A new poll by the Pew Research Centre has found that transgender people experience less social acceptance in the United States than those who are lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to LGBTQ adults.
About six out of 10 LGBTQ adult participants in the poll said there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of social acceptance in the US for gay and lesbian people, according to “The Experiences of LGBTQ Americans Today” report released on Thursday.
Only about one in 10 said the same for non-binary and transgender people — and about half said there was “not much” or no acceptance at all for transgender people.
The survey of 3,959 LGBTQ adults was conducted in January, after US President Donald Trump’s election, but just before his return to office when he set into motion a series of policies that question transgender people’s existence and their place in society.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order calling on the government to recognise people as male or female based on the “biological truth” of their future cells at conception, rejecting evidence and scientific arguments that gender is a spectrum.
Since then, Trump has barred transgender women and girls from taking part in female sports competitions, pushed transgender service members from the military and tried to block federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under age 19.
A poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in May found that about half of US adults approve of the way Trump is handling transgender issues.
Transgender people are less likely than gay or lesbian adults to say they are accepted by all their family members, according to the Pew poll. The majority of LGBTQ people said their siblings and friends accepted them, though the rates were slightly higher among gay or lesbian people.
About half of gay and lesbian people said their parents did, compared with about one-third of transgender people. Only about one in 10 transgender people reported feeling accepted by their extended family, compared with about three in 10 for gay or lesbian people.
According to the Pew poll, about two-thirds of LGBTQ adults said the landmark US Supreme Court ruling that legalised same-sex marriage nationally on June 26, 2015, increased acceptance of same-sex couples “a lot more” or “somewhat more”.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule in the coming weeks on whether Tennessee can enforce a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in what is seen as a major case for the transgender community.
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