Exposed: The Myth That "10% Are Homosexual"

Traditional Values Coalition ^

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

While homosexuals claim they make up 10% of the population, the reality is closer to 1-2%.

A NEWLY RELEASED REPORT from the Centers for Disease Control’s National Center for Health Statistics reveals that only 2.3% of the population considers themselves homosexual. The statistics come from a 2002 National Survey of Family Growth and are based on 12,571 interviews with men and women ages 15-44 years of age. (The findings were reported in WorldNetDaily, September 16, 2005). According to this survey, only 2.3% of the males surveyed considered themselves to be homosexuals; 1.8% considered themselves to be bisexuals. Among men ages 18-44, 92% said they were attracted “only to females” and 3.9% “mostly” to females. Among women, 86% said they were attracted only to males, and 10% “mostly” to males.

	Reputable journalists, legislators, and other opinion leaders must avoid using this bogus 10% statistic. Those who continue to use this homosexual urban legend should be challenged to prove it with facts-not myths.

Homosexuals Admit 10% Is Wrong

Homosexual activist groups have finally admitted that their claim that 10% of the population is “gay” is false. This admission took place in a Friend of the Court brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 26, 2003 in the Lawrence v. Texas, known as the Texas sodomy case. In this case, homosexuals are trying to have the Texas law against sodomy declared unconstitutional by the Court.

In footnote 42 on page 16 of this legal brief, 31 homosexual and pro-homosexual groups admitted the following: “The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). The NHSLS found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. See Laumann, et al, The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States (1994). This amounts to nearly 4 million openly gay men and 2 million women who identify as lesbian.”

Despite this indirect admission that the 10% figure homosexuals have used for more than two decades is wrong, the writers of the brief still continue to lie about the real numbers. The claim that 4 million men and 2 million women are gay is based on multiplying the 2.8% and 1.4% figures by the total number of males and females in the U.S. It is unreasonable to count any of the 60 million Americans who are 14 or younger (including 40 million who are under nine years of age) as “openly gay men and women.” Yet, that is what this brief claims. Even as homosexuals admit they’re wrong about the 10% figure, they apparently still can’t resist lying about their true numbers in our population.

The NHSLS study found that only 0.9% of men and 0.4% of women reported having only same-sexual partners since age 18, a figure that would represent a total of only 1.4 million Americans as homosexual. The truth is that homosexuals used the bogus 10% figure in order to inflate their numbers and their influence.The 10% Urban Legend has been effectively used by homosexuals to recruit children into the homosexual lifestyle and to lobby for legislation to provide special legal protections for homosexuals. Homosexual groups throughout the United States, however, continue to use this bogus 10% figure because it provides them with political power and legitimacy.

Debunking The Urban Legend

What do scientific surveys and studies show about how many homosexuals actually exist? As long ago as the early 1990s, statistics showed that the 10% was false. USA Today, in its April 15, 1993 issue published the following statistics from a Planned Parenthood/Alan Guttmacher Institute study:

• Only 2.3% of males ages 20 to 39 said they had experienced a same-sex relationship in the past decade. Only 1.1% said they were exclusively gay.
  
  
• A 1989 U.S. survey indicated that no more than 6% of adults had any kind of same-sex experience. Less than 1% said they were exclusively gay.
  
  
• A 1992 French study found that only 1.4% of men and 0.4% of women said they had any same-sex contact in the past five years.
  
  
• In 1991, the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) provided data indicating that of the 6% who have ever experienced same-sex relations, the number of currently active homosexuals (at that time) was .06-0.7%. The source for this is: T.W. Smith, Planning Perspectives 23, May/June 1991).

The Wall Street Journal shed more light on the 10% urban legend in its March 31, 1993 issue:

• A survey conducted by the Minnesota Adolescent Health Survey (1986-86) of public school students indicated that only 0.6% of boys and 0.2% of girls identified themselves "mostly or 100% homosexual"-which is less than one percent!
  
  
• In Canada, a 1988 survey of first-year college students under 25 indicated that 98% were heterosexual; 1% bisexual; and 1% homosexual. (Source: King, et al. Canada, Youth and AIDS Study, Kingston, Ontario: Queen's University.)

Census Figures Show Few Homosexual Households

The 10% figure was drawn from Alfred Kinsey's deliberately dishonest research on human sexuality conducted in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Even Kinsey never declared that 10% of the population claimed to be exclusively homosexual.

The Census 2000 figures show that homosexuals exist in far fewer numbers in our population than homosexual activists would have us believe. Homosexuals used these census figures to claim that the number of same-sex households had experienced an explosive growth during the past ten years. This is untrue. According to Census 2000 figures, there are a total of 106,741,426 households in the U.S., only 00.42% of those are unmarried same-sex households. This is less than one percent. Yet activists claimed that these figures showed a surge in same-sex households since 1990. However, the Census Bureau issued a disclaimer saying that 1990 figures and 2000 figures could not be reconciled because of the different ways the questions were asked in 2000. TVC's report, Lies, Homosexuals, and Census Statistics provides more details about this. It is posted on the TVC web site.

