Gallup Poll - 7.2% of Americans LGQB

[Cheerful Charlie]

From Gallup Polling.

....
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- After showing perceptible increases in 2020 and 2021, U.S. adults’ identification as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual held steady in 2022, at 7.2%. The current percentage is double what it was when Gallup first measured LGBT identification a decade ago.
....

U.S. LGBT Identification Steady at 7.2%

Gallup estimates that 7.2% of the U.S. adult population is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual.

news.gallup.com

 

[lostone]

More people are coming out because it is safer to do - which is why the Right Wing Evangelical anti-culture warriors are working so hard to return it being perilous to declare oneself LGBT. Nothing has really changed, it is just more out in the open.

 

[bilby]

More people are coming out because it is safer to do - which is why the Right Wing Evangelical anti-culture warriors are working so hard to return it being perilous to declare oneself LGBT. Nothing has really changed, it is just more out in the open.

Indeed. And given that it's still unsafe to come out in many places, the actual figure is almost certainly far higher than 7.2%, and always was.

Cis-hetero exclusive people are quite probably a minority; Cis-hetero majority people (those who elect to have only or mostly cis-hetero relationships even when no stigma is attached to other kinds of relationship) are likely around two-thirds of the population at most.

Homo Sapiens are very a highly sexual and sexually undiscriminating species, and in the absence of violent threats from other members of the species, will pretty much fuck anyone.

The world would be a better place if the only rules that were enforced were those around consent. But hypocrites gonna hyp.

 

[Politesse]

I am heartened by what this indicates about the ability of the American public to self-identify as they choose these days. There was a time - as recent as my childhood, and I'm a spring chicken to most of this message board - when such a number was almost unimaginable. As, indeed, the generational data still suggests.

It is unsurprising that bisexuals represent the most common non-straight romantic disposition, though it is an odd situation as well considering public opinion of bisexual people is so dismal, and positive representations thereof in popular culture are still relatively rare.

I feel sad, looking at the numbers, about the extent to which my lesbian sisters were never liberated as fully or as early as gay men were able to be, and that so many bi and lesbian women of older generations no doubt remain strictly closeted despite the revolution in gender and sexual identity.

 

[SLD]

I think it’s much closer to 90%. It’s just that so many are afraid to admit that they have tendencies both ways. While I am not attracted to men, I can’t deny that I also have gay fantasies. Am I straight, bi, or just gay? I just don’t care what you call me. I long ago decided to choose the straight lifestyle. I’ve met many other men who are exactly like me, primarily on the internet where anonymity can allow you to let your hair down.

The older I get though the less homophobic I’ve become. I think it might be simply that I’ve proven my heterosexuality by getting married and having kids. No longer do I feel threatened by someone suggesting I might be gay. And no one would seriously say that who knows me. Well, you all would now that I’ve confessed.

 

[Politesse]

It was comforting in some ways being in a straight marriage for many years as I was, having that easy social acceptibility. People reacted to my very existence in their social spaces in very different ways. Even though people must know on some level that possession of a marriage certificate does not determine one's romantic preferences! Well, at least they can't say I didn't give heterosexuality the old college try.

 

[Swammerdami]

The stats at the beginning of this video are frightening. Many young American men have few friends and no girl friend. (I'm posting in this thread because increased female-to-female sex pairing may help explain the stats.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The stats at the beginning of this video are frightening. Many young American men have few friends and no girl friend. (I'm posting in this thread because increased female-to-female sex pairing may help explain the stats.)

Yeah, social media has come to replace an awful lot of personal interaction and the one-to-many scaling it permits is very bad news for the less desirable.

 

[lostone]

Men do have the option of trying to make themselves more attractive on the free market. They cannot change their bodies to make them more attractive, but they can change their attitudes and try to do a better sales job. After all, a lot of women have to do the same.

 

[Swammerdami]

Wasn't it Joseph Stalin who said “The celibacy of one man is a tragedy. The celibacy of a million is a statistic” ?

Men do have the option of trying to make themselves more attractive on the free market. They cannot change their bodies to make them more attractive, but they can change their attitudes and try to do a better sales job. After all, a lot of women have to do the same.

What may be very good advice for a specific acquaintance is not generally a good prescription for social change. Trends exist for reasons. Systemic changes are the solution for systemic flaws.

The short YouTube I linked to, though off-topic in this thread, is worth watching in its entirety.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Meanwhile Dennis Praeger is very upset men are afraid to talk to women because of woke, leftist politics. Poor Dennis!

Dennis Prager Knows Why Men Are Afraid To Talk To Women

Relationship expert...Dennis Prager?

crooksandliars.com

 

[lostone]

Wasn't it Joseph Stalin who said “The celibacy of one man is a tragedy. The celibacy of a million is a statistic” ?

Men do have the option of trying to make themselves more attractive on the free market. They cannot change their bodies to make them more attractive, but they can change their attitudes and try to do a better sales job. After all, a lot of women have to do the same.

What may be very good advice for a specific acquaintance is not generally a good prescription for social change. Trends exist for reasons. Systemic changes are the solution for systemic flaws.

The short YouTube I linked to, though off-topic in this thread, is worth watching in its entirety.

I agree that there is a lot of truth in that video. It is difficult to make oneself more attractive in an environment where the male does not even get to meet the female, except online, where all the advantages lie with around the favored 20% of the males, the ones blessed with height, good looks, and strong finances.

 

[Oleg]

More people are coming out because it is safer to do - which is why the Right Wing Evangelical anti-culture warriors are working so hard to return it being perilous to declare oneself LGBT. Nothing has really changed, it is just more out in the open.

