Survey reveals less than 3 percent of U.S. adults belong to LGBT community

A new survey has revealed that less than percent of the adult U.S. population is a sexual minority, as they belong to LGBT community.

According to federal government's report that asked people about their sexual orientation and health, about 97 percent of the adult U.S. population, or 224 million people, described themselves as "straight" or heterosexual, the Washington Times reported.

National Health Interview Survey's data found that another 5.6 million adults said they were gay or lesbian (1.6 percent), bisexual (0.7 percent) or "something else" (0.2 percent), while around 1 million adults refused to answer sexual orientation questions, and more than 800,000 said they didn't "know" what to say.

James M. Dahlhamer and colleagues wrote in their new report on the NHIS that these population groups are so small and diverse that it has been difficult to craft sexual orientation questions that all respondents can easily grasp and answer correctly.

For instance, of the nearly 34,000 adults interviewed in the NHIS, 155 people said they didn't "know" what their sexual orientation was, while another 56 people said they were "something else" rather than straight, gay, lesbian or bisexual.

The new NHIS report said that 1.8 percent of U.S. men, or about 2 million, said they were "gay." Another 0.4 percent, or 481,000 men, said they were "bisexual," while 0.2 percent of 196,000 were "something else" and among women, the sexual minorities included 1.4 percent, or 1.7 million women, who said they were lesbian, 0.9 percent of women, or 1 million, who said they were bisexual, and 0.2 percent, or 204,000, were "something else.