Transgender
One effort to quantify the population gave a "rough estimate" that 0.3 percent of adults in the US are transgender, overlapping to an unknown degree with the estimated 3.5 percent of US adults (1-in-30) who identify as LGBT. More recent studies released in 2016 estimate the proportion of Americans who identify as transgender at 0.5 to 0.6%. This would put the total number of transgender Americans at approximately 1.4 million adults ().
History of transgender people in the United States
The American transgender community also achieved some firsts in religion around this time. In 2002 at the Reform Jewish seminary Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York the Reform rabbi Margaret Wenig organized the first school-wide seminar at any rabbinical school which addressed the psychological, legal, and religious issues affecting people who are transsexual or intersex. In 2003 she organized the first school-wide seminar at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College which addressed the psychological, legal, and religious issues affecting people who are transsexual or intersex. Also in 2003, Reuben Zellman became the first openly transgender person accepted to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, where he was ordained in 2010. Elliot Kukla, who came out as transgender six months before his ordination in 2006, was the first openly transgender person to be ordained by the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. HUC-JIR is the oldest extant Jewish seminary in the Americas and the main seminary for training rabbis, cantors, educators, and communal workers in Reform Judaism. In 2007 Joy Ladin became the first openly transgender professor at an Orthodox Jewish institution (Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University). Emily Aviva Kapor was ordained privately by a rabbi she defined as "Conservadox" in 2005, but did not begin living as a woman until 2012, thus becoming the first openly transgender female rabbi.