There are an estimated one million gay and lesbian veterans in the U.S. Coupled gay men are less likely than other men to serve in the military, while partnered lesbians are more than five times as likely as other women to report ever having served in the armed forces.

Conclusion

The myriad policy debates about gay and lesbian rights occurring in voting booths, courts, and legislative bodies around the world most often take place with limited information about the population under debate. In addition to the United States, census data collection efforts in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and several European countries are now including ways to count same-sex couples. As more countries recognize marriage rights for these couples, additional data will likely become available.

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An increasing number of surveys are also asking questions about sexual orientation and gender identification. These data collection efforts hold the promise of providing a more accurate demographic picture of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community.

Census 2000 revealed that there were 594,391 gay male and lesbian couples in the United States, living in 99.3 percent of all U.S. counties; nearly a quarter of these couples are raising children, and these families live in 96 percent of U.S. counties.

Many glbtq people reject a fixed definition of family imposed by society, and instead claim the right to define their own families as they choose.

Over the past 25 years, the academic discipline of Geography, especially its social scientific and humanistic branch, has been attuned to glbtq people, places, and natures.

Over the past decade, the field of market research has developed a more complete snapshot of a highly diverse population of glbtq consumers by using newer scientific methodologies.

The United States military's relation to homosexuality is complex and contradictory, defining itself explicitly in opposition to homosexuality, but nevertheless facilitating the very behavior and identity it seeks to exclude.

Even though glbtq people have been parents throughout history, recent political movements and advances in fertility technology have given rise to a much more visible and self-identified gay and lesbian parents.

Lesbian and gay couples have been fighting for the freedom to marry since the dawn of the modern glbtq struggle for equality; despite some success abroad, progress toward same-sex marriage in the United States has been slow.

The most important sex researcher of the twentieth century, Alfred C. Kinsey contributed groundbreaking studies of male and female sexual behavior in America.