More Adult Americans Are Identifying as L.G.B.T., Gallup Poll Finds

A survey found that 5.6 percent of adults described themselves as L.G.B.T. in 2020, up from 4.5 percent in 2017.

A Gallup survey released Wednesday has found that more adult Americans are identifying as L.G.B.T., a shift that pollsters see as driven, at least in part, by people in younger generations who are more likely to consider themselves to be something other than heterosexual.L.G.B.T. inclusive sex education

The poll found that 5.6 percent of adults identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, rising from 4.5 percent in 2017, the last time Gallup reported an annual update. The poll also found that more than half of L.G.B.T. adults identified as bisexual.

One in six adults in Generation Z, people born between 1997 and 2002, identify as L.G.B.T., the poll found. The growth in Americans who identify as L.G.B.T.Q. is likely to continue to increase, Gallup’s senior editor, Jeffrey Jones, wrote in announcing the results. That is because those in younger generations are more likely than those in older generations to to consider themselves L.G.B.T., he said.

Americans have been more supportive of equal rights for L.G.B.T.Q. people, Mr. Jones said, prompting an increase in people who identify themselves as L.G.B.T.

“I think the findings prove that visibility and acceptance, when combined, will bust out closet doors,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of GLAAD, an L.G.B.T.Q. media organization and advocacy group.

The survey was based on more than 15,000 interviews conducted throughout 2020 with Americans in all 50 states and the District of Columbia who were 18 or older. Those surveyed were interviewed by both cellphone and landline. They were asked: “Which of the following do you consider yourself to be? You can select as many as apply: straight or heterosexual; lesbian; gay; bisexual; transgender.”

Gallup said the poll’s margin of error was plus or minus one percentage point for all adults, and plus or minus five percentage points for L.G.B.T. adults.

The identity question in the most recent poll was more detailed than in previous years, Mr. Jones said. Respondents answered their precise sexual orientation instead of answering “yes” or “no” to whether they identified as L.G.B.T.

The Supreme Court has made several landmark rulings in the past decade, adding to a more supportive climate for L.G.B.T.Q. people. In 2013, the court ruled that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits. In 2015, the court ruled that same-sex marriage was a nationwide right. Most recently, it ruled in June that civil rights law protected gay and transgender workers.

NHYTimes.com, by Christina Morales, February 25, 2021

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Families of gay kids were once seen as the enemy by support groups. That’s changing.

Families of gay kids were once seen as the enemy by support groups. That’s changing.

David Pitches, 74, a retired New York architect, never came out to his parents when he was a teenager growing up in Yonkers. “We were a silent family,” he says. “Coming out to them seemed to entail a family intimacy that I never had, or cared to have.”families of gay kids

Even after his parents figured it out years later, Pitches always felt they disapproved. “My father believed that gay people should lead their lives in private, and my mother never accepted it, even to her dying day at age 94,” he says. “Growing up in the ’50s was not a fun thing for a dreamy little boy who was gay.”

Even if families sought to understand the implications of their child being gay in what was, at the time, an anti-gay culture, they had nowhere to turn for support.

“The idea that I singly, or with them, would ever think to get some sort of therapy or program for coping was absolutely beyond their or my ken,” he says. “I was a deviant, and an embarrassment, who was best kept undercover or well-closeted.”

Fast forward to 2012, when Wendy Williams Montgomery, then a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, discovered that her 13-old son was gay. “Learning this felt both confusing and scary for me,” she says. “It was never a question of: Do I still love him? Can I still accept him? My question was: How do I do this as Mormon? Am I going to have to choose between the God I love, and the child I love?”

For two weeks, she couldn’t eat or sleep. She sought understanding from the church, but found only hostility.

“The message I was receiving by my church leaders, family members, friends and printed text was that my son was broken in an irreparable way, and would have to suffer through a truly horrific life until he died, at which time he would be ‘fixed’ and straight like the rest of us in heaven,” says Montgomery, who quit the Mormon Church five years later.

Fast forward to 2012, when Wendy Williams Montgomery, then a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, discovered that her 13-old son was gay. “Learning this felt both confusing and scary for me,” she says. “It was never a question of: Do I still love him? Can I still accept him? My question was: How do I do this as Mormon? Am I going to have to choose between the God I love, and the child I love?”

