Category: lgbtq

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

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L.G.B.T. Overlooked

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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The post More Adult Americans Are Identifying as L.G.B.T., Gallup Poll Finds appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

The Impact of Trump’s Discriminatory Policies on LGBTQ+ Americans

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LGBTQ+ people already face discrimination. A new HHS proposal would only make those problems worse.

On November 1, 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking along with a “Notice of Nonenforcement” which states the agency will not enforce nondiscrimination protections put in place by the Obama administration in December 2016. These protections were enacted to ensure lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people would not experience discrimination by any entity receiving federal grants from HHS. To comply with these protections, the grantees — including foster and adoption agencies — were also directed to treat persons in same-sex marriages as equal to persons in different-sex marriages, in line with the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges.LGBTQ+.Discrimination

If enacted, the New York Times has reported that the proposed HHS rule change could remove sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes. Once the proposed rule is published in the Federal Register, the public has 30 days to submit comments. After that point, if HHS decides to finalize the proposed changes, any organization receiving federal funds from HHS will have the ability to discriminate against individuals who are LGBTQ+ on religious grounds. Such scenarios include allowing agencies receiving HHS funds to bar would-be adoptive or foster parents from taking care of children explicitly because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

As the largest university-wide LGBTQ+ health research center in the U.S., the Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing (ISGMH) at Northwestern University conducts scientific research on the physical and mental health of LGBTQ+ people. It is already well established that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people face high levels of discrimination. Research has consistently found that such discrimination manifests itself in the form of tangible and quantifiable health disparities.

For instance, in Texas, research has shown that LGBTQ+ people experience disparate rates of food insecurity, housing insecurity, housing access, and healthcare. Other research has found that “[LGBTQ+] youth and young adults are 120 percent more likely to experience homelessness than their straight and cisgender peers” and that “[LGBTQ+] youth continue to be disproportionately represented among homeless youth in our country, and their experiences of homelessness continue to be characterized by violence, discrimination, poor health, and unmet needs.” These disparities have profound effects upon the immediate health of [LGBTQ+] persons, and they also reverberate throughout the wider society with great costs (in terms of public spending and human suffering).

Here at ISGMH, we have found that discrimination takes a particular kind of toll on the health of LGBTQ+ youth, including mental health disparities which affect trans, nonbinary, and gender diverse youth. We have also found that young men who are sexual minorities experience high levels of victimization and are at a higher risk for mental health and substance use problems compared with heterosexual youth; that the cumulative effects of victimization experienced by LGBTQ+ youth result in a higher risk for depression and post-traumatic stress disorder; and that LGBTQ+ youth have a higher prevalence of mental disorder diagnoses than youth in national samples.

Out.com, November 19, 2019 BY STEVEN W. THRASHER, PHD, SARAH QUAIN, AND BRIAN MUSTANKSKI, PHD

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The post The Impact of Trump’s Discriminatory Policies on LGBTQ+ Americans appeared first on Time For Families.


Source: Time for Families

Which Box Do You Check? Some States Are Offering a Nonbinary Option

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As nonbinary teenagers push for driver’s licenses that reflect their identity, a fraught debate over the nature of gender has arrived in the nation’s statehouses.

Ever since El Martinez started asking to be called by the gender-neutral pronouns “they/them” in the ninth grade, they have fielded skepticism in a variety of forms and from a multitude of sources about what it means to identify as nonbinary.nonbinary

There are faculty advisers on El’s theater crew who balk at using “they” for one person; classmates at El’s public school on the outskirts of Boston who insist El can’t be “multiple people”; and commenters on El’s social media feeds who dismiss nonbinary gender identities like androgyne (a combination of masculine and feminine), agender (the absence of gender) and gender-fluid (moving between genders) as lacking a basis in biology.

Even for El’s supportive parents, conceiving of gender as a multidimensional sprawl has not been so easy to grasp. Nor has El’s suggestion that everyone state their pronouns gained much traction.

So last summer, when the Massachusetts State Legislature became one of the first in the nation to consider a bill to add an “X” option for nonbinary genders to the “M” and “F” on the state driver’s license, El, 17, was less surprised than some at the maneuver that effectively killed it.

Beyond the catchall “X,” Representative James J. Lyons Jr. (he/him), a Republican, had proposed that the bill should be amended to offer drivers 29 other gender options, including “pangender,” “two-spirit” and “genderqueer.” Rather than open the requisite debate on each term, leaders of the Democratic-controlled House shelved the measure.

“He articulated an anxiety that many people, even folks from the left, have: that there’s this slippery slope of identity, and ‘Where will it stop?’” said Ev Evnen (they/them), director of the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, which is championing a new version of the bill.

As the first sizable group of Americans to openly identify as neither only male nor only female has emerged in recent years, their requests for recognition have been met with reservations that often cross partisan lines. For their part, some nonbinary people suggest that concerns about authenticity and grammar sidestep thornier questions about the culture’s longstanding limits on how gender is supposed to be felt and expressed.

“Nonbinary gender identity can be complicated,” said Mx. Evnen, 31, who uses a gender-neutral courtesy title. “It’s also threatening to an order a lot of people have learned how to navigate.”

And with bills to add a nonbinary marker to driver’s licenses moving through at least six legislatures this session, the expansive conception of gender that many teenagers can trace to middle-school lunch tables is being scrutinized on a new scale.

NYTimes.com, May 29, 2018 by Amy Harmon

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Source: Time for Families