By - Associated Press - Thursday, April 7, 2011 SAN FRANCISCO | How many gays are there in the United States? Gary Gates has an idea but acknowledges pinpointing a solid figure remains an elusive task.
Mr. Gates is demographer-in-residence at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, a think tank based at the University of California, Los Angeles. For the institute’s 10th anniversary this week, he took a scholarly stab at answering the question that has been debated, avoided and parsed since sex researcher Alfred Kinsey said in the 1940s that 10 percent of the men he surveyed were “predominantly homosexual.”
Mr. Gates‘ best estimate, derived from five studies that have asked subjects about their sexual orientation, is that the nation has about 4 million adults who identify as being homosexual, representing 1.7 percent of the 18-and-over population.
That’s a much lower figure than the 3 percent to 5 percent that has been the conventional wisdom in the last two decades, based on other isolated studies and flaws noted in Kinsey’s methodology.
Brad Sears, the Williams Institute’s executive director, recalled Mr. Gates‘ 2006 estimate, which was drawn from census data on same-sex households and put the nation’s lesbian, gay and bisexual population at about 8.8 million. That news upset some gays who found comfort in Kinsey’s 1-in-10 number, Mr. Sears said.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/apr/7/study-sees-gays-as-17-percent-of-population/#ixzz3fEn5GRka Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
In any case, it's far below the preposterous claim that's been driveling over the media these past 10 years that it's 10%.
Thanks. That article is from 2011. I doubt it’s credibility in today’s world.