Why doesn't my ~/.bash_profile work?

I'm using Linux Mint. My login shell (cat /etc/passwd | grep myUserName) is bash. After I start my graphical desktop environment and run a terminal emulator from it, I can see that .bash_profile is not sourced (environment vars that are exported in it are unset). But if I log in from a text console (ctrl+alt+F1) or manually run bash -l from the terminal emulator, .bash_profile works fine. Am I wrong when I think that .bash_profile should be sourced when X starts and all export'ed vars should be available in the terminal, running from X? P.S. Placing everything in .bashrc and sourcing it from .bash_profile is not good idea : environment stuff should be sourced only once.