According to a Gallup poll, 70% of LGBTQ+ adults say society has improved how they are treated in the past decade, but younger generations are more likely to report positive changes. File Photo by Chris Chew/UPI
July 26 (UPI) — Younger LGBTQ+ people are coming out nearly a decade earlier than older people and are experiencing greater social acceptance, according to a recent Gallup poll.
The new findings, released Friday, come from an online survey conducted May 1-15 of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, as well as people who identify as non-heterosexual or a gender other than cisgender.
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The majority of respondents said they came out before they turned 30, with 57% saying they came out by age 22. 10% said they came out later, and 18% said they had never come out to anyone.
Respondents ages 18-29 said they came out at age 17 on average, while those ages 30-49 and 50-65 said they came out in their early 20s. The oldest respondents, those 65 and over, said they came out in their late 20s on average.
The report also found that LGBTQ+ girls are more than twice as likely as boys to come out by the age of 14.
The majority of respondents believe that society’s treatment of LGBTQ+ people has improved over the past decade, although younger respondents were more likely to report positive changes than older groups.
Additionally, roughly one in four respondents said they had been a victim of mistreatment or harassment in the past year.
45% of LGBTQ+ adults said they had not experienced mistreatment in the past year.
Bisexual adults were less likely to have been harassed, with 20% saying “yes,” compared to 36% of gay and lesbian adults.
Additionally, bisexual people (23%) were significantly more likely to say they had never come out to anyone than gay and lesbian people (5%).
Gallup did not report responses regarding transgender people, citing sample size limitations.
The Gallup poll coincides with another recent report by the Human Rights Campaign, which noted that federal LGBTQ+ protections have been significantly strengthened under President Joe Biden than under President Donald Trump.
Under the Trump administration, federal agencies have rolled back many regulations that protected LGBTQ+ people from discrimination and stopped accepting civil rights complaints based on sexual orientation or gender identity.
During his time in office, Biden reinstated these rules following a Supreme Court ruling that found LGBTQ+ people are protected from discrimination under the same rules that prohibit discrimination based on sex.
Michigan on Wednesday also banned the “gay panic” and “trans panic” legal defenses that defendants charged with killing gay or transgender people have used to argue that they reacted spontaneously and violently to unwanted sexual advances.
“Since I took office, we have expanded the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to the LGBTQ+ community, established the Michigan LGBTQ+ Advisory Council and banned conversion therapy on minors,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said in a statement. “Our work is not done, and we will continue to forge ahead and move Michigan forward.”
