Gay Amerins: Government Begs LGBT Populatn Count

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• GAY AMERINS: GOVERNMENT BEGS LGBT POPULATN COUNT

GAY AMERINS: GOVERNMENT BEGS LGBT POPULATN COUNT

For centuri, beg lbian, gay, bisexual or transgenr Ameri meant hidg at least part of who you were.

“For s our stggle has been to stop beg visible, ” says San Francis Supervisor Stt Wiener, an openly gay lawmaker who is proposg this data be llected the Cy by the Bay. When pollsters asked Amerins last year how they would intify on the Ksey Sle—a six pot ratg spanng om “exclively homosexual” to “exclively heterosexual”—about a third of lennials poted somewhere the “non-bary” middle, pared to about 8% of people over the age of 45.

When you ask Siri what percentage of the populatn is gay, she refers iPhone ers to one of Gat’ papers. Any time you’ve read that there are an timated 65, 000 lbian, gay or bisexual people the ary on active duty––a figure ced by untls media outlets the n up to the 2010 repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”––that’s his work. At the time, he says, “You had plenty of policians who said, ‘I don’t have gay people my district’ or ‘Gay people don’t live here’.

” He proved those assertns wrong by publishg The Gay and Lbian Atlas, which ed data om a new U.

In heated polil battl all over the untry—largely over the e of public bathrooms—transgenr advot n be heard makg arguments about their very existence that echo on ma by gay and lbian Amerins s ago.

In the 1970s, the gay liberatn movement was propelled by the still-popular–if not exactly rock solid–statistic that 1 every 10 people is gay. “This is a perd when gay people are really tryg to claim their stat jt like any other mory, racial or relig, ” says Yale historian Gee Chncey.

At a time when many people believed they didn’t know anyone who was homosexual, that figure portrayed them as the untry’s send-largt mory and gave them polil and enomic clout.

The 1 10 figure was taken om a study done by pneerg sex rearch Aled Ksey, who found that 10% of mal were “more or ls exclively homosexual” for at least three years between the ag of 16 and 55. But experts say the te spe of those problems n only be flhed out by large-sle data llectn—and that such rmatn will make a lot easier to get the rourc need to fix problems like the extremely high rat of poverty experienced by transgenr people and gaps parental rights affectg gay upl wh children, particularly if the numbers have the thory of beg produced by the ernment self. -- Gallup's latt update on lbian, gay, bisexual or transgenr intifitn fds 5.

In addn to beg able to intify whether they are lbian, gay, bisexual or straight, rponnts may also specifilly intify whether they are transgenr. You n select as many as apply: Straight or heterosexual; Lbian; Gay; Bisexual; Transgenr.