Story at a glance
- 2021 was a year of firsts for the American LGBTQ+ community, which experts say has substantially grown in size.
- Professional athletes like Carl Nassib made history in coming out publicly, and transgender women, like Miss USA competitor Kataluna Enriquez, made strides in advocating for visibility.
- Sadly, 2021 was also the deadliest year on record for trans and nonbinary Americans.
Gallup poll finds more Americans than ever identify as LGBTQ+
An estimated 5.6 percent of Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer, according to a Gallup poll published in February, up significantly from the group’s 2017 estimate of 4.5 percent.
Of the more than 15,000 adults surveyed who identified as LGBTQ+, 54.6 percent identified as bisexual, 24.5 percent as gay, 11.7 percent as lesbians and 11.3 percent as transgender. Another 3.3 percent said they identified using another term, like queer or same-gender-loving, according to the poll.
Experts have cautioned that Gallup’s estimate still undercounts the nation’s actual LGBTQ+ population because data collection was based solely on self-reporting.
“They weren’t trying to count all the people in the closet,” demographer Gary Gates told NBC News at the time.
Carl Nassib becomes the first active NFL player to come out as gay
Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib in June announced he is gay, making him the first active NFL player to do so in the league’s 101-year history.
“I just wanted to take a quick moment to say that I’m gay. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now but finally feel comfortable getting it off my chest. I really have the best life, the best family, friends and job a guy can ask for,” Nassib, 28, said in an Instagram video.
Nassib said he had “agonized” over coming out publicly for 15 years, and he made a donation of $100,000 to the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ suicide prevention nonprofit.
“Sports are, in many ways, one of the last bastions of a place where homophobia can thrive,” Cathy Renna, a spokeswoman for the National LGBTQ Task Force, told The New York Times in June. “So to have a professional athlete of that caliber, particularly in one of the major sports leagues like the NFL, it really is historic.”
Kataluna Enriquez is the first openly transgender competitor in the Miss USA pageant
Kataluna Enriquez, a trans woman, in November became the first openly transgender competitor in the annual Miss USA pageant. Prior to that, she was the first openly trans woman to be crowned Miss Nevada.
Enriquez was eliminated from the Miss USA pageant when she failed to advance to the top 16. She said judges during her closed-door interview portion of the pageant questioned her solely on her transition.
“It was disappointing to me because I had so much more to offer, I had so much I wanted to talk about,” she told Yahoo News at the time. “Others were asked about politics, climate change, so it was highly disappointing for me because I expected more.”
2021 becomes deadliest year on record for transgender and nonbinary people
The Human Rights Campaign in November announced that at least 50 trans or gender-nonconforming Americans had been fatally shot or killed by other violent means since Jan. 1, making 2021 the deadliest year on record.
“We say at least because too often these stories go unreported — or misreported,” the HRC said in a statement, adding that most victims have been Black and Latinx transgender women.
The HRC began tracking fatal anti-trans attacks in 2013.
Canada bans LGBTQ+ conversion therapy
Legislation banning conversion therapy practices in Canada was officially approved in early December and will take effect at the beginning of next month.
The country’s criminal code will be amended to make conversion therapy practices illegal in Canada for both adults and children. Specifically, it will be considered a criminal offense to promote or profit from conversion therapy, according to text of the bill.
“It’s official: Our government’s legislation banning the despicable and degrading practice of conversion therapy has received Royal Assent – meaning it is now law. LGBTQ2 Canadians, we’ll always stand up for you and your rights,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted.
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