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Sprinting Towards Sodom
OK, that is a deliberately provocative title. But there’s a new Gallup poll about LGBT self-identification in the US and the results are alarming for a traditionalist like myself, with an unexpected twist. The title of this post is intended as a homage to Robert Bork’s terrific Slouching Towards Gomorrah, published in 1996. I highly recommend the book, which is available online free (here), though I can’t vouch for the copyright legitimacy of this version. I have it in my Audible library.
Onto the data and graphics. The latest Gallup poll, released this week but reporting polling data from 2020 (here), reports an increase in LGBT self-identification to 5.6%. The prior reported figure, from 2017 (here), was 4.5%. That’s an increase of about 24% since 2017. Here’s how it breaks down by age cohort:
The red line shows the 2020 Gallup data. As you can see, it follows a “hockey stick” pattern, with a substantial and accelerating increase in overall LGBT self-identification among the younger age cohorts.
The orange and blue lines show the same results for 2017 and 2012, respectively. Interestingly, LGBT identification has declined a bit in the older cohorts, shows a slight increase in Gen X, and shows large increases in the younger two age cohorts. There are no results reported for Gen Z prior to 2020, as they were not yet adults.
Note that Gallup has slightly tweaked the cutoff points for some of the age cohorts. A person born in 1980 was considered a Gen X-er in 2017, but is now classified as a Millennial. A person born in 1997-1999 was considered a Millennial in 2017, but is now classified in Gen Z. I don’t think that these minor changes have a significant effect on the results.
In a post in October 2019 (here), I did a more detailed analysis of LGBT self-identification by age, based on smaller age cohorts (five-year intervals). The data fit a cubic function quite well. Here is the graph from my 2019 post, based on data from 2017:
This model indicated a prevalence of LGBT identification that was rapidly increasing, and was around 12% for 18-year-olds — meaning people who were 18 years old in 2017. This is quite consistent with the latest Gallup data from 2020, showing that 15.9% of Americans in Gen Z — aged 18-23 in 2020 — self-identify as LGBT.
So the recent Gallup data confirms my prior conclusions. It is quite inconsistent with the arguments that LGBT individuals are “born that way” or that these characteristics are “immutable.”
The 2020 Gallup data, however, includes a helpful breakdown of the subcategories of LGBT identification, reporting self-identification for five subcategories: bisexual; gay (i.e. male homosexual); lesbian (i.e. female homosexual); transgender; and “other” (whatever that might mean). Here is a graph of this breakdown in 2020:
As you can see, the bulk of the increase occurs in the bisexual category (red line), with a notable increase in the transgender category (blue line).
The most consistent subcategory across generations is male homosexuality (orange line), which shows a small increase in the younger age cohorts. Note that the number of male homosexuals in the older age cohorts — especially the Boomers — is probably an understatement of the total rate of male homosexuality in these cohorts, as I suspect that AIDS resulted in the early death of a significant number of men in this category.
In percentage terms, the largest increases in LGBT identification between age cohorts are:
- Bisexual identification increased 500% between the Boomers and Gen X
- Bisexual identification increased a further 183% between Gen X and the Millennials, and yet another 125% between the Millennials and Gen Z
- Transgender identification increased 500% between Gen X and the Millennials, and another 50% between the Millennials and Gen Z
- Male homosexual identification increased 67% between Gen X and the Millennials, then increased only 5% further between the Millennials and Gen Z
- Female homosexual identification increased 75% between the Boomers and Gen X, another 14% between Gen X and the Millennials, and another 75% between the Millennials and Gen Z
I find this to be interesting information. The bulk of Americans identifying as LGBT are bisexual. Overall, about 55% of LGBT adults are bisexual. This trend is most pronounced among Gen Z, among which about 67% of LGBT individuals are bisexual.
A final observation is the sex differentials in the bisexual category. The latest Gallup report provides limited information on this, reporting that for the entire population, 4.3% of women and 1.8% of men identify as bisexual. This suggests that about 70% of bisexuals are women. The report does not provide information on sex differences in bisexual identification by age cohort.
I’ll do my best to answer any questions that you might have about this updated information, and I’m interested in your comments about the cultural and policy implications of these demographics.
Wokeism delenda est.
Published in Domestic Policy
I do not infer anything from whether I “like” anyone or not. The men introduce themselves as having a husband and the women as having a wife. QED.
I wasn’t meaning you liking or not. Sorry if it seemed that way.
