Support for LGBTQ equal rights sank this year, but remains high

Support for LGBTQ equality dipped slightly in 2024 but remains at historically high levels, according to data released Thursday by GLAAD, an LGBTQ media advocacy organization.

Eighty percent of non-LGBTQ adults surveyed by the group in January said they support equal rights for the LGBTQ community, down from 84 percent who said the same in 2023, according to GLAAD’s annual Accelerating Acceptance report, a yearly barometer of support for LGBTQ Americans.

A majority of non-LGBTQ adults — 91 percent — said LGBTQ people “deserve to live their lives free from fear,” however, and 89 percent said LGBTQ Americans “should have the freedom to live their lives and not be discriminated against.”

“While acceptance for LGBTQ people remains at supermajority levels, the data this year also sounds substantial alarms about threats to this progress and to freedoms valued by every American,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD’s president and chief executive.

Conservative lawmakers, court judges and media sources that oppose things like abortion and contraception access, Ellis said, are using a similar playbook “to undermine LGBTQ people and our equality.”

Threats to reproductive health care and gender-affirming care for transgender people are interconnected, and disinformation about the LGBTQ community as a whole has spread rapidly in recent years, driven in part by conservative policymakers and influential figures who oppose LGBTQ rights.

Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), the Republican nominee for vice president, has repeated the false and inflammatory claim that LGBTQ people are “grooming” children to abuse them. After a deadly shooting at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tenn., last year, Vance suggested the shooter’s gender identity may have been a motivating factor.

His running mate, former President Trump, frequently touts a campaign promise to ban transgender women and girls — whom he calls “men” — from female sports teams and has said he will reinstate a ban on trans people serving openly in the military if he is reelected in November.

Thursday’s findings are consistent with polling numbers from the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit organization that conducts public opinion surveys on topics including LGBTQ rights. The group in a March report found that support for policies protecting LGBTQ Americans from discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation dropped to 76 percent in 2023 from 80 percent in 2022.

That dip was driven largely by Republicans, whose support for nondiscrimination protections dropped to 59 percent in 2023 from 66 percent in 2022. Support for marriage equality also dipped for the first time in roughly a decade, the report found.

A slim majority of adults surveyed by Gallup in May said they believe changing one’s gender is “morally wrong,” but 62 percent said they oppose laws and policies that ban certain types of gender-affirming care for minors.

Thursday’s GLAAD survey found that laws targeting LGBTQ people — including laws restricting access to gender-affirming care — are negatively impacting LGBTQ Americans’ mental health and well-being.

Among LGBTQ adults surveyed by the group, 72 percent said they believe anti-LGBTQ legislation will lead to increased discrimination and violence against the community, up 16 percent from last year. Additionally, 85 percent of LGBTQ Generation Z adults said the same, an increase of 18 percent over 2023.