LGBTQ+: Bias Busters ‘answer the questions everyone’s asking’
If this headline sounds familiar, that’s because we recently published a column about “Police and ICE” that makes a similar point: In our deeply divided American communities, people are looking for neutral, trusted sources of information about the headline news they’re encountering every day.
The Bias Busters’ work researching gender and sexuality is just as timely as our reporting on police officers. Just as some say government actions are trying to erase public awareness of it, the U.S. LGBTQ+ population is holding steady and poised to grow, according to new Gallup research.
On Feb. 17, a coalition sued the U.S. Park Service in a rising debate about federal removal of a rainbow flag at a place symbolic of the gay pride movement. The flag flew adjacent to the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. Stonewall became the site of resistance against violent New York Police raids on gay bars in 1969. That rebellion is credited with forging the modern gay pride movement. The movement and the flag were created at Stonewall. The flag is flown worldwide.
The National Park Service removed the flag around Feb. 9.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani responded: “New York is the birthplace of the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement, and no act of erasure will ever change, or silence, that history.”
The issue of removing symbols goes beyond Stonewall and New York City because the National Park System includes 433 parks, monuments and sites across all 50 states and U.S. territories. In his first term, President Trump launched a review of national monuments designated or expanded since Jan. 1, 1996. In his second term, he became more direct. In March 2025, early in his second term, he ordered the Interior Department, which runs the National Park Service, to review properties for “false reconstructions of American history” or partisan ideology.
Removal of the rainbow flag was one response to his order. Last year, the federal government erased references to trans people and the word “queer” from Stonewall’s website.
On Feb. 19 educational materials on slavery that had been removed from the President’s House, a National Parks site in Philadelphia, were reinstalled under a judge’s order.
Amid this struggle, Gallup issued a report that the LGBTQ+ group is far from monolithic, is stable and poised for growth. Gallup polled more than 13,000 people by telephone in this research.
Gallup reported that the percentage of the U.S. adult population identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or something other than heterosexual was about the same as last year, down from 9.3% to 9%. That was more than double the 3.5% figure for 2012.
Gallup reported that bisexual identity has consistently been the most common LGBTQ+ identity. It was 5.3% in 2025.
These are other percentages from Gallup:
Gallup sees generational change in the new numbers, especially among younger women. The polling company reported that nearly one fourth of Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012 and still entering adulthood) identify as something other than heterosexual. LGBTQ+ identification is less common in older generations.
Learn more about Stonewell, the Pride flag and people in 100-question guides about sexuality, gender identity and more. You’ll find guides related to other populations with National Park Service sites in the nearly two dozen Michigan State Bias Busters guides on this Amazon page.