I'm more likely to believe that they aren't living in hiding any more. The chemical castration of a war hero doesn't exactly give one the confidence to believe they could safely be open and proud.
We can just start telling people that "the gay" is contagious with numbers like these. We should have said this during the pandemic to get all the religious redneck nutters to put on a mask.
(Sigh. It would have been funny at first, but it would be harmful in the long run, unfortunately. It would go from a joke to yet-another harmful myth that never dies.)
Of course not, they're simply pointing out how the title is misleading. Obviously more people being able to feel comfortable enough to come out is a good thing, but that doesn't change the number of gay people in the world.
Probably could have chosen different terminology but "grows" doesn't necessarily mean more people became gay, it could just mean that more people openly identified that way.
I wasn’t gay. But then I turned 60 and wanted to be hip again so I joined the internet to see what todays youngsters were up to. I saw that they’re all gay furries now so I figured I’d better get with times. It’s been very itchy and sometimes painful but at least I’m hip now.
As a straight guy I see this as pretty good news. It means more people are comfortable being themselves rather than what some church tells them they have to be. I'm sure in reality those numbers are even higher, but there's still a lot of people who can't/won't admit it because of religious dogma.
If there's always been 10 million dollars in the basement wall and you find 2 million of it... That just means that you now know about more of the money, AND there's still A LOT hidden that you still don't know about. It's always been there, you're just now able to count more of it. The amount of money hasn't really "grown" though.
I have to mock the headline which misses the point that people feel safer or realize that they are OK.
I am older, but this fabulously captures the point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNeq2Utm0nU
It's interesting that this is based on 2020 numbers. The last 3 years have seen a huge wave of hatred and escalating real world violence against queer people of all sorts. More anti-lgbt political actions have been taken in the last 3 years in America than I can remember at all before then. This wave coinciding with a rise in people identifying as LGBT makes me wonder if, unintentionally, this has been driving a boom in a wider understanding of LGBT people and education of LGBT rights.
I feel like more people are aware of who queer people are and what it means to be gay or bi or trans or ace than ever before. Awareness has spread nearly globally, and there is a growing public opinion, especially among young people, that queer identity should be celebrated. It's shocking to see the growth in such plain numbers because the hate campaigns against us obfuscate just how much public acceptance of queer people has grown over the last 5 years. This, in turn, has caused fascists to adopt the narrative that queer people are taking over society, justifying itself in part on how much more common queer acceptance has become.
It makes me feel a sort of cautious optimism. Like inevitably more and more otherwise neutral cishet people are seeing queerphobia and anti-LGBT rights movements as wrong. The association of anti-LGBT movements with MAGA and open fascism and fascists like Ron DeSantis may be to some extent making more people pro-LGBT rights. As there are more openly queer people, thusly more people know someone who is queer than ever before. I think that is also probably encouraging more people to openly be themselves and live openly as LGBT people. I think there is some cause for hope that the combination of these various factors may be early indicators of a drastic shift in Western public opinion. Whether or not that will pan out to genuine political change is impossible to tell. For the time being LGBT rights are still very much under attack, with little signs of the Republicans (and all other conservatives and fascists) changing their agenda.
FWIW, I might have stayed oblivious of my own repressed gender identity for much longer if it wasn't for all the hate-mongering keeping the subject in the news and making it harder to stop thinking about. So that's at least one anecdotal example that fits such a trend.
Most of this growth is in the bisexual demographic who are still severely undercounted. Not sure what this data says but bisexual men frequently self report at lower levels than gay men. Internalized homophobia really does a number on folks.
The Republicans should embrace LGBTQ+ people's of the world...err the USA, US gays first lol. Here's the reason: gay people will never need an abortion! Not only that, but hey if you got an unwanted fetus, sure let it be born and we'll take it from there!
It's a win win situation while women are screwed just like the Republicans love it. But at least the women's role ends right after they give birth to whatever citize might have been stuck in there for 9 months.
Ofcourse I am being sarcastic about women. But if the Republicans really want all those deformed and rape babies born, well I suppose there's a population who would be able to take care of them.
You severely underestimate the power of religious dogma over a ton of people. A shit ton of people will forever be anti LGBTQ+ because they grew up with a religion that told them that it's wrong. No amount of persuasion up to and including their own children coming out will change that.
No doubt growth in new gays and old gays that are finally coming to terms or feeling safe enough to not hide who they are.
It’s a beautiful thing! Conservative hate rhetoric has no power, LGBTQ have the right to exist and live their lives with the same rights the rest of us have
It's truly heartbreaking when you hear the stories of LGBTQ+ that come out later in life because they were too afraid or lived in dangerous areas. They always feel they wasted so many years not being their true self.
Next thing you know, you're going to tell me that the number of left handed people increases when we stopped beating it out of them. They're putting shit in the water to make the fricking frogs lefties!
It says the number of self-identified LGBTQ+ has gone up by that much, not that the LGBTQ+ population has gone up by that much. Otherwise it is puzzling, like hearing that the left-handed population had grown by 2 million when overall population growth wasn't enough to account for that. It would mean the right-handed people are becoming left-handed which is something that usually doesn't happen. All that is going on though is that LGTBQ+ are coming out of the closet, not that they are coming out of the straight population.
I do know one formerly straight person who had surgery to become gay, as I like to tell people. He went into the surgery as a straight guy, and she came out of it as a lesbian.