Posted on 05/21/2015 8:07:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
“We’re not a smart people,” says Ace, pointing to a similar but now outdated 2012 survey from Gallup.
The actual number of gays is around four percent, as best anyone can tell. What’s your guesstimate, America?
Fifty-three percent think gays compose at least 20 percent of the population. Huh. I don’t know what’s odder, the fact that this number has grown as the public’s paid more attention to gays over the past 13 years or the fact that guesstimates were already wildly inflated in 2002, before gay marriage had picked up national momentum. Logically, you would think the estimates would have been sharply lower as you go further back in time, when more gays were in the closet. Or, alternatively, you could argue that the estimates should be sharply lower now, as better information about gays has become more widely available. Instead ignorance abides — although maybe the source of the ignorance has changed. Maybe it used to be that people overestimated how many gays there were precisely because they didn’t know much about them and thought “20 percent” seemed like a reasonble-ish number, small enough to comport with gays’ status as a minority but large enough to comport with their visibility in celebrity culture. Now, Americans may have heard here and there that the actual number of gays is under five percent but they’re having trouble processing that figure because gays and gay-rights issues seem to be everywhere in media and on the news. Increased visibility may be overwhelming better information, ironically “confirming” the earlier 20-25 percent guesstimate.
There are demographic differences in the estimates too, of course:
You can see better access to information at work there in how postgrads are closer to the mark than high-school grads. On the other hand, it’s young adults who’ve grown up with plenty of access to information about gays online and on TV and they’re the most wildly wrong of any age group. Women have roughly the same access as men do and yet their guesstimate is nearly 10 points worse than men’s is. I think Ace’s theory about that is right on: It’s not so much access to statistical information that matters as personal exposure to gays. Women and young adults are almost certainly more likely to have openly gay friends than men and older people are; the more you’re surrounded by people who are gay, the more likely you are, it seems, to think gays are more prevalent in the population than they actually are. There’s a partisan difference too along those lines although it’s not as dramatic as you might think, with Democrats guesstimating that 25 percent of the public is gay and Republicans guessing 19 percent. If the basic theory here is true, that personal exposure produces higher estimates even as accurate information about gays becomes more widely available, then the numbers should actually keep increasing as gays feel more comfortable coming out to their friends. By 2030, maybe two-thirds of the public will guess that America is at least 20 percent gay.
And don’t forget, it’s in the interest of gay-rights activists to promote (or at least not contradict) the assumption that gays are more numerous than they are. That’s counterintuitive in the sense that constitutional protections for gays depend in part on their supposed status as a small, powerless, politically vulnerable group; the larger and more powerful they seem, the less they need the courts looking out for them. In reality, though, it may be that one reason support for gay marriage has spread as quickly as it has is that Americans are under the mistaken impression that it affects many more people than it actually does. The bigger the gay population seems, the less gay marriage seems like an otherwise ignorable boutique issue.
Here’s Ted Cruz deftly handling a snotty reporter who wanted to talk to him about some gay issues but most definitely not others.
Newsrooms are still probably staffed at a greater percentage...
Media manufactured reality for many. The “enlightened” are actually ignorant of reality.
Why are pieces by ‘AllahPundit’ legit here? Hs is a RINO.
Pure fiction.
The answer is go back in the closet.
This poll is all I need to know that sexual deviant freaks ARE NOT “born that way”. The freaks are recruited to join in the fad.
I don't often actually read what gets posted of the article, and the one time I do, I miss the critical information.
/johnny
I had understood the gay population of the U.S.A. is 2% of the populace, which I believe is too high.
Ironically enough,Obama’s approval rating is now at 53%!
http://www.gallup.com/poll/183362/obama-favorable-rating-best-september-2013.aspx
That explains so much!
/johnny
As evinced my LSDNBC and DU, "alternate" reality is perhaps the best description.
3%....tops
Bah. SOunds like another Fairy Tale to me.
lol
Americans are so stupid it seems, public schools and the media have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams
even 5% is far too high a number
The article says about 4%, but if one really works at it, they come up with under 2%, or about 2.4% depending on how they measure it.
The trouble is that the one authentic survey, is the one ignored, back in 1994 and they did a study where they tried to get EVERYONE to answer, rather than just the loosy goosy types who want to talk about sex.
In that study they went back to people as many as 20 times, because they didn’t want to exclude them and what might turn out to be more conservative sexual lives, that is the study that found very little cheating going on by married couples.
So many of the sex surveys that have been used for generations, were self reporting surveys, from sources that attracted sexually loose readers.
Rather than the “around four percent, as best anyone can tell”, I firmly believe it is the fairly fixed <2% that is has always been since psychiatrists properly treated it as a mental disorder. Most probably, the % of schizophrenics, paranoids, and psychotics has remained about the same as well, conditions causing all these disorders all being equal of course.
Just based on personal observation, I agree with you, too high. Again, just my own experience, I don't know even one self professed queer. Stretching the old memory back, I cannot remember ever knowing one.
When I was in college there was a group of misfit, lonely folks known as Moonies who today identify as gay. It’s another fad. Equally sad and pathetic. But true.
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