One in Six 18- to 23-Year-Olds Identifies as LGBT. NewsWire

NewsWire: 3/04/21

• The share of U.S. adults identifying as LGBT has risen to 5.6%. Younger generations are far more likely to identify as anything other than heterosexual, with nearly 16% of 18- to 23-year-olds doing so compared to just 1.3% of adults age 75+. (Gallup)
• NH: 5.6% of U.S. adults self-identify as LGBT, up from 4.5% when Gallup last asked this question three years ago. (See “More Millennials Identify as LGBT.”) As was the case in the last survey, the rise was mostly driven by increased LGBT identification among late-wave Millennials. Nearly 16% of 18- to 23-year-olds identify as LGBT, as well as 9.1% of 24- to 39-year-olds. But it’s much less common among those 40+, comprising 3.8% of Xers, 2.0% of Boomers, and just 1.3% of Silent.

• Overall, the majority of LGBT adults (54.6%) identify as bisexual. But younger Millennials are much more likely to identify as bisexual (72%) as opposed to other orientations like gay, lesbian, or transgender. Millennial women, in particular, are much more likely to identify as bisexual compared to Millennial men. Among older LGBT adults, bisexual preference is not significantly more common than gay or lesbian preference.
• Most people hearing about such findings might well be prompted to ask: How reliable are they? Or more to the point, what exactly do they mean? Do they say anything--or are they even supposed to say anything--about the sexual desires or activities of the respondents? After all, to "identify" oneself with a sexual orientation may say nothing at all about what you do or think about. It may instead simply indicate which group or outlook or lifestyle you want to be seen as part of.
• If you're a Boomer, for example, you may be gay by most behavioral standards but want others to see you as "straight/hetero." But if you're a Millennial or Homelander, the reverse may be true: You may be pretty cisgender in your behavior but still want to identify as bi, gay, trans, queer, gender neutral, or whatever. Anything but straight. And maybe you're attracted to these options both because it showcases you as a decent and open-minded person--and because it drives so many Boomers bonkers.
• I suspect a lot of this is indeed going on. At a time when a large and growing majority of younger Americans support gay rights, the share of series regular TV characters who are LGBT has risen to 9% and gender-bending stars like Billie Eilish and Harry Styles have become teen idols. There is a lot more support and visibility, whether among peers or in media, for queer youth. For some young people, the label says something about their personal behavior; for most, it rather says something about their sympathetic mindset.
• Yes, we do have some data to bear on this point. The CDC runs periodic surveys of adults age 18 to 45 on their sexual behavior. In its last survey, run in 2011-13, the survey specifically queries of 10,000 of these adults on sexual attraction and lifetime sexual contact. The results are instructive. Among women age 18-24, 94% said they were "only" or "mostly" attracted to the opposite sex. Just under 3% said "only" or "mostly" attracted to the same sex. Among men in the same age range, the answers were 95% and just over 3%, respectively. Among older groups, the numbers were even more lopsided. Sure, this survey was run 8 years ago, but I doubt that results would be very different today.
• How young people think about gender does matter. The fact that Millennials and Homelanders feel less pressure to confirm to binary notions of gender or sexuality means that there is greater demand for, say, androgynous clothing and a burgeoning market for men’s makeup (see “His Makeup Looks Great”). There is also huge demand for queer dating services: Gay couples are nearly twice as likely as straight couples to have searched for partners online.
• But in most outward respects, the rising generation's big life choices appear, well, pretty heteronormative. According to a survey taken last year, 48% of LGBT Millennials plan to have children, compared to 55% of non-LGBT Millennials. This is a much smaller gap than was seen with older generations, in part because younger LGBT youth see more paths to starting a family. And a 2019 Pew survey found that among bisexual people with partners, the vast majority (88%) are married or in a relationship with someone of the opposite sex. Growing LGBT identification speaks to a big cultural shift, but it doesn’t seem to be driving equally seismic changes in how we live.