Reply #62: All the estimates are disputed.

[Xithras]

Kinsey once said that 90-95% of the males in America have some aspect of bisexuality, or some buried attraction towards males that you can uncover if you try hard enough.

The "real" answer depends on how you define gay. The NORC study in 2003 found that about 5% of men reported having sex with another man after the age of 18. Lots of people look at that and claim the 5% number, but the same study found that only 1% of them were exclusively gay, and that about 4% exhibited some degree of bisexuality. Keep in mind that those numbers are nationally averaged too...the numbers are far higher in urban areas, and fall to nearly 0% in rural ones.

If you define "gay" as including everyone seriosuly attracted to the same sex whether or not they act on it, there are several psychological studies that put the number close to 20%

If you define gay as "having had sex with the same sex during the last decade", a 1993 study put the number at about 2% to 3%

Interestingly, if you ASK people how they self-identify (not what they do physically, but how they mentally view themselves), more than 15% of the population admits to some kind of homosexual/bisexual identification, and about 6% openly declare themselves to be gay.

In the 2004 exit polls, one of the questions asked was about the sexual orientation of the voter. About 4% self-identified as gay or bisexual.

In 2005, the British government had to determine how many gays anb bisexuals were in the UK so they could estimate the impact from their new domestic partnership laws. After extensive study, they found the number to be around 6%


So you see, the actual number depends on which survey you believe and how you define gay. If you want to only consider people who exclusively bond with their own sex, the number is probably very low...like 2-3%. If you open it up to bisexuals and dabblers, the number probably jumps to 5-6% (the numbers most commonly used by the media).

Of course, all of these studies are flawed in that they generally look at gay MEN. The numbers of lesbian women are slightly higher, and if you include permanently or ocassionally bisexual women, the number jumps considerably. The largest number I ever saw, which included even women who had one time flings with other women in college, put the number in the mid twenties (though it would probably be a bit higher today).