Survey: Americans' 'Satisfaction' with LGTBQ+ Acceptance Hits New High
More Americans are "satisfied" with the country's level of LGTBQ+ acceptance than ever, a new Gallup "Mood of the Nation" poll shows.
USA Today reported on the results of the poll, an annual survey that takes the country's pulse on numerous "aspects of U.S. life and policy areas, ranging from the overall quality of life to the nation's military strength and environmental issues," the article explained.
"Americans' satisfaction with the acceptance of gay and lesbian people stood out in the 2022 poll because it reached the highest level the nation has seen since Gallup started tracking the trend in 2001" —�an all-time high of 62% — "though the peak is statistically similar to 2016 levels," USA Today detailed.
The response to the question about LGBTQ+ people was more positive than were the responses to any of the poll's queries about 20 other topics, the article noted, and reflected a substantial uptick; last year's poll showed only 55% of survey respondents reported being "very or somewhat satisfied with the acceptance of gays and lesbians in the nation".
In a perhaps surprising result, given the ongoing legislative attacks on LGBTQ+ — and especially transgender — Americans in recent years, "Fifty-nine percent of Democratic survey respondents said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the acceptance of gay and lesbian people," while 64% of Republicans said the same.
Gallup senior editor Jeff Jones told the newspaper that the results are an indication of how mainstream LGBTQ identity has become. "When we used to ask about same-sex marriage, in the 1990s and even in early 2000s, we would have majorities opposed," Jones noted. "And now we have solid majorities that seem to grow at least a little bit every year."
The results seemingly stand in contrast to a 2019 GLAAD survey that indicated that younger Americans had become more "uncomfortable" with their LGBTQ+ peers. As TIME Magazine reported at the time the GLAAD survey asked "nearly 1,800 American adults... to rate their position, on a scale of very uncomfortable to comfortable, to prompted situations like 'having LGBT members at my place of worship,' 'learning a family member is LGBT,' and 'learning my child has a lesson on LGBT history in school.' "
At the same time, however, approval of legal equality for LGBTQ+ Americans remained high.