It's all gone to shit

Less than five percent

'Til now, the best objective estimate for the LGBTQIABC+FLAPFLAPFLAP population that I've found comes from 'phone polls of 350,000 US citizens, conducted by Gallup and published in 2017 by the UCLA Williams Institute. This gives a countrywide average of 4.5%.

The problems with sampled population polls are obvious. But now we have an analysis of an arguably less subjective population. The publication of 2021 census data for England and Wales puts the rainbow-flap proportion of the population aged 16 years and older at 3%, with 1.5% being honest down-the-line homosexuals, and 1.3% who like to keep their options open…unless they've confused bisexual with availing themselves of professional services, that is.

The BBC's article was co-written by an LGBT correspondent and an LGBT producer, which probably explains the tone of the article, and why it drills down into all the sub-flaps—0.03% identify as queer and a massive 0.2% as transgender, for example—yet only confirms that around 90% of the population is normal in passing with a bar graph.* The silent majority, that no one at MostTrustedInternationalFlapFlapFlap Towers likes to talk about.

But you know the queers, it's all about them. Even when they're (statistically) insignificant.** (rolleyes)

* A further 7.5% of respondents chose not to answer the voluntary question regarding their sexual orientation. It's unclear, however, whether they didn't want to divulge such personal information, or simply didn't understand the question.

** We refer to two populations as being statistically significantly different, if they meet a test of difference at the 5% level (α=0.05). By the same token, a group that is less than 5% of the general population in size cannot represent it in terms of sameness.