For two weeks, she couldn’t eat or sleep. She sought understanding from the church, but found only hostility.

“The message I was receiving by my church leaders, family members, friends and printed text was that my son was broken in an irreparable way, and would have to suffer through a truly horrific life until he died, at which time he would be ‘fixed’ and straight like the rest of us in heaven,” says Montgomery, who quit the Mormon Church five years later.

WashingtonPost.com, August 20, 2019 by Marlene Cimons

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Gay Dads Make Excellent Parents, According To A Recent Study, Proving What We Already Knew

Yet another study, now from Canada, shows gay dads are engaged and loving parents.

gay dads study

Sometimes it seems like our world is never getting any better. Climate change is still very much a thing, as are climate change deniers. Racism, sexism, homophobia; none of this has been completely eradicated as a person might have hoped would happen by 2019. And yet, there is still a nice shiny light at the end of the tunnel. Because a recent study found that gay dads make excellent parents, and just the knowledge that such a study exists is cause for a little celebration.

A seven year study conducted by Eric Feugé of the University of Quebec in Montreal looked specifically at how gay fathers interacted with their children. The long-term study observed 46 families, including 92 gay fathers and 46 children under the age of 9, according to Pink News. 

Most of the men in the study had adopted children who had been removed from their biological families for their own protection, according to The Montreal Gazette, which can understandably be more of a challenge considering potential emotional or physical trauma. And it seems that, according to the study, a full one-third of the children adopted under the social services umbrella in Montreal were adopted by gay parents since it became legal in the province of Quebec in 2002.

Feugé explained to The Montreal Gazette that he was looking specifically at gay dads to see how they engaged with their kids. 

“One of my main objectives was to study the degree of engagement of gay fathers, and how they distribute parental work,” he told the publication. “I wanted to see if that had an effect on the adaptation of the children; and to understand the determinants of (the fathers’) engagement — why some fathers get involved in certain areas of their children’s lives rather than others.” 

And as he explained to The Montreal Gazette, “There was a high degree of engagement in all types of parental roles.”

Feugé went on to note in his study that there tended to be one father who did a bit more than the other, leading the researchers to categorize the dads into primary and secondary caregiver roles, according to The Montreal Gazette.

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Recent wins for LGBTQ families

March arrived like the proverbial lion with a wave of good news for LGBTQ families.

LGBTQ Families

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) signed a bill Feb. 19 expanding the state’s paid family leave law in a number of ways, including by expanding the definition of “family” to include chosen families and expanding the definition of “parent” to include foster parents and those who become parents via gestational surrogacy.

“New Jersey is now the first state in the nation to offer paid family leave that is inclusive of all families,” according to the Center for American Progress. 

A bill also passed the New York Assembly Judiciary Committee Feb. 27 that would more effectively protect families created through assisted reproductive technologies. The Child-Parent Security Act would legalize gestational surrogacy in the state and simplify the procedure for securing the legal rights of non-biological parents. It has yet to pass the full Assembly and Senate, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has expressed his support.

And in Virginia, the General Assembly on Feb. 22 passed an update to its surrogacy laws that will now give same-sex couples and single parents the same rights as different-sex couples. The legislation, known as Jacob’s Law, is named after the son of two dads who had to fight for their rights to him after he was born with the help of a surrogate. A Virginia court had refused to recognize their Wisconsin surrogate contract, precipitating a long legal battle.

On the federal level, Judge John F. Walter of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Feb. 21 recognized the birthright citizenship of Ethan Dvash-Banks, the son of U.S.-citizen Andrew Dvash-Banks and his Israeli husband Elad Dvash-Banks. Two-year-old Ethan was previously denied recognition of his citizenship—even though his twin brother was granted it.

That means that at least one other family, that of U.S. citizen Allison Blixt and her spouse Stefania Zaccari, an Italian citizen, must continue to fight for their children’s right to be U.S. citizens. Like the Dvash-Banks’, they married abroad while the Defense of Marriage Act was still in effect, and then had two sons, Lucas and Massi. The U.S. State Department refused to recognize their marriage and said that Massi was Allison’s son because she had given birth to him, but Lucas, who was carried by Stefania, was not. It thus has refused to recognize Lucas’ citizenship. The Dvash-Banks victory is thus a step forward, but not the end of the story.

Washington Blade by Dana Rudolph, March 18, 2019

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