In wake of SC Pride, I wanted to take some space to answer a seemingly simple but frighteningly complex question: How many queer people are there in America?
Many surveys have been conducted, but there are many reasons to doubt their accuracy. While the situation is improving, many gay and lesbian people are still closeted and, until virtually the entire population is out and sexual orientation is a census question, getting accurate measurements is impossible. But compared to the other groups in the full LGBTQIA community, estimating the size of the gay and lesbian population is a relatively simple affair.
Measuring the number of bisexual Americans has the same problems mentioned above, with the compounding factors that people might not always want or need to be out as such if they are only dating members of one gender. The misunderstandings and uncertainties about the precise definition also makes quantification difficult, as does lingering stigma around it that drives a fair amount of bisexual people to identify as homosexual or heterosexual.
That doesn’t hold a candle to trying to survey the number of transgender individuals. There is strong evidence, anecdotal and statistical, that a majority of transgender people are closeted. Even if every transgender individual was out, that still doesn’t account for those who question or don’t fully understand their gender until later in life, a more common occurrence than the media usually portrays. It also would leave out those who don’t transition for personal reasons or a lack of necessity.
As intersex is primarily a medical condition, better data exists for it than for the other populations discussed here. On balance, there is no universally agreed-upon definition for it. Do chromosomal abnormalities count, or just clear phenotypic differences? Where does medicine draw the line as to what is not a normal male or female phenotype? Intersex people make up close to 1 percent of the population by a broad definition, but other definitions could lead to different numbers.
Asexuality and aromanticism are also hard to figure out a frequency for due to a lack of awareness and a necessity to be out about them, as well as their nature. The two are more spectrums than anything, and agreeing upon what point on the spectrums makes one flip from not asexual and/or aromantic to asexual and/or aromantic is pointless. The virtually nonexistent awareness of asexual and aromantic issues also interferes with reliable population estimates.
Queer/questioning have only vague agreed-upon definitions and basically come down to people who say they are queer/questioning. Honestly, this is how the whole endeavor is best handled. While there are some legitimate reasons to try to make estimates of the queer population, such as calculating the cost of including transgender health care under insurance policies, for the most part it simply doesn’t matter if we can get accurate data or not. It’s unclear if having it would even help sway people over. Having a figure of how many millions there are affected by real cultural and institutional biases in America would put the problem in perspective, but inevitably people would fire back that it’s only a small portion of the population.
That's the real tragedy of the matter: It shouldn’t matter how large or small the community is. In America the majority might rule, but the rights of the minority to equal treatment are enshrined in the Constitution and the equality of all is central to the Declaration of Independence. Basic respect for others is foundational to every major world religion. If the nation fails any group in these respects, whatever their size, it is not living up to its ideals and needs to change.