An undefinable absurdity

The Gallup polling group does an annual survey tracking how much of the U.S. population identifies as “LGBTQ+.” They released their most recent findings on Feb. 20, and the new data further demonstrate just how incoherent this meaningless alphabet soup really is.

In 2023, 7.2% of Americans said these letters identified them in some way. In 2024, that number climbed slightly to 7.6%. However, this year that number jumped to an even more unreasonable 9.3%. It is unreasonable because the whole idea that “LGBTQ+” represents anything objectively true and real—something that anyone actually is—is a myth.

Gallup reports this new 9.3 percentage apex has nearly doubled since 2020 and is much higher than 3.5% in 2012, the first year Gallup started polling these amorphous identities. Nearly all this growth has taken place among the younger generation, demonstrating this is more social/ideological contagion, rather than something that objectively exists in nature.

It is not unfair to question what this collection of letters even means.

Gallup explains they asked people if they “identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual.” We must be mindful of the fact that increasing numbers of young people believe its unfashionable to identify as heterosexual, regardless of their actual sexual desires or behaviors. Why be a normie when there are so many other options that make you a hero?

More than half of the LGBTQ+ cohort—5.2% of those Gallup polled—said they were bisexual, while another 5% declined to give an identity at all. This is very telling. Both speak to the elastically undefined nature of what is going on here.

Only 2% said they were “gay,” 1.4% identified at “lesbian,” and just 1.3% said they were “transgender.” Fewer than 1% specifically identified as asexual, “pansexual” or “queer.”

It has been documented that respondents don’t always mean what we might think they mean when they identify with the alphabet soup. Remarkably, Eric Kaufmann, a Canadian professor of politics at the University of Buckingham in England, found in his 2022 research that “LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior” (emphasis added). Kaufmann adds, “The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.” In effect, young people are increasingly using the imprecise “LGBTQ+” identity for reasons beyond what their actual behavior is.

Kaufmann concludes, “Overall, the data suggest that while there has been an increase in same-sex behavior in recent years, sociopolitical factors likely explain most of the rise in LGBT identity.”

Leftist commentator and comedian Bill Maher famously skewered the incoherence of this exploding “LGBTQ+” identity among our youth, wryly noting that “if we follow this trajectory, we will all be gay in 2054!” Of course, that is no more true than it is that nearly 10 percent of Americans are gay, lesbian, queer or trans. Young people are increasingly identifying with this mish-mash alphabet soup because it is trendy and it challenges norms, something nearly every generation of young people has been eager to do to express their so-called independence.

That is what happens when we tell our youth they can literally define their own realities. Douglas Murray, a British public intellectual who identifies as homosexual, explains in his very important book, The Madness of Crowds, that LGBTQ+ is an absurd fiction.

LGBT is now one of the groupings which mainstream politicians routinely speak about—and to—as if they actually exist like a racial or religious community. It is a form of absurdity. For even on its own terms this composition is wildly unsustainable and contradictory.

Why? Murray is very clear.

He says those who claim the various letters never actually find themselves in the same communal spaces because they have nothing in common. The “LGBTQ community” is a vast fiction. The Ls are suspect of the Gs’ machismo and promiscuity. Both suspect the Bs refuse to pick a side and the Ts are confusing the categories. After all, the Ls and Gs are nearly as clear about what a man and woman are as we are here at Focus on the Family. They just have different intentions for each. And the Qs just want to tear down the polite society acceptance the Ls and Gs have been fighting for.

No, “LGBTQ+” is not a coherent category. That is precisely why polling like this from Gallup only tells us how many young people don’t want to be affiliated as normies and are all too happy to confuse pollsters with made up categories.