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Finally, there is empirical evidence of something the LGBT community has presumed for years—gay and lesbian adults are trendsetters.

The news comes from Harris Interactive, the global market research and consulting firm. Its recent poll found that 48 percent of gay and lesbian adults like to keep up with new trends and styles. That's compared to 38 percent of heterosexual adults.

If you snickered at the poll results, you're forgiven. Finding out that gays and lesbians are trend watchers is like finding out that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are techies. Once again, the obviously true turns out to be statistically true.

And hold the laughter here: Gays and lesbians, as a group, are trendier than their mainstream counterparts. No news there either. Who did they think was buying all those pink shirts at Brooks Brothers?

Marketing executives at the nation's Fortune 500 companies have known all this for years, of course. Whether actively courting the LGBT community with exotic vodkas, for example, or just hoping lightening will strike with a new product like the iPhone, corporate America has come to count on influential gay and lesbian consumers when looking at the bottom line.

It's also a good take-home message for smaller LGBT businesses hoping to surge ahead with new products or services. Tapping into the LGBT community may prove to be a gold mine, and, more importantly, could start an infectious trend that spreads to mainstream consumers.

Looking solely at gay men, the 2008 survey found that 53 percent of them like to keep up with the latest trends. While that seems low for gay men, especially when you look around the table at an HRC dinner, consider what the number was for heterosexual men—a dismal 30 percent.

Yet in a strange twist, Harris's poll of the same subject matter in January 2007 showed that 39 percent of gay men and 32 percent of straight men kept up with trends. The astonishingly narrow 6-point margin between gay and straight men might point to the need for survey calls to gay men to come later in the day, say, after the fourth cup of coffee or Red Bull has kicked in.

Gay men, who are noted for breaking new ground in fashion and home décor, also forge ahead in some key economic ways. The mainstream community relies on gay men to be the urban pioneers who reclaim blighted neighborhoods even before police patrol them at night.

And lesbians don't always lag behind their male counterparts on trendiness. Gay men and lesbians may all be homosexual but they're not homogenous, which accounts for why lesbian trends (cruises, automobiles and hiking boots) aren't always reflected in the male community. Plus, the placement of Martina Navratilova's name on a product makes it trendy enough for half the lesbians in America to buy it, whether it's a credit card or a car. Rev up those Subaru Foresters, the lesbians are coming!

No surprises either with the news that gay and lesbian adults are also more likely to upgrade to the latest model (45 percent) compared to their heterosexual counterparts (33 percent). The figure is 49 percent for gay men alone. The ranks of first adopters must be loaded with gay men. You know there are utility drawers in gay male households across America littered with outdated iPods.

Like most first adopters, LGBT individuals tend to be frequent shoppers, motivated to spend a little extra on new products and upgrades to stay ahead of the pack. The combined factors of being exceptionally media savvy and having a larger disposable income than straight consumers likely play a role as well.

Perhaps the poll's really shocking revelation was that the number of trend-conscious LGBT people only hovered around 50 percent. Dinner-party guesstimates most likely would have put that number higher. Maybe the ultimate message from the poll isn't that gay men and lesbians are excessively trendy or extraordinarily stylish. Maybe—say it ain't so, Dorothy—we're not as trendy as we thought.