I am familiar with broad polling from a textbook I read on the subject. The media’s covered it as little as possible, but the most notable poll available online was the shift from 2013-2015:
“More LGB Americans consider themselves Christian than ever before. In a new Pew Research Center report, 48 percent of LGB Americans identify as Christian, up from 42 percent in 2013. The statistic contrasts the study’s finding of overall decline of Christianity, from 78.4 percent of Americans identifying as Christian, down to 70.6 percent.”
https://www.advocate.com/politics/religion/2015/05/12/report-half-lgb-americans-identify-christian
It’s not particularly beneficial to any narrative, so they’ve not done very many polls on the subject. And VERY few public ones.
42% to 48% is not at all a big change, especially for a small demographic where there can be expected to be a lot of statistical noise in a sample size that is inevitably going to be pretty small in a national survey.
It might also be worth considering that it perhaps reflects more Christians identifying as LGB rather than the other way around...
The subsample size is 1604 which is decent enough, and a 6 point rise in the context of a 8 point decline in the population as a whole probably does signify something but yeah I'd be wary of hanging too much on one poll, especially one which has to navigate both identifying religiosity and sexuality.
A better approach is probably to think about this from first principles, to ask whether it makes sense that a greater or the same (which is functionally an increase given the secular decline in belief) proportion of people who are identifying as gay are also identifying as christian compared to 10 or 20 years ago. And when you phrase it in that way it becomes not just plausible but overwhelmingly likely. If you came out in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s you were doing so in a culture which treated you terrible mostly for religious reasons (you could maybe argue that a lot of this was a theological excuse for an instinctive hatred, but what the real motivation of the bigot is doesn't actually matter- in the public sphere you are judged on the words that you say) and only a few tiny sects dissented from this consensus. In that context it is hardly surprising that few openly gay people identified with christianity, any more than its surprising that so many Jewish brits turned their back on Labour during Corbyn's leadership. If you treat a group of people with contempt they will respond in kind.
But of course there is nothing inherent about being gay that means you are more or less likely to believe in God, or that can not be reconciled with Christianity, which just as a matter of sociological fact is almost infinitely malleable. In a society without homophobia you would expect the proportion of gay theists to be similar to the proportion of gay atheists. Of course we don't live in that society, the news story that this thread is about testifies to that, but it is undeniable that we are light years away from the situation in 1984, 1994 or even 2004. Christian Churches as a whole are not close to being there yet, but the direction of travel is unmistakable, there are now many affirming denominations and most that aren't are in retreat, largely restricting their comments to whinging about religious freedom.
Because of this, because homophobia in the public sphere is year by year becoming uncoupled from christianity qua christianity, its easier for people to hold onto and explore their own faith when they come out rather than have to jettison it because its so hostile to them, and so it makes sense to see a gradual increase in religious identification of LGB people to meet the levels we see dropping in the population as a whole.
