Right now the LGBT community – particularly out here in the wilds of the Midwest – is being strangled by an assumption. It’s the idea that we’re wimps as far as politics goes, that there aren’t enough of us and that we don’t have enough allies to swing an election.

This assumption, held by both politicians and queer folk, makes legislators too frightened to vote for fair laws. It keeps many of us from spending time and money on what we think is a lost cause.

This is why three recent reports are so important.

The first is a groundbreaking poll commissioned by the Kansas Equality Coalition, where I serve as communications chair. This is the only survey I’ve ever seen that measured attitudes in Kansas about basic gay rights. Although national polls have long confirmed, for example, that Americans support ending discrimination in employment, just about everyone (myself included) assumed most Kansans were too conservative to go along with the national norm.

The results of the Equality Coalition poll floored me.

Seventy-nine percent of those polled agreed that it is not a good practice to “fire someone because they are, or appear to be, gay or lesbian.” Of those who opposed discrimination, 68 percent supported a law banning workplace bias based on sexual orientation. Sixty-three percent said they believed that cities should be allowed to establish domestic partner registries.

Taken Jan. 19 and 20, the poll consisted of 500 interviews with Kansans who voted in the last two elections. It has a 95 percent level of confidence.

The two other reports are demographic studies of the lesbian, gay and bisexual communities in Kansas and Missouri. Both were released in January by UCLA’s Williams Institute.

Using U.S. Census data, the Williams Institute reported that in 2005 an estimated 72,600 lesbian, gay or bisexual individuals and more than 6,660 same-sex couples lived in Kansas. Same-sex couples lived in every county in the state, even the most remote. Seventeen percent of same-sex couples were raising children.

In Missouri, the Williams Institute reported an estimated 160,900 individuals and 14,700 same-sex couples. About 20 percent had children. Lesbian, gay and bisexual people were reported in every county in the state, no matter how conservative.

These are just a few of the results of the Williams Institute’s Census Snapshots, but they’re telling. LGB people live in the districts of almost every legislator in Kansas and Missouri. Every one of us has friends and family who have a vested interest in gay rights. That means every lawmaker, no matter how conservative, has to answer to constituents who want us all to be treated fairly.

The fact that the Williams Institute found that nearly 7,300 children are being raised by same-sex couples in Missouri and Kansas is also revealing. Because of inequities in the law, these kids have less access to health insurance and more likelihood of having a parent ripped away by the courts than their friends with heterosexual parents.

These three reports are great first steps, but we have a long way to go to get the information we need. We need to include transgendered people in our studies. We need to dig deeper into the attitudes of the typical Midwesterner. We need to look further into demographics.

Given that we face job discrimination and our families are still pummeled by the law, I wouldn’t be surprised if the census vastly undercounts us. The LGB people with the most to lose – parents and their children – are the ones most likely to be undercounted.

Even with those deficiencies, though, these studies show that we have both numbers and attitudes on our side. Perhaps the most important lesson of all is that it is time to let go and toss every single one of our old assumptions aside.

Diane Silver helped found the Kansas Equality Coalition. She blogs at www.hopeandpolitics.blogspot.com.