Who could’ve seen this coming? Yeah, everyone.
In 2012, 3.5 percent of the public identified as LGBT. Six years later, 4.5 percent — about an additional three million people — do. Two possible explanations. One: It’s not that there are more LGBT people now than there were 10 years ago, it’s just that they feel more comfortable admitting it. The more accepting the culture seems of gay/trans lifestyles, logically the more gay/trans Americans will own up to having them. Although if that’s the explanation, you’d expect this trend to level off sometime soon-ish.
Let’s be honest. It’s super chic right now to be LGBT. On top of that, right now we’re in the victim Olympics and nothing gets you medals in the victim Olympics more than declaring yourself team LGBT. I would suspect that a majority of the increase is young girls experimenting but that’s not broken out in the data. It does say, however, that while those identifying as LGBT among boomers and seniors actually declined, young people are now approaching something like 10 percent identifying as LGBT.
10 percent!?
