Zachary Rogers

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows over one out of every four high school students in the United States identifies as LGBTQ.

Using data it collected in 2021, the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) found that 74.2% of American high school students identified as heterosexual. The CDC surveyed 17,508 students from 152 schools across the U.S.

According to results, 3.2% of students identified as either gay or lesbian, 5.2% identified as “questioning” and 12.2% identified as bisexual. About 3.9% of students answered the question by saying they were “other” and 1.8% claimed they didn’t understand the question.

The CDC says the number of students in the United States who identify as LGBTQ has increased from 11% in 2015 to 26% in 2021. That increase “might be a result of changes in question wording to include students identifying as questioning,” the report claims.

About 57% of those high school students in the CDC’s data said that they have not had any sexual contact in their lives, while 34.6% of those students said they had sexual contact with someone of the opposite sex. 

Just 2.4% of students reported that they’ve had sexual contact with the same sex, and 6% said that they’ve had sexual contact with both sexes, according to the CDC.

Polling shows that younger people are increasingly identifying as LGBTQ. Research from the analytics firm Gallup says the number of Americans who identify as LGBTQ has doubled in the last decade.

Critics, including some from the LGBTQ community, say that an “agenda” pushed in U.S. schools had led to the increase.

Everyone’s like ‘No, no, no, no that’s not indoctrination. We’re just teaching inclusion, so it doesn’t count.’ I totally disagree with that,” former U.S. Marine and bisexual member of Gays Against Groomers, Samantha Viscount, told KMPH News in Fresno, California. “I think that if you teach children all this LGBT material way too early on of an age before they understand it, it’s absolutely indoctrination.”

The concern is that our children in the schools are being taught in regards to the transgenderism, the LGBTQ agenda,” Pastor Jesse Alvarez of Valley Life Community Church in Selma, told KMPH. “And that’s one side of the story that’s an opinion, a culture, a belief in our country.”

However, LGBTQ advocates call such concerns “ignorant.”

No, I don’t think that should be a concern at all or an issue to bring up because it sounds ignorant,” Equality California’s Jorge Reyes Salinas said. “We all read books about animals. We all read books about things that may be fantasy or whatever and we’re not saying that we’re going to be that character in a book or anything like that.”

Gallup polling shows that LGBTQ identification among adults in the U.S. “leveled off” in 2022 after reaching 7.1% in 2021.