Talk:LGBTQ (term)

There is no "LGB". It never existed. The reference in the first line is wrong.

Somehow this utter nonsense has been inserted into the article: "In the 1990s, gay, lesbian, and bisexual activists adopted the initialism LGB. Terminology eventually shifted to LGBT, as transgender people gained recognition."

You'll note the lack of citations, because it is of course completely made up. There was an acronym **GLB** but that is not "LGB". GLBT was used very, very briefly, but LGBT came during the AIDS crisis, as lesbians were switched to the front in recognition of how much lesbian women had done caring for gay men dying of AIDS.

How this falsehood entered a prominant wikipedia article uncited is completely unknown. You will find NO photos of "LGB" from the 70s because it was "Gay," "gay and lesbian" or occasionally "GLB". Never LGB, as ordering the Lesbians first ONLY happened during the AIDS crisis, and happened after Transgender was added to the acronym. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:600:9280:D3B0:69DE:F93:4DC0:A2D8 (talk) 06:33, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

The early 90's were the dawn of the Internet. Chat on EFnet and IRC most certainly used "LGB"! I can personally attest to it as can many womyn of the time. ~2026-30613-45 (talk) 10:25, 21 May 2026 (UTC)

Edit: A creep has tried to remove this. This is a factual inaccuracy, heavily pushed by the hate group "LGB drop the T". Given this comment was removed within hours of being posted on a talk page, I think it's obvious how this inaccuracy got added, and who is keeping it around. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:600:9280:D3B0:69DE:F93:4DC0:A2D8 (talk) 06:48, 18 October 2025 (UTC)

Doing newspapers.com searches for the period 1980-1999:

• "lesbian gay bisexual" LGB brings up 76 results in the peak year, 1994. First use, Sep 1990 article covering UMass's LGB Cafe events
• "gay lesbian bisexual" GLB brings up 59 results in peak year, also 1994. Earliest 2 results (well, 3, but one is a false positive with a different use of GLB), both in 1989
• "lesbian gay bisexual" LGBT brings up 135 results in peak year, 1999, pretty clearly growing at the end. (in 1994, the total was 13.) First use, a help wanted ad in 1992.
• "gay lesbian bisexual" GLBT brings 501 results in peak year, 1999, pretty clearly growing at the end. First hit, 1993, but that was a gay-specific paper, Seattle Gay News. First non-gay paper hit, September 1994 in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

That doesn't make clear which came first, but it does show that LGB was in more active use for a while, although not that significantly more than GLB -- within the range that it might be skewed by a single wire article.

Newspapers.com does not separate G/L/B from GLB.

Use in the popular press is not fully indicative of use in the community, of course, but many of the hits are for names of events or organizations which would have been named by the community. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 14:48, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

the acronym GLA was more popular and preceded both LGB and GLB. GLAAD is an existing example. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ~2026-68931-4 (talk) 04:30, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Doing a newspapers.com check from 1960 on, the earliest relevant GLA I find (searching for GLA gay lesbian) is 1972, but the L stood for "liberation". GLA as Gays and Lesbians of Ames shows up in 1981. First reference to a "Gay/Lesbian Allaince shows in 1985, First use of GLA initialism for that, 1986. Much of the early use is specifically about one Utah campus group. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:53, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Improving some historical inaccuracies in the lede and some vagueness in "Variants" section

I came to this article to find some info about the switch from "GLBT" to "LGBT" and I was surprised not to find anything but a vague sentence in the "Variants" section.

Then I saw an IP's topic/complaint about the use of "LGB" in the lede: while the tone is inadequate, it's true that I couldn't find any RS for "LGB" (nor for "GLB", for that matter) being widely used in the past (except for the National Gographic, reliable but probably not the most adequate source for feminist and LGBTQ issues https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/from-lgbt-to-lgbtqia-the-evolving-recognition-of-identity/).

The correct time-line seems to be "gay" -> "gay and lesbian" -> "GLBT" -> "LGBT" -> "LGBTQ". I put some sources below.

