The UK’s increasing queer population has not bettered its discriminatory attitudes

50 years after the UK’s first pride march – the LGBT community remains ‘outnumbered by the people who look at us with disgust’, according to UK charity.

Stonewall, a UK LGBT+ rights charity, surveyed 2000 people on their feelings regarding sexualities in 2021. With an overwhelming result of support and alliance, negative emotions ranked much lower by comparison.

The charity concluded, “Less than one in ten said they felt negative feelings such as disgust [with a positive of] one in three [which] felt actively respectful towards lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, and one in five expressed admiration”.

Results were sectioned into separate categories such as location-based statistics. These figures detailed exact emotions according to the country and displayed a noticeable distinction between England, Wales, and Scotland versus Northern Ireland.

Highlighted in the figures, Northern Irish people were more likely to have feelings of disgust and/or pity towards LGBT communities.

Stonewall confirmed that, “areas where religious beliefs are more commonly held, the public is more likely to hold less positive views towards LGBT people” – particularly relative to Northern Ireland’s 45% Catholic population.

Across differing LGBT communities such as Lesbian, Bi, and Trans people, Stonewall connected that homophobia was a “strong predictor” of Lesbophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia.

Additionally, the Home Office reported that transphobic hate crimes recorded by the police increased by 16% from 2020-2021, and YouGov found that “one in five LGBT people experienced a hate crime incident due to their sexual orientation or gender identity in the past 12 months”.

Although Stonewall’s statistics show that the UK support LGBT communities overall, the small 3.1% of the public identifying as Lesbian, Gay, or Bi are still at risk of discrimination from judgemental and unaccepting members of society.

Globally, figures on acceptance rates for LGBT people are inconsistent.

A 2021 Statista and YouGov study (sourced below) ranked the UK second amongst the acceptance rates of LGBT family members across eight other countries.

Respondents were asked if they would support a family member if they came out as gay, including children, parents, siblings, and close relatives.

Spain was shown to have the highest support rate with 91% of its respondents showing support (Madrid has also recently been voted the 6^th most LGBT-friendly city in the world), followed by 84% in the UK.

The USA and France ranked the lowest, with European countries; Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and Germany placing in the middle.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported increases in LGB identification in 2020.

With LGB-identifying men increasing by 1.5% from 2014 to 2020, LGB-identifying women statistics have doubled from 1.4% to 2.8% within the same timeframe.

This trend in LGB identification is also closely linked to age demographics as, in 2020, the ONS found that 8% of 16–24-year-olds were most likely to identify as Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual.

Comparatively, Stonewall’s connection with religion and an aversion to LGBT people is supported here. A humanitarian report in 2018 found that 70% of 16-29-year-olds in the UK are non-religious which could suggest links between sexuality diversity and religion.

The UK’s figures for LGBT-identifying individuals are small, but with negative reactions to openly Lesbian, Gay, or Bisexual people in society still common, closeted individuals may feel apprehensive to express themselves in potentially unsafe and hostile environments.