Feb. 22 (UPI) — The latest poll on sexual identification by Gallup found that people in the United States who identify as anything other than heterosexual remained steady in 2022 from previous polls.
The results follow notable increases in LGBT identification in 2020 and 2021, Gallup said in a news release. In 2022, 7.2% of people polled identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or anything other than heterosexual.
The 2022 mark for LGBT identification is more than double what it was when Gallup did the poll in 2012. At that time just 3.5% of respondents identified as part of the LGBT community.
“LGBT identification has become much more common in the U.S. in the past decade,” the news release reads. “With many more younger than older adults seeing themselves as something other than heterosexual, the LGBT share of the entire U.S. adult population can be expected to grow in future years.”
Between 2012 and 2017, LGBT identification rose by 1 percentage point. Gains have been much larger in the years since. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there were 980,276 same-sex households in the United States in 2019, and more than half were married couples.
Gallup conducted its survey by phone, reaching 10,000 participants. About 7% declined to respond to questions about their sexual orientation. Among those who identified as LGBT, 4.2% said they were bisexual.
The 2022 poll was the first in which Gallup asked respondents for their preferred identities if they identified as something other than heterosexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Most identified as queer, pansexual or asexual.
LGBT identification was most common among younger generations. There was not an older generation that identified as LGBT at a higher rate than the next youngest generation. Gen Z identified as LGBT at 19.7%, with 13.1% identifying as bisexual. Millennials responded at an 11.2% rate followed by Gen X at 3.3%.
