According to a
report released Thursday by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School
of Law, 3.5 percent of adults in America identify as lesbian, gay
or bisexual, and an estimated 0.3 percent of adults are transgender.
Putting the number of LGBT Americans at 9 million, or roughly the
population of New Jersey.
Demographer Gary Gates arrived at the
estimates by averaging national polls conducted between 2004 and
2009.
“The number matters,” Gates told
The Washington Post. “An unfortunate part of our political
system is that you don't really count unless you're counted. LGBT
Americans still are not routinely counted. That allows legislators
and policymakers to say they really don't matter much, because if
they did, we'd have this data.”
Approximately 1.7 percent of adults
identify as lesbian or gay, while 1.8 percent say they're bisexual.
Women are more likely to identify as bisexual than men.
An estimated 19 million Americans
(8.2%) say they've engaged in sexual behavior with a member of the
same sex and more than a quarter of the population (25.6%)
acknowledge at least some same-sex sexual attraction.