And Just How Gay is America?

And Just How Gay is America?

Perhaps to coincide with the release last week of Kinsey, GQ released the results of a survey called "The State of Man" tabulating phone polling of 1000 men between the ages of 25 and 55 by The Benenson Strategy Group. In the section entitled "How Gay is America?" they provide these results:

2% of men acknowledge being gay.
23% of single men say they've had a gay encounter.
12% of all men admit to having had a gay encounter.
8% admit to fantasizing about a gay encounter.
22% would be flattered if they were hit on by a gay man.
27% have friends who are gay.

I would have guessed these numbers to be higher. Wishful thinking?

more...

http://towleroad.typepad.com/towleroad/2004/11/how_gay_is_amer.html#more

:shrug:

And likely to stay that way. Also, 50% of the population has no dog in this race anyway.

Figure if people are "worried" or "preoccupied" about what gays do in their bedroom or who they marry then it's because they want in on the action:D

in 2000.....

population is gay -- of course this number might combine gay with bisexual.

When I took abnormal psy the Prof said that he and his colleagues in the field of Sports Psy were estimating that the gay population in the US and probably world wide was about 10-15% of the population.

This was a good course (and for the time very liberal) -- because the Prof lectured that being gay was NOT abnormal and he was lobbying for a change in the "official" definition. This particular Prof was one of the first Sports Psychologists -- he was the co-originator of this specialty. Anyway he said that there were many very macho looking men in Pro sports who were very gay -- often they had a trophy wife to cover the fact that they were gay.

I credit this prof for giving me an excellent insight into this side of human sexuality. He invited many people from the gay community come and share what it was like trying to exist in a Heterosexual world. Cops were awful to the gays. Cops at the time were acting like storm troopers toward students at the time (Kent State era) -- so that turned into common ground because the cops had just beat up several dozen students on campus.

- 2% of men acknowledge being gay
- 27% have friends who are gay

Either, the gay men really get around and know a lot of men or someone is just not being totally up front (excuse the pun).

MALE Population in U.S. 2000: 138,411,000
Males over the age of 19: 97,126,000

Admitted gays based on study (2%) 1,942,520

Study males who have gay friends 26,224,020

Ratio of admitted gays to males
who have gay friends 13.5

Ratio of admitted gays to straight
males (24,281,500) who have gay
friends (1,942,520) 12.5


I am assuming that the gay males in the study would all have admitted to having gay friends, so the focus has to be on the straight men who say they have gay friends. I certainly fall into this latter group. First, I regard a friend as someone who I have a relationship with, who is real (not TV charter for example) that I would do stuff with, meet on a regular or frequent basis with, confide in from time to time, but being straight would not have a sexual relationship with. So, I would not put casual acquaintances in the group who I would claim are "friends". I might know a neighbor who would be gay, but because we are not friends, I can't claim that acquaintance had I been in the survey. I could say then, that I have one such friendship at the moment with a male who is gay and looking back over the years probably never had more than two such persons in my life. I probably have no more than a dozen males who I would claim are friends again based on my criteria, so my 12 male friendships at the moment consist of 1 gay and 11 straights. Given that all of the other males who are straight would have a range of friendships going from as few as one to as many as a person could possibly keep track of, I would have to say that having 50 male friends is really pushing the envelop of relationships. Thus, because that ratio of straights claiming gay friends is as high as it is, there has to be quite a few people who have common gay friends. By deduction, gays are hardly a lonely group, and not at all deprived of male friendships. That seems to contradict the general experience however. So, either more people are actually gay and won't admit they are in a survey situation, or straight males are actually engaging in an unconscious homophobia, claiming to have gay male friends, when in fact they don't know this for a fact, but only suspect. The subject needs much more study and research.

Than the entire gay male and female population of the USA.

So we're ALL online PLUS a few thousand heterosexual supporters who post personals just to make gay friends? ;)

The number of homosexuals will actually decrease.

If homosexuality is genetic, as more people begin their adults lives as out homosexuals, living authentically and having same sex partners, assuming a majority of same sex couples will be childless - in other words - as gay people enter into fewer heteorsexual relationships out of a desire to conform to society, fewer gay people will be having children, and therefore not passing on the genes which determine ones sexuality to be homosexual.

So what's incredibly ironic here if this were true - if the religious right really wanted to reduce the number of homosexuals, they would support same sex marriage.

But I wonder if the increased acceptance of homosexuality has already had an affect on the size of the gay population.

I don't think the genetic link to homosexuality as been assigned to gays. As a gay man, I don't think my children (if I chose to have them) would be gay. They would most likely be straight. Most gays I know have hetero parents. So, I don't think gays actually pass on a "gay gene" any more or less than non-gays. Therefore, I don't think your conclusions would come to fruition. Personally, I think if homosexuality loses the stigma, then we will see an increase in gays. Not that they weren't always there, they would just be more comfortable to be themselves. I also think we would see an increase in bisexuals, because I feel many people would not feel inhibited to love whomever they were attracted to. Just my opinion.

and since I answered "yes" to each of them, I guess that makes me at least 94 percent gay (though I think the actual percentage is higher than that by at least 6 percent).

I think the best numbers converge on that 1% of women and 3.5% of men are homosexuals for life, for lack of a better term, and people who can be called bisexual or ambiguous add a few percent, mostly to the womens' side (gee, surprise).

people i meet who fool around with people of their own sex.
it's a very different world from when i was much younger.