The amount of adults who identify as LGBT has increased in the past four years, according to a Gallup study.
Sharon Lopez, 18, nursing major, believes this doesn’t necessarily mean the number of actual LGBT people has increased, only that people now feel more free to express their sexuality due to a wider acceptance of LGBT people.
The poll also showed that women are more likely to identify as LGBT than men, with self-identified LGBT women rising from 3.5% to 4.4% in the past four years and 3.4% to 3.7% for men.
“I think that women have been coming out more because I feel that women are more open about certain things compared to men. Certain things like sex, (and) certain things like relationships,” Adrian Fields, 21, auto technology and real estate major said. “And (they) definitely can be more expressive of their emotions better than men and can display who they are easier. The American image of a man is the guy that puts a roof over his wife and kids' head and isn’t supposed to be emotional.”
Kevin Subuyuj 19, nursing major, believes this has to do with stereotypes of men having to be straight and masculine.
“Guys always tend to brag about how they smash women,” Subuyuj said.
Charles Tzou, 20, computer science major believes these stereotypes are portrayed in pop culture.
“The way that men are portrayed in TV and in music, they’re expected to be masculine,” Tzou said. “If you listen to a lot of music in pop culture it’s probably about sex and stuff so I think that they (men) expect they have to be a certain way.”
The Gallup poll also showed that LGBT self-identification is higher among non-religious adults compared to religious adults.
In the past four years, the amount of non-religious adults who identified as LGBT increased from 5.3% to 7.0%. Rates went from 2.0% to 1.9% in highly religious adults, and 3.6% yo 3.5% in moderately religious adults.
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| A timeline of LGBT acceptance in the US, sourced from Vitaminw.co. |
“If you are LGBT and you go to church I think that people are going to say things about this, and would talk about you,” Yixuan Kueh, 20, business administration major said. “So if they don’t have religions they don’t need to care about this.”
Tzou said that some religions "won’t totally ban you but they won’t approve your actions" for being LGBT.
"I think there’s a lot of religions that don’t see homosexuality as legit,” Tzou said. “They think that you can become influenced to become gay.”
The poll also showed that LGBT self identification was higher among Hispanics and Asians compared to black and white adults.
Gallup researchers suggested this could be because of the age difference in the average adult between these races.
The average Asian adult is 35. For Hispanics it is 39, 44 for blacks, and 51 for whites.
“I also think it does depend on location. There’s a lot of Asians in the east coast and the west coast, (which) are generally pretty liberal,” said Tzou, who believes these different rates could be due to more than just age. “So because a lot of Asians are concentrated in these areas I think they’re influenced by the culture and they’re like ‘oh ok it’s fine to be gay,' which is true. They should be safe to be who they are.”
None of the people interviewed identified as LGBT, and four out of the five people interviewed supported same sex marriage, while the other decided not to comment on the matter.
One student declined to be interviewed because they did not feel comfortable talking about the topics.
A video on more findings of the Gallup survey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJXpGwvYtic
