Gen Z is here, they’re queer, and right-wing nuts are completely freaking out about it

A recent Gallup poll has revealed that young adults are even queerer than you’d think — and right-wing politicians are terrified.

A newly published survey conducted in 2022 of over 10,000 adults in the U.S. revealed that an approximate 7.2% of those surveyed identify as LGBTQ+ across all age groups.

When you zero in on Gen Z (specified as young adults born between 1997 and 2004), a whopping 19.7% self-identified as LGBTQ+. That’s right; there was 1 queer young adult for about every 5 Gen Z respondents surveyed.

This is a remarkable uptick from surveys of this kind taken in the past, even as recently as the 2010s. Gallup information from 2017 put the national estimate of LGBTQ+ adults as low as 4.5% (though the number of Gen Z adults at the time was likely too low to draw conclusion from).

The conversation of the exponential rise in LGBTQ+ youth always brings with it accusations of young people simply following a trend. The common rebuttal for this is a comparison to the rates of left-handed people skyrocketing in the 20th century as being left-handed stopped being forcibly trained out of children over time. Shockingly, when people start being abused less for having a trait, more of them openly express that trait!

Homophobes on the right have also noticed the right in LGBTQ+ youth in recent years, and the accompanying rise in left-wing politics among young voters. Naturally, they’re running scared.

Voter “reform” (read: suppression) targeting demographics that lean to the left has been a specific focus of the right as of late, and young people are no exception.

In Texas, Rep. Carrie Isaac recently introduced sweeping reform bill HB 2390 that would close all voting locations on college campuses, making voting more inconvenient and less accessible to college age adults (who, don’t drag us, have historically been kind of easy to deter from voting by inconvenience).

If signed, the bill would take effect late this September and affect all university and junior college polling places as designated by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

The youth voting initiative MOVE Texas released a statement harshly condemning the bill as the attempt at voter suppression that it is.

They refer to the bill as “one of the most insidious attempts to silence young voters in Texas”:

Isaac’s bill joins other pieces of legislature introduced by Texas conservatives attempting to get fewer citizens to vote. State Rep. Andrew Murr’s HB 39 aims to bring back the illegal voting penalty to any state jail felony, while our favorite anti-drag gun nut Rep. Bryan Slaton is trying to close Texas primaries by only allowing party affiliates to vote with HB 239.

Isaac’s bill is especially heinous in light of the large LGBTQ+ presence among young adults (and therefore among young adult voters).

This is, of course, not the only legislature introduced to negatively impact queer Americans. The Human Rights Campaign cites a horrifying 315 anti-LGBTQ bills filed in 2022, with many more entering the fray already in 2023.

Many of these bills target LGBTQ+ students, LGBTQ+ youth in relation to drag performers, transgender healthcare for LGBTQ+ minors and more. This new Gallup poll indicates that the kids are alright — but the political climate they’re being subjected to certainly isn’t.