National

New study shows LGBTQ acceptance dropping

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DAVOS, Switzerland — GLAAD announced on Thursday that, for the first time, acceptance for LGBTQ has gone down.

The result came from the annual Accelerating Acceptance report produced by GLAAD and Harris Poll. This is the first time in the four year history of the report that the level of acceptance has gone down.

Some of the findings include.

  • Less than half of non-LGBTQ adults (49 percent) reported being “very” or “somewhat” comfortable with LGBTQ people across seven situations. This is a significant decline from 53 percent last year and the first time the Accelerating Acceptance report has shown a drop in acceptance for LGBTQ people.
  • GLAAD and The Harris Poll found that 55 percent of LGBTQ adults reported experiencing discrimination because of sexual orientation or gender identity. This number is a significant 11 percentage point increase from the previous year (44 percent).
  • There was a decline in non-LGBTQ adults’ comfortability around LGBTQ people, particularly in more personal situations. Compared to last year’s results, significantly more respondents noted that they would be uncomfortable learning a family member is LBGTQ (30 percent vs. 27 percent), having their child’s teacher be LGBTQ (31 percent vs. 28 percent), and learning their doctor is LGBTQ (31 percent vs. 28 percent).

“An unseen casualty of a tumultuous year has been the LGBTQ community,” John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, said in a statement released by GLAAD. “In a single year, we’ve seen significant declines from what had been an increasingly accepting America to one now less supportive. And this lost ground of acceptance cuts across many in American society.”

“In the past year, there has been a swift and alarming erosion of acceptance which can only be fought by being visible and vocal,” said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis. “This report puts numbers to the bias that too many LGBTQ Americans have recently experienced.”

The Harris Poll was conducted online November 16-20, 2017 among a total of 2,160 US adults. 1,897 are classified as non-LGBTQ adults. You can read the full report at https://www.glaad.org/publications/accelerating-acceptance-2018.