Posted on 12/04/2014 6:51:14 AM PST by wagglebee
Why do people in the United States (and probably other Western countries, as well) over-estimate the proportion of gays and lesbians in the population? Ever since 1948, when the Kinsey Report suggested 1-in-10, Americans have accepted wildly exaggerated figures. Last year, The Smithsonian, the official web magazine of the famous museum in Washington DC, even suggested that it was 1-in-5!
However, a recent government survey in the United Kingdom found that in 2013, 1.6% of UK adults identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual. This is a very small proportion of the population, but it becomes even smaller when the figures are broken up. Only 1.6% of men identified as gay; only 0.8% of women as lesbians; and 0.5% of men and women as bisexual.
The percentages varied hugely by region. In London the figure for gay, lesbians or bisexual was 3.2% but in the North East region, it was only 1.1%.
How accurate are these statistics? A spokesman for the gay rights group Stonewall suspects that they must be higher: “We don’t think the figures are completely accurate yet. People aren’t necessarily going to know the sexual orientation of everybody living in a household and some people would not feel comfortable telling a complete stranger their sexuality.”
This is quite possible, but corresponding figures for the United States and other countries yield similar results. The Williams Institute, a gay think tank at UCLA Law School, has compared a number of US and international surveys. The lowest overall percentage of gays, lesbians and bisexuals came from the Norwegian Living Conditions Survey (1.2%); the highest from the US National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior (5.6%). It found that international surveys, which varied from 1.2% to 2.1%, estimated lower percentages of people who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual than US surveys, which ranged from 1.7% to 5.6%.
Obtaining accurate figures about the size of the LGBT population is a critical first step to informing a host of public policy and research topics. It matters greatly whether the number of people affected by policy changes is 0.1% of the population or 10% of the population.
So it’s a bit alarming, then, that the public wildly over-estimates the percentage of people who are LGBT and therefore the number of people who wish to contract same-sex marriages. According to the Gallup polling service in 2002:
“Whether increased acceptance of homosexuality has led to an upsurge in the number of positive media portrayals of gay characters or vice versa, one result seems to be that Americans now tend to overestimate the gay population in America. While most expert estimates place America's homosexual population at 10% or less, Americans tend to guess that the number is higher, around 20%.”
About 10 years later another Gallup poll found that public perception had increased still further:
“U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%.”
What does it mean if people think that the proportion of homosexuals is about 1-in-4, when the figure is really 1-in-100? That the public is so fearful of gays and lesbians that it thinks they are everywhere? That the public has become so sympathetic that it thinks they are everywhere? It’s impossible to say. But one thing is sure. Good public policy is based on facts, not ideology. If politicians, journalists and judges are working with wildly over-estimated figures, we are bound to get the worst possible policies.
The site has popups, you are blocking them, I can block their script as well but it doesn’t change my complaint about what they are doing.
The ones I got were from LifeSite.
Thank goodness the disease affects such a small percentage of the population:
Queers: "We are the 2.3%". 07/15/2014 192kb.pdf
I haven’t been to one, but I always wondered what the Gay Pride parades consisted of. Are they proud of anything other than their deviant sexuality?
Just look at the Hollywood percentage and you can see why.
I agree "Will and Grace" mainstreamed it more. TV has rapidly become the media for gay recruiting. Look at "Glee" it not only represents gaydom but glorifies it. It makes weaker minds feel that they are a freak for not being gay.
Don't look now but that disorder has been turned into a "business."
“The public is totally unaware that society is now going out of its way to pander to a minuscule percentage of society that is actually suffering from a mental disorder.”
Not only are we “aware”...we also continue to wonder WHY so much attention is given to the attention that is given to these people. However, considering the “grave mistake” America has made by removing God from it, and of how hopeless the condition of the world is now in, there is no strategy that could be employed to change the way things are except to repent as a nation and turn back to God....putting Him as HEAD of our affairs.
only sampled from Prison populations
I used to watch the t.v. show, "House Hunters" a lot, until they started to have about one in three house hunter couples that were queers - like that was the norm.
The left likes to talk about the %1 while they insist we pander to the 4%. Most who experiment with the gay lifestyle leave it. The reason people end up thinking that lgbt populations are bigger is because of the media and hollywood. Its just brainwashing. I know many lgbt and ex-lgbt and even some ex-ex-lgbt. The picture that is presented of the joyous content lgbt is a myth though lesbians seem to have a better time of it than gay men many which are simply hypersexual in the sense of sexual addictive behavior which is why so many pride parades are such demonstrations of depravity.
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm
26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”
All quite deliberate, and done by the enemies of this nation.
It’s the big lie, like global warming is the big lie. Homosexuals live a lie and are compelled to lie about their significance in numbers in order to gain normalcy in the society they infest.
To the mentally healthy (heterosexual), sex is something you do.
To the mentally diseased ("homosexual"), sex is everything you are.
What's the first law?
The first law of homosexuality:
'Homosexuals' don't reproduce, they recruit
The second law of homosexuality:
To the mentally healthy (heterosexual), sex is something you do;
To the mentally diseased ('homosexual'), sex is everything you are.
The third law of homosexuality:
Any exposure of children to homosexual behavior is child abuse
The real question is how many REALLY WANT to be married? Plenty of cases out there they get married, but not for long before they change their minds, and demand divorce settlement rights.
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