“Am I Gay?” Google Searches Are Higher in Red States
Cultural Currents Institute, Google searches for questions such as “Am I gay?” “Am I lesbian?” “Am I trans?” and “how to come out,” as well as searches for “nonbinary” have jumped by 1,300 percent since 2004.The analysis suggests that more politically conservative states are the “most closeted,” with Utah, Iowa, Indiana, West Virginia, and New Hampshire leading the list of top states where Google users have searched “Am I gay?” For “Am I lesbian?” the top states were: Utah, Connecticut, Kentucky, Washington, and Colorado.For “Am I trans?” the top states were: Utah, Kentucky, Colorado, Michigan, and Washington.For the term “how to come out,” the states with the most searches were: Oklahoma, West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Kentucky.“The regional differences highlighted below are significant, offering a geographical landscape of self-questioning and discovery across America,” Cultural Currents’ analysis reads.“Utah, a state with traditionally conservative social values, surprisingly tops three out of five search term categories.