What percent of men are gay?
Since High School it’s been suggested that a good rule of thumb answer for American men is about 1 in 10 are gay. A friend at work today suggested that although we’ve been told that for a long time, he heard that it wasn’t actually true. This of course spurred me on to do some quick internet research on the topic.
But first, some wisdom from People like Us in Singapore:
http://www.plu.sg/main/facts_05.htm
What is the purpose of asking how many people in a population is gay? Certainly, it is a minority, however one defines it, but does it matter whether it is x% or y%? Is respect for a minority, their liberties and rights, to be calibrated based on numbers? Do people become less equal in law and in our conscience, the fewer they are?
The most vocal denials that I could find of the 10% estimate for gay males in the US were on Christian right wing sites like family research council et al (I won’t provide any links to their site folks, sorry). I consider sources like these obviously biased.
I couldn’t find any studies that raised serious doubts about the original findings. However, the original studies by the father of sexology Alfred Kinsey from the 40’s and 50’s have always been controversial. Arguments against his findings range from poor sampling technique to all out bias (supported by unsubstantiated? claims of Kinsey’s own sexual deviance - purported to be masochism). Similar arguments have been raised against some of the other studies that more of less support his original findings (as I found by digging around a bit). I found a short list of some of the studies on Yahoo answers (listed below). Just this short investigation suggests to me that the 10% estimate is probably reasonably accurate.
from http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080417160636AAw91WY
- The Indiana University Kinsey Reports (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male - Kinsey, Pomeroy, and Martin/Sexual Behavior in the Human Female - Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, and Gerhard) reported 10% of males being more or less exclusively homosexual and 2% to 6% of females being more or less exclusively homosexual.
- A 1990 study (Homosexuality/Heterosexuality by McWhirter, Sanders, and Reinisch) stated 13.95% of males and 4.25% of females had “extensive” or “more than incidental” homosexual experience.
- A 1993 study (The Janus Report on Sexual Behavior - Janus and Janus) found 9% of men and 5% of women were involved in frequent or ongoing homosexual experiences.
- A 1994 study (The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States - Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, Michaels) reported that the incidence rate of homosexual desire for men is 7.7% and 7.5% for women.
- In 1995, a survey (The prevalence of homosexual behavior and attraction in the United States, the United Kingdom and France: Results of national population-based samples - Sell, Wells, and Wypij) reported 6.2% of U.S. males and 3.6% of U.S. females with “sexual contact with someone of the same sex only or with both sexes in the previous five years.”
On a related note I found the following interesting:
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality)
Cognitive differences in gay men and lesbians
- Recent studies suggest the presence of subtle differences in the way gay people and non-gay people process certain kinds of information. Researchers have found that: Gay men and lesbians are significantly more likely to be left-handed or ambidextrous than are non-gay men and women;[147][148][149]
- Simon LeVay argues that because “[h]and preference is observable before birth[150]… [t]he observation of increased non-right-handness in gay people is therefore consistent with the idea that sexual orientation is influenced by prenatal processes,” perhaps heredity.[3]
- Gay men[151] and lesbians are more verbally fluent than heterosexuals of the same sex[152][153][154] (but two studies did not find this result).[155][156]
- Gay men may receive higher scores than non-gay men on tests of object location memory (no difference was found between lesbians and non-gay women).[157]
Comment posted on 7-5-2008
There has been significant research since Kinsey’s to indicate that the occurrence of homosexuality in America and in other countries is much lower than the Kinsey statistics would indicate. Milton Diamond of the John A. Burns School of Medicine at the University of Hawaii analyzed studies of populations in the United States, Scandinavia, Asia, and Europe, and found that including all individuals who have ever engaged in any kind of same-sex behavior, the numbers would be “5–6 percent for males and 2–3 percent for females.” (“Homosexuality and Bisexuality in Different Populations,” Milton Diamond, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 1993, vol. 22, no. 4, p. 303.)
A large study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute reported in 1993 that of sexually-active men aged 20–39, only 2.3% had any same-gender sexual activity and only 1.1% reported exclusive homosexual contact during the last ten years. (“The Sexual Behavior of Men in the United States,” John O. G. Billy et. al., Family Planning Perspectives, March/April 1993, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 52–60.)
Perhaps the largest and most scientifically-based modern survey was concluded in 1994 by academics at the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. (See “Sex in America,” U.S. News & World Report, Oct. 17, 1994, pp. 74–81, and “Now for the Truth About Americans and Sex,” Time, 17 Oct. 1994, pp. 62–71.) They asked 210 pages of questions of 3,432 Americans, ages eighteen to fifty-nine, and published their findings in The Social Organization of Sexuality. (The Social Organization of Sexuality, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 1994. A smaller companion volume is published as Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, Gina Kolata, Little, Brown and Company, Boston, MA, 1994.)
On the subject of homosexuality, this survey found the following:
Have you had sex with someone of your gender?
(a) 2.7% of men (and 1.3% of women) had sex in the past year
(b) 7.1% of men (and 3.8% of women) had sex since puberty
Are you sexually attracted to people of the same gender?
(a) 6.2% of men (and 4.4% of women) said yes
The survey also showed larger percentages in urban areas. The twelve largest cities in the United States showed more than 9% of men identifying themselves as homosexual, as opposed to only 1% in rural areas. Since homosexual people tend to migrate from the rural areas and suburbs to larger cities, these larger urban groups feed the percept-ion that a larger percentage of the total population is homosexual.
Comment posted on 7-6-2008
I haven’t done very much to verify any of these specific claims yet, but I can say that I found your post basically word for word attributed to Jason Park on this page. A quick check indicates that Evergreen International is a Mormon site “that helps people who want to diminish same-sex attractions and overcome homosexual behavior.” While lack of proper attribution does not invalidate your post, it certainly creates suspicion as to motive.