LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. see lower social acceptance for transgender people than those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual, a new Pew Research Center poll found.
Pew found that about 6 in 10 LGBTQ+ adults said there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of social acceptance in the U.S. for gay and lesbian people. Only about 1 in 10 said the same for nonbinary and transgender people — and about half said there was “not much” or no acceptance at all for transgender people.
Giovonni Santiago, a 39-year-old transgender man and Air Force veteran who lives in Northeast Ohio and was not a participant in the survey, said he feels that acceptance for transgender people has declined in the last few years – roughly in step with the rise of state laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors, regulating which school and public bathrooms transgender people can use and which sports they can play.
He said he's seen acceptance get worse nationally, following the lead of some places that were early adopters of restrictions.
"They were like the anomaly for ignorance and in hatred, especially towards trans people,” Santiago said. “But now we see that it’s just kind of sweeping the nation, unfortunately.”
Still, Santiago said he doesn’t fear for his own personal safety — a contrast with most transgender people, who said they have feared for their safety at some point.
“I guess I don’t feel it as much because I live a life that most people don’t know that I’m trans unless I specifically tell them,” said Santiago, who runs a nonprofit dedicated to supporting transgender youth.
The survey of 3,959 LGBTQ+ adults was conducted in January, after President Donald Trump was elected but just before he returned to office and set into motion a series of policies that question the existence of transgender people.
On his first day, Trump signed an executive order calling on the government to recognize people as male or female based on the “biological truth” of their future cells at conception, rather than accept scientific evidence that gender is a spectrum. Since then, he’s begun ousting transgender service members from the military, and tried to bar transgender women and girls from sports competitions for females and block federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under 19, among other orders.
A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research conducted in May found that about half of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling transgender issues, with a range of views on specific actions.
According to the Pew poll, about two-thirds of LGBTQ+ adults said the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage nationally 10 years ago boosted acceptance of same-sex couples “a lot more” or “somewhat more.” The Supreme Court is expected to rule in coming weeks on a major case regarding transgender people — deciding whether Tennessee can enforce a ban on gender-affirming care for minors.
Transgender people are less likely than gay or lesbian adults to say they’re accepted by all their family members. The majority of LGBTQ+ said their siblings and friends accepted them, though the rates were slightly higher among gay or lesbian people. About half of gay and lesbian people said their parents did, compared with about one-third of transgender people. Only about 1 in 10 transgender people reported feeling accepted by their extended family, compared with about 3 in 10 gay or lesbian people.
Transgender people are more likely than gay, lesbian or bisexual people to say they feel “extremely” or "very" connected to a broader LGBTQ+ community and to say that all or most of their friends are also LGBTQ+.
Some elements of the experience are similar. About one-third of transgender and lesbian or gay adults said they first felt they might be LGBTQ+ by the time they were 10 and most did by age 13. About half waited until they were at least 18 to first tell someone.
Aubrey Campos, 41, runs a taco truck near a hub of LGBTQ+ bars in Fort Worth, Texas, and also serves as a community organizer. She says her parents were supportive when she came out as transgender at about age 12. But the younger trans people she works with often have very different experiences — including some who were kicked out of their homes.
“Now the times are a little bit dark," she said. "This is a time that we to come together and make it brighter and make it known that we aren’t going to just disappear.”
