The LGBT community (also known as the LGBTQ+ community, LGBTQIA+ community, gay community, or queer community) is a loosely defined grouping of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals united by a common culture and social movements. These communities generally celebrate pride, diversity, individuality, and sexuality. LGBT activists and sociologists see LGBT community-building as a counterweight to heterosexism, homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, sexualism, and conformist pressures that exist in the larger society. The term pride or sometimes gay pride expresses the LGBT community's identity and collective strength; pride parades provide both a prime example of the use and a demonstration of the general meaning of the term. The LGBT community is diverse in political affiliation. Not all people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender consider themselves part of the LGBT community.
Groups that may be considered part of the LGBT community include gay villages, LGBT rights organizations, LGBT employee groups at companies, LGBT student groups in schools and universities, and LGBT-affirming religious groups.
LGBT communities may organize themselves into, or support, movements for civil rights promoting LGBT rights in various places around the world. At the same time, high-profile celebrities in the broader society may offer strong support to these organizations in certain locations; for example, LGBT advocate and entertainer Madonna stated, "I was asked to perform at many Pride events around the world — but I would never, ever turn down New York City".
LGBT
LGBT, or GLBT, is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the term is an adaptation of the initialism LGB, which was used to replace the term gay – when referring to the community as a whole – beginning in various forms largely in the early 1990s.
While the movement had always included all LGBT people, the one-word unifying term in the 1950s through the early 1980s was gay (see Gay liberation).