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BY: GRAHAM GREMORE
What Christian extremists have been warning us about for years is finally happening. People in America are turning gayer and gayer. And at a shockingly fast rate, too.
A new Gallup survey has found that more than 10 million Americans, 4.1% to be exact, now identify as LGBTQ. That’s an increase of more than 1.75 million since the last survey conducted in 2012, which found 3.5% of Americans identified as LGBTQ.
The survey is based on a total of 1,626,773 telephone interviews with randomly selected Americans ages 18 and older living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The survey was conducted from June 1, 2012 through December 30, 2016.
Millennials showed the sharp increase in overall LGBTQ self-identification, going from 5.8% in 2012 to 7.3% in 2016. Generation Xers remained more of less than same, hovering around 3.2%. Baby boomers went from 1.8% to 1.4%, and traditionalists (folks born between 1913-1945) went from 1.8% to 1.4%.
Some of the survey’s other findings included:
- More women (4.4%) identified as LGBTQ than men (3.7%).
- Among ethnic minorities, the largest increase in LGBTQ self-identification occurred within the Asian population, going from 3.5% to 4.9% over the course of the four years.
- LGBTQ identification increased among all income and education groups.
- Increases in LGBTQ identification were largely among those who are not religious.
According to Gallup, the fact that data security and confidentiality are less of a concern to millennials, in general, could explain why that group is so much more likely to identify as LGBTQ than older generations.
Or maybe gayness is just contagious.
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This post was originally published on Queerty and is republished here with permission.
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Photo credit: Pixabay
