I was reading the comments in an article I read on some website and most of them quoted a survey that said we are only 1.7 percent of the population. I was thinking that maybe they are right and we don't really matter that much. Kind of depressing really.
There is no real accurate way of polling sexual orientation, people only know if others are gay if that person willingly tells you they are.. So we'll never really know for sure. There are tons of gay & bisexual people who just don't disclose their sexuality publicly. And being a minority doesn't = we don't matter.
The number of gay people is the same percentage no matter where you are. Of couse the number of openly gay people will change depending on where you are. I heard between 5%-20% generally
There are different numbers floating around. It used to be said that 1 in 10 men is gay, but the 1 in 20 numbers have been gaining more ground because there seemingly isn't 10% of the male population that is gay. Latest credible survey I recall from 2012 counted the number to a little over 3% of the population is LGBT, but that the number is believed to be higher because of the whole negativity surrounding being LGBT, meaning that people are more likely to lie about their sexual orientation to be on the safe side. The numbers should be between 5-10%, but I wouldn't be surprised to see this number increase in the next 10-20 years as the LGBT movement continues to gain more acceptance.
And the US population who is President is about .0000003 percent of the population. I guess President Obama is not very important. OK...that is a little extreme. Still...numbers aren't everything. On a practical level, there are enough gay people that meaningful changes are taking place, such as same sex marriage. (Even if the changes are taking longer than one might like.) I also personally would not be surprised if the numbers are greater than that statistic. One problem with statistics: you have to have people who honestly report. Some people are so far in the closet they never will, even with the anonymous survey. Others are gay, but haven't realized it yet.
As a supporter of LGBT rights, I tend to think the numbers are at least 30% Hetero, 30% Homo, 30% Bi, and 10% Asexual.
Proper studies we looked over in my psych class listed (from what I remember) ~5% homo and ~3% bisexual in men, ~3% homo and ~5% bisexual in women.
Like Hefiel said, the latest number is a little over 3% for the population as a whole. However, there are sub-groups that have percentages that are higher than that. If memory serves right, young women of color without college education had the highest rate at around 10%. I think one study found that as many as 20% of young women identify as either bisexual or lesbian, but I could be wrong. I suspect that the occurrence of multisexuality and asexuality, at least, are probably higher than current studies suggest because they are easier to mistake for heterosexuality.
They say about 3% is accurate, but it's more than that because the numbers do not count closeted individuals and questioning people who eventually end up finding themselves as gay. I say anywhere from 5-8% is a safe assumption, for both genders.
Since when do statistics define how much a person is worth? Oh, and while we're at it, how come american gay people are so much more important that all the others?
No biggie. OP is from the US, so there should be no surprised that he'd be more interested in the gay population of his own country. Plus, it'd be a little hard to gain a credible worldwide sample considering there are countries where you can be killed for being gay. Plus it's true that it's a bit disappointing that our numbers are so low. We need a higher presence of LGBT individuals in the world. More gays means more potential partners.
this site says 3.4% How many Americans are gay or lesbian? Gallup survey says 3.4 percent. but a lot of people are in denial/in the closet/feel that they are sinful or something and would never admit it. I think it is somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. The senior class at my school did an anonymous survey; their class was 8%. My class is at least 5%, based on the ones that I know from the GSA/heard rumors from, and is probably a few percent more. I saw that one poll said that americans on average think that it is 25%!! Maybe it is but it is probably from TV (glee is like half lgbtq haha)
Yes, and Gallup predicted a 7-point landslide for Romney last November. I wouldn't take any of their 'surveys' seriously. It is difficult to get a good estimate because the number of people willing to say they're such-and-such on a survey is different from the number willing to reveal personal information anonymously online. It is further complicated by the fact that anyone who is kinsey 1 will almost certainly identify as straight and never bring it up, and that the majority of kinsey 2's will also either think they're straight or choose to identify as straight for a variety of reasons. Based on this totally unscientific survey conducted on city-data.com, with 348 participants, these look like legitimate numbers and they reflect what I've seen in real life, for the most part. Kinsey 0 - 61.21% Kinsey 1 - 12.64% Kinsey 2 - 4.89% Kinsey 3 - 1.72% Kinsey 4 - 2.87% Kinsey 5 - 4.60% Kinsey 6 - 12.07% In broader terms, 73.85% straight, 9.48% bisexual, 16.67% gay I think surveys on big websites that aren't catered to a queer audience tend to get a distribution pretty similar to that. I literally put more stock in that than in official surveys by Gallup.