Is that it? Or has it simply become tready?

Born This Way? The Rise of LGBT as a Social and Political Identity

CSPI Report No. 6

www.cspicenter.com

 

[Oleg]

Men do have the option of trying to make themselves more attractive on the free market. They cannot change their bodies to make them more attractive

Nonsense. If you exercise - bulid muscle - clean yourself up and get a career you'll be ahead. Suprisingly, women aren't into gamers with soyboy bodies.

 

[southernhybrid]

I don't read that many threads, so I missed this one earlier. Sorry about that, but it reminded me of the book I read several months ago by Frans de Wall, called, "Gender from a Primatologist's Perspective". He claims that studies have found about 350 animals, ( I don't remember the exact number ) have been identified as being bisexual, but only one species has been identified so far that has members who are strictly homosexual, and that would be a certain breed of Rams. Bisexuality is common among other primates, so it makes sense that a good percentage of humans would also be bisexual. I have a friend who was married to a man, had children with that man, and after her divorce, fell in love and married a woman. She continues to identify as bisexual. She and her wife are scared that gay marriage will be overturned.

I will never understand why anyone cares about someone else's sexual orientation, but I'm pretty sure that just about all of it is tied to conservative religion, and conservative politics.

And, imagine growing up in the 50s, like I did. I had a female classmate when I was in the. 5th grade who wrote love letters to another girl, who was my friend and neighbor. She showed me the letters and we were confused. She showed her parents the letters and she was told never to talk to the other girl again. None of us even knew that some people were attracted to the same sex. De Santis and his ilk would have loved it because nobody talked about such things back then and gay people were so deep in the closet that a lot of them probably did partner with someone of the opposite sex to avoid being judged. harshly and discriminated against.

I was probably nearly an adult before realizing that gay people existed, and then I finally understood what was going on with the girl in my 5th grade class. It's cruel to deny children the knowledge that sexuality and gender include a variety of IDs and orientations. Without this knowledge children are often predisposed to be prejudiced toward those who are different from themselves, or may feel depressed and left out, if and when they realize that they are a minority when it comes to sexual orientation and/or gender.

So, on the one hand, we've come a long way, but now we have so many religious extremists gaining power, that it's frightening to think what gay members of our communities might have to face in the near future.

I just read that the brand new speaker of the House is against gay marriage He's against a lot of other things too, but I'll leave it at that.

 

[lostone]

Peer pressure works on adults just as well as it does on children. Maybe even better, since adults can lose their jobs and their ability to get jobs, if they fall into a group that is hard to hire. You could completely lose your ability to make a living, just like 'communists' did back in the McCarthy era of the 1950s.

Religious extremists and natural Puritans have enforced their POV on sexuality and society for a long time all over the world. Look at Iran and Russia, who boast that they have 'no homosexuals or lesbians'.

I grew up in the 50s myself, and clearly recall how much social pressure there was on people to be straight in small towns, and even in cities, people lived in neighborhoods. The social conservatives would love to bring those days back and push everyone back into the closet. They are working very hard to do just that.

 

[thebeave]

Its skyrocketing at Brown University. Gotta wonder how much of this is real, and how much is chasing fads and/or social contagion.

Nearly 40% of Brown University students identify as LGBTQ+

The number of Brown University students identifying as LGBTQ+ has doubled since 2010, according to a new poll from the university’s student paper, writes Alex Oliveira for the New York Post.

About 38% of students at the Ivy League school identified as either homosexual, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual, questioning, or other — more than five times the national rate for adults not identifying as straight.

A similar poll conducted at the school just over 10 years ago found that 14% of the student body identified as being part of the LGBTQ+ community. The poll was conducted by the Brown Daily Herald, an independent student newspaper at the Rhode Island school, and released in June as a part of a Pride Month special issue.

 

[Politesse]

Its skyrocketing at Brown University. Gotta wonder how much of this is real, and how much is chasing fads and/or social contagion.

Nearly 40% of Brown University students identify as LGBTQ+

The number of Brown University students identifying as LGBTQ+ has doubled since 2010, according to a new poll from the university’s student paper, writes Alex Oliveira for the New York Post.

About 38% of students at the Ivy League school identified as either homosexual, bisexual, queer, asexual, pansexual, questioning, or other — more than five times the national rate for adults not identifying as straight.

A similar poll conducted at the school just over 10 years ago found that 14% of the student body identified as being part of the LGBTQ+ community. The poll was conducted by the Brown Daily Herald, an independent student newspaper at the Rhode Island school, and released in June as a part of a Pride Month special issue.

Yes, I can see how a very stupid person might wonder that.

Did you pick your sexual orientation due to a "fad", thebeave?

 

[Jokodo]

Arguably, a majority and certainly a large minority of self identifying straight people picked that identification due to a fad. That one time you kissed another girl and boy was it hot? That one time another guy wanked you off? That one fellow in middle school you had a very clear intuition that you'd find him smoking hot if only you were into boys, but you aren't, right, so those thoughts must be something else? They don't count, right?

They don't count because you chose not to count them. You could just add easily count them as evidence that you're bi.

 

[Jokodo]

I believe I've read about a study done in Berlin in the 70s and repeated in the 90s with the same methodology that seemed to show that such behaviour, ie experimentation with sexualities other than one's dominant one, became *less* frequent as gays became more visible. So apparently people are more careful about remaining "straight" when they are more aware that they could be gay, despite higher overt acceptance of homosexuality.

It's not the time of the day to start digging up references where I live, not when you have kids and a job and construction workers coming to your house in the morning, so you'll have to take my word on it or discard it at your discretion.