Vermont ranks 4th in country in percentage of adults identifying as LGBT

By Cynthia Prairie
© 2024 Telegraph Publishing LLC

The state of Vermont ranks 4th in the percentage of LGBT adults per capita, behind Washington, D.C., Oregon and Delaware, according to a new study by the UCLA School of Law Williams Institute.

Vermont has been considered a pioneer in gay rights, being the first in the nation – in 1999 — to legalize civil unions. In 2009, following the Supreme Court ruling, it became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage.

The study was released in December and used data compiled from 2020 to 2021, estimating the number of LGBT-identifying adults ages 18 and up by state and region.

According to the report, which uses LGBT without the Q to describe gay, bisexual and transsexual people, says that D.C. far and away has the largest LGBT community per capita with 81,400 adults, or 14.3% of the D.C. population.

In Oregon, 7.8% of the adult population identifies as LGBT. That’s 253,300 people. Delaware, with a population of 1.03 million residents, sees 7.5% of its adult population identifying as LGBT.

And Vermont, with 645,570 residents, has an adult LGBT population of 7.4%. Vermont is followed by New Hampshire, with 7.2% adults — 78,400 — of its population identifying as LGBT.

Overall, 5.5% (13.9 million) of the adult population of the United States identifies as LGBT. The state with the lowest percentage of LGBT-identifying adults is Mississippi with 4.1%.

According to the report, LGBT people live in every region of the United States, with more living in the southern states than in any other region, despite the South’s reputation for being unfriendly to LGBTQ folks, especially trans children and their families. Still, more than half (57%) of LGBT people in the U.S. live in the South (35.9% or 5 million) and Midwest (21.1% or 2.9 million).

About one-quarter (24.5% or 3.4 million people) of LGBT adults live in the West; while less than one in five (18.5% or 2.6 million) LGBT adults live in the Northeast.