Maybe you thought you were alone in thinking that there seemed to be more and more of us out there. Not just in the media, which has always been a few steps ahead of the popular zeitgeist, but in everyday life as well. That pink haired barista at the corner coffee shop? Obviously. The hunky twunk working out at the gym with the painted fingernails? Most definitely.
But now, apparently, EVERYONE is gay.
Newsweek is reporting that a survey conducted by George Barna in conjunction with the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University and Foundations of Freedom, a non-profit entity that promotes traditional American values, shows a significant increase in young people who identify as LGBTQ+.
The poll looked at so-called Millennials, defined as someone born from 1984-2002, which is about 78 million individuals representing a quarter of the U.S. population.
Among Millennials, 30 percent identify as LGBTQ, more than three times that of the rest of the adult population, and when the researchers broke out the youngest of the group, ages 18-24 (which some call Gen Z), they found 39 percent called themselves LGBTQ.
Newsweek continues:
Barna’s poll is based on a sampling of 600 respondents representing Millennials weighted for factors such as geographic location, race and gender who took an average of 17 minutes each to answer 71 questions.
What is particularly interesting about this survey is that it looked at other questions besides just sexuality, posing such questions as to what the respondent felt about socialism (scored better than capitalism) and religion (74% believe all religions have equal value). What scored highest among the Millennials was a search for meaning in their lives (75%).
This comes not long after a similar poll from the Trevor Project reported that one in four LGBTQ+ youth identify as non-binary.
Conservatives, and in particular Evangelical Christians, will interpret these findings as evidence that their world is continuing to crumble around them. The heteronormative, white domination of American culture that they had come to view as the only valid vision of America is shown to be collapsing as fast as the ice sheets in the Arctic. Within a generation the sexual, and perhaps economic, landscape of America will be significantly different if these findings become permanent.
How to translate these findings will be the subject of discussion for many, but it does seem to reinforce that inner Gay-dar in many of us that there are more of us around than ever before.
(source: Newsweek)
I think when someone is trying to develop a list of gay folks, you need to get rid of the rest of the alphabet. The rest of them are not gay. Why are we taking gay people, yet, and mixing them up with everyone else? Can we not be represented on our own???
I know several gay gen z’ers we are everywhere.
OMFG what a load of bull. 600 people are supposed to be representative? Come on. Chances are the numbers were roughly the same 50 years ago, but people lacked the words to describe their situation, or weren’t as comfortable being open about it (so the reported or rather estimated numbers were much lower). Good job misinterpreting the findings, and thinking this is only valid in America.
Duh, that’s the point. Of course the nature of human sexuality hasn’t changed in a few generations; but this shows that the shame associated with that is abating and perhaps now people can be who they really are.