Opinions on lgbtq rights

Executive Summary

Public support of the rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender (LGBT) people in the United States has increased significantly and rapidly over the last three decades. This report presents the national trends on public belief on LGBT rights by aggregating the results from over 325 surveys from 1977 to 2014. It also explores why support has increased so rapidly.

The issues covered in this brief encompass the national polling trends on:

• General attitudes toward LGBT people
  • Public support for lesbians and gay men has doubled in the past three decades, more so than for any other group surveyed over the equal time period.
  • While it is generally assumed that this change is largely because younger supportive generations are replacing less supportive older ones, this analysis in fact shows that a broader cultural shift impacts people of all ages. In particular, since the mid­1990s, the positive impact on attitudes from increased LGBT visibility ­­ from more LGBT people being out, the growing number of LGBT characters on television, and the national discussion of, and policy advances

    LGBT Equality Index

    Equality Index Methodology

    Equaldex's Equality Index is a rating from 0 to 100 (with 100 being the most equal) to aid visualize the legal rights and universal attitudes towards Diverse (lesbian, gay, bisexual person, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex...) people in each region. The Equality Index is an average of two indexes: the legal index and the public perspective Index.

    Equality Index
    
    Average of Legal Index and Public Opinion Index

    Legal Index

    The LGBT legal index measures the current legal status of 13 other issues ranging from the legal status of homosexuality, queer marriage, transgender rights, LGBT discrimination protections, LGBT censorship laws, and more. Each topic is weighted differently (for example, if same-sex marriage is illegal in a region, it would have a much bigger impact on the score than not allowing LGBT people to serve in the military). Each topic is assigned a "total possible score" and a "score" is assigned based the status of the law using a rating scale that ranges from 0% to 100% (for example, if homosexuality is legal, it would would receive a score of 100, but if it's illegal, it would receve a score of 0.)

    LGBTQ Rights

    The ACLU has a long history of defending the LGBTQ community. We brought our first LGBTQ rights case in 1936. Founded in 1986, the Jon L. Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović LGBTQ & HIV Project brings more LGBTQ rights cases and advocacy initiatives than any other national organization does and has been counsel in seven of the nine LGBTQ rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided. With our reach into the courts and legislatures of every state, there is no other organization that can match our write down of making progress both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion.

    The ACLU’s current priorities are to end discrimination, harassment and violence toward transsexual people, to close gaps in our federal and state civil rights laws, to prevent protections against discrimination from being undermined by a license to discriminate, and to preserve LGBTQ people in and from the criminal legal system.

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    For non-LGBTQ issues, please contact your local ACLU affiliate.

    The ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual person Transgender Project seeks to create a just population for all LGBTQ people regardless of race or income. Thr