I know that the lede isn't supposed to cite sources, but that doesn't mean the content can be inaccurate: sources should be available elsewhere in the article (but I couln't find any regading "LGB"); in fact this notion doesn't even mirror the "History" section. I also checked this page's archives for any prior discussions about this, and there were some, but no RS were ever provided for "LGB" being used as described in the lede, so apparently that's OR... The section where "LGB" has relevance in this article is "Criticism", where it is sourced (as far as I can see) and described together with "lesbian and gay separatism" etc. So I propose that, based on the sources I provided and the ones in the article, we change the lede like this:

In the 1970s, the expression commonly used by activists was “gay and lesbian,” in full. In the 1990s, the initialism GLBT (later LGBT) was gradually adopted, as bisexual and transgender people gained recognition. Around that time, some activists began to reclaim the term queer ...

I also propose that, in the "Variants" section, less vague info about the GLBT -> LGBT switch be added.

Although identical in meaning, LGBT may have a more feminist connotation than GLBT as it places the "L" (for "lesbian") first. It gradually replaced GLBT as the most commonly used acronym in the mid-2000s, the political reason being lesbian underrepresentation in comparison to gay men. In Brazil, GLBT replaced "GLS" (Gays, Lesbians and Sympathizers), while LGBT was adopted in 2008 during the First LGBT National Conference.

(I'm not sure about adding Brazil's "GLS"... However assuming this page isn't just about the LGBTQ term's evolution and usage in the US, as it makes several exemples of non-US acronyms, it might be an interesting addition).

https://msmagazine.com/2013/10/01/lgbpttqqiiaa-how-we-got-here-from-gay/

https://www.themarysue.com/why-does-the-l-come-first-in-lgbtqia/

https://www.google.it/books/edition/Gender_Sexuality_For_Beginners/fP9EAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22The%20decision%20to%20put%20%E2%80%9CL%E2%80%9D%20first%20in%20the%20acronym%22%20political&pg=PT87&printsec=frontcover

https://web.archive.org/web/20230422021957/https://sc.edu/nrc/presentation/sit/2007/files/42-CT.pdf

https://www.scielo.br/j/ep/a/LBDYPy9CZ3pGLJ4Sk4HVdQm/?lang=en Poiutredsaa (talk) 17:03, 23 December 2025 (UTC)

I attemped the aforementioned improvements. While I was editing the lede, a saw another editor's note mentioning the National Geographic as a source, so it wasn't OR, someone had probably come across that same article in the past. However, as I mentioned, I couldn't find any other source on the LGB acronym being widely used before LGBT. Poiutredsaa (talk) 18:42, 26 December 2025 (UTC)

I have added some relevant data into the discussion above this one. Although we cannot cite it in the article (it would qualify as original research, it seems clear that both LGB and GLB were getting at least some foothold before GLBT really took, and we should avoid phrasing that indicates to the contrary. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:37, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Oooh, this short paragraph (from this 2006 Scripps Howard News Service article) may be of use; "Many GLB (or LGB) advocacy centers have added the T to become GLBT or LGBT centers." So that's a statement that the three-letter versions had been in use and a change took place. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:45, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Sourcing problem on 1988 claim

Article currently states From about 1988, activists began to use the initialism LGBT in the United States. However, while that is sourced to "Research, policy and practice: Annual meeting" published by "American Educational Research Association Verlag AERA, 1988", the link actually goes to the 2008 edition (and the archive link is a repeat of that link.) The next listed source, the Ms. Magazine source, says "Bisexual and transgender people were added to the description in the late 1990s", which admittedly doesn't mean that there can't have been individual examples in 1988. This reference was added in February 2011 by no-longer-active editor Dbachmann. The original link pointed to the Swiss Google site for some reason, and while the link now points to the 2008 edition, in the oldest Archive.org listing for that link (January 2012), it did point to something it said was published in 1988 but that it also says did not contain LGBT. The item being searched for, "An Examination of the Family-School Relationship", Google books says shows up in the 2008 edition (and I've verified that what it is showing is not actually the 1988 edition, as it contains references to later years.)

So we have not just a source that is currently mislinked, but with the signs I can find, was perhaos inaccurate to being with. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:17, 26 May 2026 (UTC)