According to an analysis released last
week, at least 20 million adults in the United States – nearly 8
percent of the total adult population – identify as lesbian, gay,
bisexual or transgender.
In its “We Are Here: Understanding
the Size of the LGBTQ+ Community,” the Human Rights Campaign
Foundation, the educational arm of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC),
the nation's largest LGBT rights advocate, analyzed recent data from
the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, a national household
probability survey of adults in the United States.
HRC's conclusion that nearly 8 percent
of the adult population identifies as LGBT is nearly double that of
prior estimates of the community's size. The Public Religious
Research Institute's (PRRI's) American Values Atlas suggested that
4.4 percent of American adults identify as LGBT.
“LGBTQ+ people
are here – in every town, in every city, in each and every ZIP
code,” HRC Interim President Joni Madison said in a statement.
“This data shows what we’ve suspected: our community is larger
and more widespread than we could have known up to this point. We’re
proud to bring this data to light and set the stage for a future
where all the millions of LGBTQ+ people in America enjoy full legal
and lived equality. I commend the Biden administration and the U.S.
Census Bureau for finally allowing researchers to count us, and look
forward to seeing the LGBTQ+ community counted in further studies."
Other
findings from the report include an increase in the number of
people who identify as transgender – from 1.4 million to 2 million,
or 1 percent of adults. Bisexual people made up the largest single
demographic, at about 4 percent of respondents.
States with the largest number of
LGBTQ+ residents are California and Texas, with an estimated 2,6
million and 1.6 million, respectively.