Dr. Mark A. Yarhouse and Dr. Stanton L. Jones have dealt with the 10% urban legend in their book, Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church's Moral Debate. They note that the 10% figure originated in the flawed research work of Dr. Alfred Kinsey in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Kinsey's work has been criticized not only for his use of pedophiles to molest children, but his statements about the prevalence of homosexuality in our culture have also been misquoted and distorted. While homosexuals still claim that 10% of the population figure is homosexual, Kinsey never made that claim. According to Yarhouse and Jones, Kinsey actually reported a number of different statistics on prevalence rates. These rates include the following:

• Ten percent of white males were "more or less" exclusively homosexual during at least a three-year period between the ages of 16 and 55.
  
  
• Fifty percent of males had neither attraction to nor the experience of homosexual behavior.
  
  
• Kinsey also reported that homosexuality among women was about half the rate of males.

The Kinsey statistics as a whole are suspect because he didn't use random samples and drew samples from prison populations and others who self-identified as homosexuals.

Gay Activist Admits The 10% Figure Is Bogus

Bruce Voeller, a gay activist has admitted in his book, Some Uses and Abuses of the Kinsey Scale that the 10% figure was a myth used to promote the homosexual agenda. According To Voeller: ...after years of our educating those who inform the public and make its laws, that concept that 10 percent of the population is gay has become generally accepted as “fact.” ... As with so many pieces of knowledge and myth, repeated telling it made it so… In short, the 10% urban legend was used by homosexual activists to promote their political and social agenda. They knew it to be false but used it anyway.

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[freeplancer]

Can you read? This is a myth, but welcome to FR and say hi to the peeps at DU for us.

[freeplancer]

It is a fact that SF is only slightly above 15% queer. Do you research, become better informed.

[null and void]

and they are - by and large - attention whores.

Most of the ones I know aren't. Once again the ones you see are the attention/media whores. And you see plenty of them.

[Citizen Blade]

I think 10% is probably accurate, it seems the homos are everywhere these days!

It depends on where you live- homosexuals tend to cluster in gay-friendly communities. Which makes sense- it would really suck to be gay in rural Oklahoma.

But there is no way homosexuals are 10% of the general population. I suppose we can stretch the definition of who is a homosexual, but I would limit it to someone who is exclusively sexually attracted to their own gender. I've seen studies that suggest maybe 2-3% of the population falls into this category.

[Gondring]

When I was told that I needed to have homosexual feelings to be normal I decided that I didn't want to be normal if homosexuality was required.

I wasn't as bright as you. I simply thought, "dang, I'm not normal," not really thinking whether it was something I could have controlled. I just was shocked to hear that all of my friends were having those thoughts that I didn't have!

There was a young lady (freshman) I had as a student at a prominent research university. She was one of the most innocent-looking--and truly innocent--young ladies I have known. (I got to know her because she was diligent in her studies and asked for help often.)

She was also very pretty, classy in her dress, with gorgeous golden hair, but her shy, conservative, distant demeanor kept guys at bay, I'm sure.

I barely recognized her when I saw her on the street a couple of years later. She had shaved off her hair to a severe cropping, and was wearing dumpy clothes, no makeup, and a scowl. Turns out, she had taken a Womens Studies course to fulfil a humanities requirement, and had been indoctrinated fully.

I asked about her and what was new, and she replied with a litany of radical feminist dogma. My friend asked her details about the rhetoric she was reciting, and she had none. This was the young lady who insisted on learning the basis for everything in science class, now a man-hating zombie, spewing propaganda without questioning.

My heart aches even now as I recall that. I hope that she has since moved out of that phase and is a happy person again.

[Gondring]

Most of the ones I know aren't. Once again the ones you see are the attention/media whores.

I think that also depends on where you are.

[DungeonMaster]

What concerns me is the number of people that are practicing heteros yet vote in favor of gay marriage. In California 48 percent of the people voted for it. I think there are a lot of people still in closets or people that are curiously sympathetic to sodomites.

[svcw]

Nope. They just have lots of money and no families to care for so they like to mess it up a bit. It just makes it seem like they are everywhere.

[Gondring]

Since it has been taught in our schools that it is OK to be GAY, it has become a new Fad!

Exactly right. Even pro-homosexuality teachers and psychologists and psychiatrists will admit that.

It's a way to get attention, it's a fad, it's a way to rebel, it's a new way to "express onesself," it's a way to express "pseudo-uniqueness" (faux individualism, while not truly leaving the peer group), it's a way to explain "I'm not understood," etc, fulfilling many typical attitudes and emotional needs of youth.

[cripplecreek]

I wasn't as bright as you.

