29 identify as LGBT...of course the actual percentage of LGBT people probably hasn't changed, but more younger people are willing to come out...great news, progress is being made.

 

I actually find the enthic percentages quite interesting. Its amusing to see that the groups usually stereotyped as the least tolerant, have the most people admitting to identifying as LGBT.

 

Almost twice as many for 18-29 women as for 18-29 men! Envious...

The "Refused to answer"s go up with age as the "Yes" goes down. So clearly the younger generations are more willing to be open.

 

3.4%?

We're so fucked.

 

Hah, that's your generation! Ours is doing fine! Just kidding, I'm sorry for yah well I think that it's progress in motion!

 

Dude, 18 < 23 < 29. But still, if we're the 3.4%, we're in serious trouble. I felt like we should be 7%.

 

That would only be true if straight allies didn't exist.

 

You can realistically lift at least half of the "Refused/Don't know" column and dump it directly into the Yes column. It's pretty unlikely that a straight person would refuse to answer, and if they "Don't know" then they can't really call themselves straight.
Also at least a few percentage points would've outright lied and said 'No,' although how many is difficult to estimate.

Of course if they aren't willing to be honest with themselves they aren't going to be doing anything to help our cause...

1 in 20 seems like a realistic proportion and that's mostly what the survey shows if you take into account the above.

 

Our generation is at 6.4%. When you add the 3.5% who refused to answer or said "Don't Know", that's 9.9%- about the 10% of the population we would at most expect to be LGBT.

 

And there are still a large number of closeted people in the country. And making up 3 or 5 or 10% of the country, it doesn't matter if the majority are in favor of your civil rights... Thank goodness for straight allies amirite?

 

Let's do the math.

According to the U.S. POPClock Projection, which is maintained by the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 10/19/12 at 23:16 UTC (EST+5) the population of the United States is: 314,610,320

3.4% of that is 10,696,751.

To give a point of reference, if all LGBT people in the United States gathered together in one place, we'd become the 8th most populous state. We'd have more residence than the state of Michigan, and almost enough to be as large as Ohio - the current 7th largest state.

And all of this is assuming that Gallup's numbers are correct. Also, trends clearly show that unless something in the water is making people gay there are many more LGBT people out there than 3.4% total.

If we assume that 6.4% - the percentage at which 18-29 year olds identified as LGBT - is a more realistic number (due to the fact they've grown up in a more accepting environment). Then that puts us at 20,135,060 population wise - giving us more people than the State of New York; making us the third most populous state, and just a bit over 5 million short of edging out Texas and becoming the second largest state in terms of population.

And in all truthfulness I don't think it's hard to argue that the percentage of us are even higher than 6.4% judging by the number of people who still didn't answer the question.

None of this factors in our straight allies.

Going by the 3.4% in terms of comparing our numbers by country, we have more LGBT people in the United States than the following countries have citizens: Haiti, Tunisia, Portugal, Czech Republic, Hungary, Sweden, Austria, United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Ireland, New Zealand - we even have more LGBT people than Israel.

If we were a country, we'd be the 78th largest in the world. If we assume that 3.4% equaled the entire world population (current estimate is around 7,046,765,205), that would give us a population of 239,590,017. This would make us the 4th most populous country on planet Earth, edging out Indonesia.

In this context LGBT rights are hardly statistically irrelevant. Just taking the U.S. LGBT population alone - we out number the majority of the worlds nations.