Percentages of gays please

[mandarof]

I've heard 5, 10, and 20 percent with many focusing on 10 as the official count. How were these numbers determined? Are there any good research articles or reports people recommend?

I met someone last night who is from a family where 3 of the 6 kids are gay. There are also families where 2 of the 2 kids are gay. Here we have 50% and 100%. Are these high percentages possibly due to gene tendencies (or any family tendencies for that matter)? So then there are families that have a tendency to not be gay?

The most important question about these percentages is that I want the percentage of people who are actually gay (not closeted/out...just ARE gay). Test them somehow, lol! Do we have a percentage of gays that are out?

It seems like this information is not very accurate or sparse but I would really like to know a little more for general purposes.

[Chip]

There's no reliable data. The 10% number is most often quoted based on the Kinsey report, which is from the 1940s, and was heavily flawed for a variety of reasons including methodology and sampling bias. Other limited studies have indicated similar numbers, but no one konws for sure.

I've also seen the indications of 30 or 50 or 100% gay kids in certain families, other families with multiple kids where none appear to be gay, and extended families where numerous relatives appear to be gay. This points to either a genetic or in-utero factor, but I don't think there's any solid data on this, in part because reliable data would require a 20+ year longitudinal study, and even then, would be affected by family and upbringing factors in terms of whether the numbers report artificially low due to people being closeted.

Most people seem to stick with the 10% number but honestly, I doubt there's anything one can reliably point to in backing up that number.

[Dan82]

Political exit polling has consistently shown rates of around 4%.

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by Dan82

Political exit polling has consistently shown rates of around 4%.

However, not all homosexuals are out or vote every election consistently.

There is no definite number that can be found. The guesses in the range of 15% of population simply include those who have had some type of experience. The range closer to 5% is often the purely homosexual, excluding bisexual.

It's confusing.

[radiantdawn]

Though this is such a pointless post kind of... I just have to say, I always hear a number around 10%. But what I wonder is, WHAT THE HECK IS THE REAL PERCENT. Some people are bi, some people are curious, some people are in denial, some people just haven't realized yet, some people are ______ . D : HOW THE HECK ARE WE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A NICE ESTIMATE WHEN PEOPLE ARE HIDING D : . I really wonder what the number percent is, I just have no idea. I'm confident that it's at least 4% >_< Based on no research =p . But gosh, I hope the real number of people open to same-sex relationships is at least 15%, I HOPE HOPE HOPE. But I bet I'm wrong on that hope =p I bet my unresearched 4%-at-least claim is true though : D

[Lexington]

My personal belief, worldwide (and I include bisexuals in the mix here):

Out-and-proud: 2%
Gay (but not out): 6%
Had at least one same-sex sexual encounter sometime in the past: 25%
Has had a same-sex fantasy sometime in the past: 75%

It's those last two groups that cause the confusion, I think. Far too many people (especially gays) seem very willing to put the "gay" stamp on them. Especially if it means they can keep mooning over them and thinking "they've still got a chance". And frankly, you don't.

Lex

[Holmes]

I seem to have gone to quite a gay university, at least relative to others in Ireland, but the College Health Service gave a figure once of 11% of men. That seems high, though there are some caveats. That would include bisexuals and it's possible that because a publicity drive of some sort, gay men were more likely to get checked.

I have no idea of percentages, but I'd estimate less than 10% are gay, about 15% if we include those who are bisexual in a meaningful sense, as in they could form a meaningful romantic and sexual relationship with either sex, not just that they would the odd time think "They're hot". But really we can never know. As long as you some time find someone that's right for you, that's all that should matter.

[Enaithor]

It's pretty much impossible to tell how many people are in the closet...
Sort of like when you have a TV advert saying "458439392 people in the UK have chlamydia, but they don't know about it" and it's like, well they don't know about it and neither do you, not sure why they think they can pluck figures out of the air like that

But out of the closet...in my old high school it was less than 1%...
There was one girl (from 300 in my year) out of the closet as a lesbian, there's myself and there's someone else I'm *certain* is gay but closeted
Very hetero school D:
And of course the final year is the one with the most gays in it because year 7s and such are effectively asexual

[Chip]

Oberlin College at one point was thought to be somewhere around 30% lesbigay, and lots of other colleges seem to have much higher than 10% lesbigay populations. There are a number of studies that indicate that, on the whole, gays and lesbians are typically better educated (at least in the US) than a random sampling of heterosexuals so I don't think college populations are representative.

I don't know that we will ever know for sure, with a reliable number, unless a gene is identified that predicts sexual orientation, which would then allow testing of random samples (say of blood bank donations).

[starfish]

Originally Posted by Enaithor

It's pretty much impossible to tell how many people are in the closet...
Sort of like when you have a TV advert saying "458439392 people in the UK have chlamydia, but they don't know about it" and it's like, well they don't know about it and neither do you, not sure why they think they can pluck figures out of the air like that

Well actually you can determine numbers like that. It won't be an exact number, but you can get a pretty close estimate.

It has been awhile so I forget all of the math but you can easily extrapolate it out of known numbers. I.E. know number of people with chlamydia, number of sexual partners, likelihood of transfer, number of people tested, known number of people that don't know, etc.

I miss doing all of that stuff. It really is pretty cool.

The issue with measuring the gay population is getting a good set of sample data that represents the population as a whole. The gay population tends to be migrant, moving from less accepting areas to more accepting area. The population percentage in Austin is going to be much higher than in say Itasca, Texas. So using data from just either those places is going to skew your results. Also in Austin you much more likely to get a truthful answer, than in the rural places.

In my experience 10% seems like a good rule of thumb, though to be honest I really think it is closer to 7-8%