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

The Rise of the LGBT Population? There has been a dramatic rise in the LGBT share of the US population since 2012, and especially since 2017. [...] While the figures in the FIRE and CCES are somewhat higher than in the Gallup or GSS, we see the same broad trend: a substantial increase in non-heterosexual identity from the mid-2010s to the present, with over 20% of young people identifying as LGBT. [...] LGBT identification has also increased in longstanding low-religion societies such as Britain.24 While there is a spurt of non- religiosity in the 2021 data that corresponds to the surge in LGBT identification, there is also a rise in the proportion of very liberal and anxious/depressed people between the 2018 and 2021 surveys and a change in survey methodology. [...] In the context of limited increases in total youth unhappiness prior to the pandemic, this indicates that the LGBT rise has been disproportionately concentrated within the overlapping ‘very liberal’ and anxious/depressed part of the young population. [...] The figure of 5.8% is far higher than the 2.1% transgender recorded by Gallup for those aged 18 to 25.32 It is also considerably larger than the 0.85% trans and nonbinary share recorded for the 20- 24 population (0.3% overall) by the 2021 Canadian census, which provides perhaps the best approximation to the actual US number.33 In terms of sex, 61% of trans identifiers under age 30 in the CCES resp.