WSU releases new insights on Washington’s LGBTQ+ community

New research published by Washington State University reveals disparities within the state’s LGBTQ+ community.

WSU, in partnership with the Washington State LGBTQ Commission, surveyed almost 7,000 members of the community across Washington. Of those participating, 35.6% reside in King County, while 8.6% live in Spokane County home, and 20.1% live in rural areas.

Traci Gillig, assistant professor of communication at WSU’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, led the project. For Gillig and her team, creating a balanced, diversified cohort of respondents was important.

“We really prioritized outreach and engaging with groups such as queer seniors,” she said.

The survey was meant to “illustrate” the experiences of as many people as possible, which means one “limitation of the survey” is that it’s not a probability sample, Gillig added. Results were released last month.

The findings were vast and varied, with topics including mental health diagnoses, healthcare discrimination and hate crime victimization. Regarding these questions, researchers found 26.8% considered death by suicide this past year, 31.4% encountered obstacles when accessing care and 22% had experienced a hate crime, according to the research.

Research like this guides Gillig and the commission as they determine how the community can be best represented at the local and legislative levels.

She credits lawmakers for making “this state a safe place for queer folks, but we’re obviously seeing that not all queer folks are having the same experiences.” She hopes, though, “when they’re thinking about where to use and to dedicate public funds, that they look at the communities within the queer community experiencing the most challenges.”

It’s not just legislative matters Gillig wishes to address.

“A lot of the reason that queer folks struggle is because of negative attitudes and discrimination toward the community,” she said. “Changing peoples’ attitudes is one way of making spaces in general safer and potentially opening up more opportunities for queer people.”

Everett Maroon, of Walla Walla County, is the co-chair of the state’s LGBTQ Commission. He said an additional goal “was to begin a multi-year exploration of how things are going for people.”

The question he feels should guide research like this is, “What is the diversity of response that we can see or observe from a survey if we attempt to carefully engage people in that community over a long time period of time?”

Maroon said he hopes to develop “a really robust relationship between the people the state is trying to serve and the highest offices in the state.”

Gillig or Maroon said they were not surprised by responses to the medical questions. Gillig believes that the discomfort many respondents expressed with medical care might likely is due to providers.

Providers can have negative attitudes or they don’t understand the identity that a patient represents, whether related to gender or sexual orientation, Gillig said.

Also, LGBTQ+ patients “struggle with navigating insurance and getting coverage,” she added.

Maroon said while provider attitudes are never wholly to blame for the statistics, there are “real systemic problems throughout our medical care system.”

The mental health insights, while worrisome, were expected, according to Maroon. He was prepared “to see high levels of suicidal ideation,” he said. “In the last 20 years, we’ve seen really high rates of that.”

“If anything surprised me,” Maroon said, “it was how well the state is perceived at doing for people.”

Maroon is optimistic. The research shows progress and where growth is needed, so not all findings are meant to indicate active hostilities, he said.

“I hate to see such horrible rhetoric thrown our way all the time, but we do also have a loving, joyous community underneath all of this noise and attacks.”