I dont watch TV, so it was just weird. I couldn’t imagine how it came up on a game show.
The underlying assumption of just about any poll is, “Are the responses truthful?” It wouldn’t surprise me if a large number of liberal heterosexuals answer they are bisexual just to skew the results . . .
What I meant by ‘nobody cared’ was most people didn’t wear their sexuality on their sleeve – people just lived their lives. I have had gay friends and co-workers all my life, very dear people, and the sex subject never was brought up – they were just that – friends, co-workers, just people – that’s what I meant.
Now……we suddenly have 75 plus new gender persuasions, an acceleration of gender-confused youth, major indoctrination to younger and younger kids, drag queens reading children’s stories in libraries, gender neutral language and censorship, multiple sir names – there are no more boundaries and this is not a “natural” progression – it’s a deliberate, social transformation, along with pitting races against each other, that is harming society. I have a major beef with both, but most of all, influencing children who are too young to understand any of it. So sprinting towards Sodom is an accurate title.
Are you familiar with Artificial Happiness by Ronald Dworkin (2007)? An excellent book on the topic.
That’s what I was thinking reading the article.
“Yes, I’m bi and part of the LGBTQ+ pantheon! Have I ever had intercourse with my own sex? No. Why do you ask?”
It is after all about how you feel. These days, I feel like I might need the label ‘bi’.
But I’m going to stick with bi-pedal. I don’t have to share that last part of it do I?
Eventually, I’m just going to start outright referring to myself as a breeder. That’s really what the homosexual radical left is predominantly the nastiest about – men and women getting together and producing babies.
I think it was Rush who used to say, “I’m a lesbian trapped in a man’s body.”
Okay. I’m sure you treated them as equals, but did the law? Did the rest of society? When people are discriminated against, based on a certain characteristic, then they tend to organise around that characteristic.
When privileged people (in this case straight people, historically, also the majority) are treated with equality if feels like oppression to them.
Drag Queens reading to kids in libraries influences them. Ensuring that Drag Queens don’t read to kids in libraries also influences them. It is not a neutral non-influencing thing (see above).
Come on in, the water’s fine. (Really.)
Um, that term’s been co-opted too, just letting you know.
Of course it has.
I was thinking the same thing. How many Ricochetti last year declared that if they get a phone call for a presidential poll they are going to lie?
Wouldn’t that be offset by the Conservative homosexuals telling people they’re straight? It’s an interesting thought.
Back in 1989 I was looking for a job in the Bay area of California. Wife was very pregnant. We were in Berkley to get dinner and my wife commented that she was getting lots of ugly stares. Never experienced that anyplace else. That was the first time we came across the term “Breeder”.
Used to be a joke.
Now it’s one of the 57+ “gender” choices.
You are entitled to your opinion but that’s the nuttiest response I’ve ever read.
Maybe. However, I’m willing to bet there are a lot more lying heterosexual liberals out there than Concervative homosexuals who’d lie to a pollster . . .
Update: Another flaw with polls is you cannot say the poll is representative of the people who refused to take the poll. You will never know . . .
Same here. The gay friends I had never had to proclaim gayness – everyone just knew. Well, only one of my friends is an aggressive advocate of homosexuality, but she’ll always be my friend because I don’t talk politics with her.
This article in The Federalist says more eloquently what I was trying to state.
What’s nutty about it?
Or to their wives. Possible.
I think the suicide rates for gays has consistently been twice that of regular people. I think this is because of the hormones in utero.
Have you ever met conservative homosexuals?
I liked how people were more private then but I think being confined to the closet is unfair to homosexuals. It does make their writing much better though.
Sure have :-)
Log Cabin Republicans
It doesn’t seem that too many of them are in the closet. But to be fair I don’t hang out with many of them. Joe Rogan says that there are many closeted homosexuals in Hollywood but that place is so rainbow gay I don’t understand why they would care.
Sells less merch, audiences find it harder to willingly suspend disbelief when it comes to romantic leads so it reduces job opportunities.
But Daniel Patrick Harris and the guy who plays Sheldon on Big Bang Theory have played straight guys and they are A-list.
It depends how strictly you define A list. They are top TV stars; they aren’t movie stars, who have to be able to sell tickets in Turkey, Russia, China, and Dubai. To this day, I don’t know of any openly gay A list movie stars. I don’t think Rogan is right about how closeted the rest are.
Hollywood is much less gay than, for example, the theater scene in New York or Chicago. Out here, it’s all work; being homosexual is no great advantage getting hired.