Landon Schnabel, Ph.D., (he/they) is a is a 2024-2025 PRRI Public Fellow and the Rosenthal Assistant Professor of Sociology at Cornell University.

Most Americans now support same-sex marriage, reflecting a major cultural change over the past decades. But a similar-sized majority — around two-thirds — also say there are only two genders, according to data from PRRI’s 2023 Gender and Politics Survey, highlighting that public acceptance of gender diversity has not kept pace with attitudes toward sexual diversity. This Spotlight Analysis examines public attitudes on gender diversity and sexual diversity, focusing on how Americans’ views diverge between the two, and the implications for our understanding of LGBTQ rights in a society experiencing rapid cultural change.

While same-sex marriage has become a broadly accepted norm (a high of 69% of Americans expressing support in 2022), belief in gender diversity is not yet an accepted norm. Sixty-six percent of Americans still say there are only two genders, and most feel strongly about it. Half of all Americans strongly affirm a strict gender binary, while only 14% strongly affirm the idea that there is a range of possible gender identities.^[1]

This disconnect highlights an asymmetry in public attitudes: Americans have largely come around to supporting legal equality for sexual minorities, but many have not extended that acceptance to diversity beyond the gender binary. To better understand these patterns, this analysis sorted Americans into four groups:

• Oppose Both: Those who oppose same-sex marriage and believe in only two genders (28%)
• Sexual Diversity Only: Those who support same-sex marriage, but believe in only two genders (37%)
• Gender Diversity Only: Those who oppose same-sex marriage, but affirm gender diversity (2%)
• Inclusive on Both: Those who support same-sex marriage and believe in more than two genders (33%)

The largest group — those who support marriage equality but not gender diversity — outnumbers both the fully inclusive and fully opposed groups. The imbalance is striking: Americans who support sexual diversity but not gender diversity are far more common than the reverse. This shows how the two strands of LGBTQ inclusion are distinct — and how acceptance in one domain does not guarantee support in another.

Religion stands out as one of the clearest predictors of where Americans fall. White evangelical Protestants are more likely than other religious groups to be in the “Oppose Both” group at 58% and least likely to be in the “Inclusive on Both” group at 7%. Notably, a substantial minority of white evangelical Protestants support sexual diversity but not gender diversity at 33%. Jewish and unaffiliated Americans are the most likely to be in the “Inclusive on Both” group at 55% and 53%, respectively. Across other religious groups, a substantial percentage, usually about a third, but up to nearly half, as among white Catholics, agree with sexual diversity but not gender diversity.

The patterns vary dramatically by the importance of religion to a person’s life as well. Among those who say religion is the most important part of their lives, nearly two-thirds (64%) are in the “Oppose Both” group. In contrast, among those who say religion is not important at all, a majority (55%) are supportive of both sexual and gender diversity. Americans most likely to fall into the “Sexual Diversity Only” category tend to fall in the middle on religion, suggesting that moderate religious importance corresponds with this selective inclusion.

Beyond limited support for gender diversity, the data reveal widespread discomfort with newer forms of public discourse around gender. When asked whether Americans today “spend too much time talking about gender and pronouns,” 74% of the sexual diversity only group agreed either completely or somewhat. That’s significantly closer to the 85% of the fully opposed group than to the 30% of the fully inclusive group.

At the same time, growing exposure to gender diversity may help pave the way for greater acceptance. While 84% of Americans say they know someone who is gay, lesbian, or bisexual, only 36% say both that they know someone who is transgender, or they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns.^[2] But that exposure is rising over time, mirroring the pattern once seen with sexual orientation. A generation ago, far fewer Americans knew someone who was gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Today, that number is nearly universal — and attitudes have changed alongside that exposure. The same dynamic may be underway now with gender diversity.^[3]

Whether views on gender minorities will evolve the way they have on sexual minorities remains uncertain. But history offers some clues. In past decades, debates centered on women’s equality — whether women should work, vote, or hold power. Over time, those debates faded, and public attention shifted to same-sex relationships. Now, with marriage equality broadly accepted, gender diversity appears to be the next cultural frontier.

This sequence is not coincidental. When new cultural ideas become more visible — through public discourse, personal contact, or institutional presence — they often provoke reflection, reaction, and resistance. Previously marginal topics become symbolic dividing lines. People who had not considered an issue are suddenly asked to take a side, and those unsettled by rapid change often push back. What was once unfamiliar becomes a site of cultural struggle, and, in some cases, eventual normalization. Gender diversity now appears to be at that stage: increasingly visible, widely debated, and far from settled.

Its emergence reflects a broader pattern of rising support for autonomy and self-expression. In recent decades, Americans have become more likely to affirm the right to define one’s own identity and relationships across issues ranging from women’s equality to same-sex marriage to marijuana legalization. Gender expression beyond the binary may be the next cultural frontier in this wave of individualization. Whether gender diversity follows the path of previous contested issues remains to be seen. But the large group of Americans who accept sexual diversity while rejecting gender diversity represents a familiar moment in cultural change — when one social boundary has shifted, and attention turns to the next frontier. Their ambivalence may be less a final position than a snapshot of a society in transition.

[1] Percentages reported in this Spotlight exclude respondents who refused or skipped the question. In addition, as part of the Gender and Politics survey, PRRI included two closely related questions on same-sex marriage: (1) allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry legally and (2) allowing same-sex couples to marry legally. Because both questions produced nearly identical results, they have been combined in this Spotlight for consistency.

[2] It is worth noting the distinction and overlap between transgender and non-binary: one could be transgender, non-binary, both, or neither.

[3] While the group who support gender diversity but not sexual diversity is quite small (n=80) and any numbers for them should be interpreted with care, those who think there can be more than two genders but don’t support same-sex marriage are more than twice as likely as those who oppose both to know someone who is gender diverse and more likely to know gender minorities, and less likely to know sexual minorities, than those who only support same-sex marriage.