[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...

4.5% is about 1 in 22. 8.2% is 1 in 12. Even accounting for the fact that most LGBT people are as private about their sexuality as straight people are, its often enough that you're likely to encounter LGBT people on a frequent basis.

If the person once identified as LGBT, but doesn't today, is it based on what they "actively" are? Or if you ever once identified as LGBT, for purposes of polling, you remain in that category for life?

  sexual fluidity 

I think it's contextual to location. A lot of LGBT people move to cities for acceptance. If you live in a big city, you're more liking to know relatively more LGBT people than if you lived in a rural or suburban area.

Reason for the migration include less discrimination, but also higher concentration (making hooking up easier).

Therefore your perceived rate of homosexuality would be grater.

For what it’s worth the self reported rate of 5 percent is the same when I first cared to look it up, about 15 years ago. I would imagine that, if the self reported rate had significant error with it, the decreasing stigma would have changed it

Scientific terms are not value judgements.

Don't worry about how you come across, worry about how you are.

I understand the perfectly valid scientific use of it-- I'm just saying that sometimes people weaponize it. When you come across anti-gay rhetoric, it almost never uses the word 'gay'. It has phrases like "the homosexual agenda". The wording is specifically chosen to imply the group is lesser than others.

You can't really expect the written word to use the current preferred term.

The problem is never the words, it's the person behind them.

Homosexuality is the most precise word (literally same-sexuality) to denote LG and DSM is hardly the originator of the word (the DSM was, is, and always will be, a mess. But that’s another issue).

I left the US in 2005. My gay friends and many in the gay community in S.F. estimated amongst themselves at the time that about 10% of people were gay or lesbian, while the general public estimates were more like 4%. They estimated higher because they knew people who were not out of the closet. But even the gay community didn't think it so high as 30%.

I gather that there is some kind of virtue signal "brownie points" thing going on in the US now (from what I read, I'm not there and perhaps I've been mislead, If I'm wrong I'm wrong, no offense intended) which makes people behave in ways designed to signal virtue to each other for social brownie points, and perhaps this is what is contributing to these high estimations. This new social norm disproportionally affects younger people and women.

Studies about various social things plus first-hand experience lead me to say "probably."