I don't think it's about being bright. I grew up in a way that seems pretty rare these days. A very large extended family mostly living within walking distance. I visited my grand parents and great grandparents nearly every single day and also had aunts and uncles coming and going all the time. My teachers were almost all the same teachers who taught my parents or aunts and uncles.

There are a lot of advantages in growing up in a small tight knit community. The town I live in now only has between 150 and 200 residents. No homosexuals here that I know of.

[CriticalJ]

I believe th 1-2% level

Interestingly enough probably 20-25% (conservative estimate) of the crap coming out of Hollywood features homosexual entertainment of some sort.

[Mr. Jeeves]

I think 10% is probably accurate, it seems the homos are everywhere these days!

They are 2% of the population - they just make 80% of the noise. ;)

[Gondring]

Among women, 86% said they were attracted only to males

Meaning 14% are not.

Many women are attracted to women, and I can't blame them--women are beautiful creatures. :-) I also know women who aren't attracted to women yet say they can easily see how others are. So that's a large chunk of the population with empathy for those with these sexual desires.

But a lot of the disconnects are based on definitions of "homosexuality." I prefer using a term like "homophilia" for those who are attracted to same sex, with "homosexual" for those who act upon the attractions. But even that doesn't get to the definitional question...what about those who "tried it" but don't continue? Activists twist Kinsey's numbers to include them as "homosexual."

I also think a being a victim of abuse tends to lead to some of this.

[Gondring]

Well, I grew up in a rural area, but away from extended family. In any case, my point was that I just didn't even think about whether I'd want to be normal or not, I was just accepting of the fact that I was evidently not! And it all just seemed so foreign to me.

[JeanLM]

I think the more interesting number in these sexual statistics is the number of practicing celibates. The number is a real 10%, defined as the number of adults who haven’t had any sex for over a year.

I thought once of promoting this group as a political faction. Think of the pluses. They produce no unwanted pregnancies or diseases. Rape no one. Leave little kids alone. Should make for a worthy platform, but then I’d have to give up sex myself. Too high a price.

But celibates sure are underrepresented in the media.

[Citizen Blade]

But a lot of the disconnects are based on definitions of "homosexuality." I prefer using a term like "homophilia" for those who are attracted to same sex, with "homosexual" for those who act upon the attractions. But even that doesn't get to the definitional question...what about those who "tried it" but don't continue? Activists twist Kinsey's numbers to include them as "homosexual."

My definition of homosexual is anyone who is sexually attracted only to members of their own sex. I don't think that behavior is relevant- a celibate homosexual is still a homosexual, just as a celibate heterosexual is still a heterosexual.

The percentage of the population that is exclusively homosexual is probably very small, but there is probably a larger (but still fairly small) percentage of the population that is bisexual, to a lesser or greater extent.

[jocko12]

No matter what a queer is still a queer.

[conservativeharleyguy]

Years ago, Rosie O'Donnell screeched on O'Reilly's show:
Well, you know Bill. Ten percent of every animal species on Earth is gay".

I almost fell out of my chair. The same folks who ardently believe that evolution is the only explanation for how we got here, are trying to tell us that an evolutionarily dead-end practice is common throughout nature.

"Every animal species".? Hmmm...I'm pretty sure there's no sodomy in the Grizzly Bear, Mule Deer, or Alligator "communities". How about those cute little Rabbits. Everyone knows how much they like to do it, why not a little "gay bunny love"? Unless they also breed to pass along their genes (which, I guess by gay logic, would make the animals "bi"), it's an aberrant, one-generation phenomenon, and homosexual animals would have died out millions of generations ago.

Which means it must be something other than an inherited trait, or a "gene". From a strictly evolutionary perspective, there's no way for a "trait" that prevents/precludes transmission of one's genes to be passed along for any significant period of time. Again, it's a dead end.

Hmmm... maybe that means it's not genetic. Maybe that really means that it's a behavior? Ya think? Can't have that, because then they'd have to look at themselves as responsible for their own behavior. And when your behavior is risky, self-destructive, and outside of the norms of the society in which you live, who wants to be pestered by that revelation? Or, you could surreptitiously and/or violently overturn those pesky norms, and force everyone to accept you, evoking your very own little evolutionary regression (devolution?).

I pretty much quit watching O'Reilly that moment, because he never said a word to her about her ridiculous statement, letting it pass into the lexicon of contemporary "tolerance" mythology.

Anyway, the ten-percent thing is, and always will be, BS. It's two to maybe three-percent, tops. It just seems like more because they are the loudest voices in the room, and because they thrust themselves into the limelight (with the willing help of the Tolerance Mafia).

[Tempest]

Homosexuality is not a race and as far as a natural occurance would go it would be classifed as a defect. Scientifically speaking and species that cannot procreate will soon become exticnt.

[brytlea]

It seems that 10% figure is right—on TV that is.