Q: What percentage of the U.S. population considers themselves homosexual?
—David Davis, Newnan
A: About 1.7 percent of adults (18-and-over) in the United States (about 4 million people) identify themselves as gay or lesbian, Gary Gates, the distinguished scholar at the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA's School of Law, told Q&A on the News in an email. Gates, who co-authored "The Gay and Lesbian Atlas," wrote a 2011 report called "How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?" The data is from a Gallup Daily Tracking Survey conducted from June through September of 2012 and released in October of that year. The survey found that about 3.5 percent of adults in the U.S. identify themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), about half of who identify as lesbian or gay, Gates said in a recent email. In his 2011 report, Gates wrote that there are approximately 9 million LGBT Americans. The Gallup survey found that 3.6 percent of women and 3.3 percent of men identified themselves as LGBT. It also reported that 3.2 percent of white Americans, 4.6 percent of African-Americans, 4 percent of Hispanics (U.S. population) and 4.3 percent of Asians (U.S. population) identify as LGBT. "In that same report, I found that more than 8 percent of Americans say that they have had a same-sex sexual experience and an estimated 11 percent indicate at least some sexual attraction to individuals of the same sex," Gates wrote.
Andy Johnston wrote this column. Do you have a question about the news? We’ll try to get the answer. Call 404-222-2002 or email q&a@ajc.com (include name, phone and city).
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