I grew up in Iowa, and I live in a large Ohio city now. There are barely any LGBT folks in Iowa, even per capita, it’s just not normal or accepted there en mass. There was literally only one gay kid in my high school of 1500.
I move to Cleveland, then I meet more LGBT people than I have ever seen in my life, even having 4 lesbians in my workplace and one FTM.
But social media is probably the biggest driving factor behind the rise of so many LGBT people in the past decade.