According to a Gallup survey, 3.4
percent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and
transgender.
Gallup pollsters asked the question of
more than 121,000 people, making it the largest single study of the
distribution of the gay population in the United States on record.
The previous record was held by the
federal government, whose Department of Health and Human Services'
National Survey of Family Growth asked more than 20,000 Americans
their sexual orientation.
The group with the highest percentage
of self-identified gay people is Black (4.6%), followed by Asian
(4.3%), Hispanic (4.0%) and non-Hispanic white (3.2%).
More women (3.6%) identify as LGBT than
men (3.3%). And younger people identify as gay in greater numbers.
For example, only 1.9 percent of respondents over 65 identified as
such, while 6.4 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 29
identified as gay.
A greater number of people who identify
as gay are lower income. More than 5 percent of those with yearly
incomes of less than $24,000 identify as LGBT, while only 2.8 percent
of those making $60,000 a year or more do so.
Only 1.3 percent of self-identified gay
people are married, while 13 percent are in domestic relationships.
(However, respondents were not asked the gender of their spouse.)
“[T]he findings challenge both media
and cultural stereotypes to reveal that the LGBT population is in a
number of ways not that different from the broader U.S. population,”
the authors wrote.
Also important to note is the fact that
4.4 percent of respondents refused to disclose their sexual
orientation.