Can someone back this up? At a glance I dont see how 10% of people could be homosexual, I remember hearing one out of 200, but 10%??? Maybe 10% of people have had a homosexual experience?
shrugs
I’ve heard that figure before. I’ve also heard 5% and 20%. It depends how you measure it, and a definitive answer is probably not going to be possible. 10% sounds reasonable to me, as a rough measure. Certainly more likely than 1 in 200.
But 10% would be close to 30 million people. I just don’t see it. No horse in this race, but I’d like to see some cite where 10% are gay.
I live in a relatively liberal city, so there are probably more “out” gay folk than in some other places, and I work in a place with about 60 or 70 employees on my shift. Of these, there are five gay men and three lesbians that I know of. There may well be other, closeted ones. This fits roughly with the 10% figure.
one in 200 is something i heard from school many years ago, I dont have a net cite, but it was in some local newspaper about George Bush’s plans (please dont hijack the thread with this, thanks) for the gay marriage thing.
I dunno, going by feeling I probably see one gay in every 200 people, and I work in a relativly funky nightclub, so Ive met quite a few gays and like to think I can pick them.
10% of people are homosexual for the same reason Tiger Woods is an African-American. WHAT???
That doesn’t make sense but let me explain.
Homosexuality is a “SELF PERCEPTION.” Only if you qualify yourself as a homosexual are you one.
Example I have a friend who says he’s BISEXUAL. His last date with a female was when he was 19. He’s 41 now. In that time he has only had sex with men. Never so much as had a date with a female. But he says he’s bisexual. Put him on a lie detector and he’d pass. WHY? Becuase his self perception is that he likes men AND women. Realistically he is GAY.
I know another person that says he’s gay. He had sex with women in High School. One or two OR THREE sex acts does not a homosexual nor heterosexual make.
Add to this, I have found as a gay man something else going on. 20 years ago I was 19. NO straight man would EVER let a guy give him a blow job. Now a LOT would. Why??? Because if you cheat on your wife with a women that’s bad, but it ain’t cheating if it’s with a man. And since the stigma is less and the guy’s getting off, the married guy no longer cares. In reality he ISN’T gay. He is having a gay sex act but only his self perception of what CHEATING is keeps him from doing it with a woman.
Do you understand NOW why it is nearly impossible to qualify the number of homosexuals. I have NEVER seen a naked women. I don’t have any gay friends that can say this…But they are gay. How does one measure a statistic like that?
How many people have had A GAY sex act. I have seen numbers from 30% to 50%. That seems reasonable to me. Are they gay…NO…
The best estimates say about 3% of the population of men define themselves as Gay. 1% of the population of women defines themselves as Lesbian.
That seems to makes sense…IN my experience. But remember this is a total population. For example about 250,000 Gay people live in San Francisco. This is an unusual bend in statistics.
Now for the Tiger Woods reference. I read that he is as much Thai as he is African American. So why does no one (at least that I’ve ever heard of) say the great ASIAN golfer. Because it’s a SELF perception.
You’re forgetting that the approx 10% you work with are in your city, as a national average, I still have to WAG that it’s less than 10.
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? This is one of the best shows I’ve ever seen! I’ll buy those 5 a beer anyday.
If you take blow jobs off a man and enjoy it, your gay 
But isnt being gay genetical, or is that more propaganda bullshit?
Im straight, but I love that show, just for witty comments, nothing to do with them actually being gay 
Most authorities now quote figures between 1 and 3% of the population as being gay. The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). The NHSLS found that 2.8 percent of the male, and 1.4 percent of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
The 10% figure is an artifact from poorly structured research conducted by Kinsey.
The 10 percent figure was also quickly picked up on and widely disseminated by gay advocates for political reasons.
If you think about it long enough, the only way that could happen is as a mutation, since a sexual species cannot be propagated by only one gender (even if both exist in the same organism). If a behavioral trait becomes genetic that endangers a species, the species won’t be around very long.
Homosexuality is a behavior, not a predeterimed genetic drive. Unless you want to buy into Queer Nation’s excited rhetoric that says that homosexuality is present in EVERY LIVING THING, waiting for the “right” trigger, the trait can’t be genetic.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=234769
Hope this helps.
Which is irrelevant here since homosexual orientation does not hurt the species (H. Sapiens), it only means that one individual does not reproduce. The prevailing opinion today is that sexual orientation (a) is real, there ARE heterosexuals and homosexuals, it’s not just a matter of whim, habit, or decision of the will; and (b) results from a combination of multiple genetic and environmental factors (do a threads search for homosexuality + genetic for more cites than we can shake a stick at). And you are a little bit off on your genetics – a hereditary factor can exist as a recessive trait and will not be selected out of the population, unless it directly decreases the survival chances for all who are even mere carriers. The mutation, if any, need only have happened waaaay back in human evolution.
The 10% number, indeed, comes from the Kinsey report and was based on what is now considered questionable data. OTOH, the numbers that are ridiculously low, such as “1 in 200”, also come mostly from sources with agendas behind them. My question is: What’s the bloody difference if they’re 20 million or 5 million? They’re people and citizens.
IIRC, the NHSLS asked participants to identify themselves by their social security number, which suggests that a lot of closeted gays might have reported themselves as straight for fear that their responses would not remain confidential.
–Cliffy
IIRC that is utter crap, I have never seen any reference that indicates that this is true. The Human Rights Campaign, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, National Center for Lesbian Rights, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, Pride At Work AFL-CIO, People For the American Way Foundation and the Anti-Defamation League amongst others used these figures before the court in Lawrence and Garner v. State of Texas, No. 02-102 (U.S. March 26, 2003).
Could I ask for a cite?
I’ve always wondered about the genetic theory of homosexuality myself. I realize there is real evidence that it is true. But it seems to going against other proven facts of evolution. I’m not arguing any moral thing here, but it seems obvious that a genetic propensity to have sex with your own gender reduces an individual’s chances for reproduction. R.A. Fisher demonstrated that as little as a 1% disadvantage in reproduction will eliminate a gene within 100 generations.
Can you cite a source for your statement, presented as fact, that “homosexuality [which, as a sexual orientation, is distinct from homosexual sex] is a behavior”? Can you cite a source for your statement, presented as fact, that homosexuality is not a predetermined genetic drive? Can you cite a source for your statement, presented as fact, that Queer Nation espouses the viewpoint that “homosexuality is present in EVERY LIVING THING”?
Except that there’s no evidence that homosexuality is 100% genetic in origin or that a single gene controls sexual orientation. There is also the theory that provides that animals without offspring of their own are free to assist in the raising of the offspring of their siblings or others who share at least some portion of their genetic makeup, thus helping to ensure that some of the genes that animal possesses pass on to future generations. This could certainly include one or more of the genes required to produce homosexual orientation.
“I’m not arguing any moral thing here, but it seems obvious that a genetic propensity to have sex with your own gender reduces an individual’s chances for reproduction. R.A. Fisher demonstrated that as little as a 1% disadvantage in reproduction will eliminate a gene within 100 generations.”
… in a given abstract model, perhaps. But there are literally thousands of persistent or reoccuring genetic traits found in humans that reduce their chances for reproduction. For example, if I take off my glasses, everything more than a couple of feet away is a blur. This would have been a significant disadvantage when it came to finding food, let alone a mate, had I lived a mere five or ten thousand years ago. (Not all myopia is genetic, but a substantial chunk of it is.) If evolution were as tidy and as rapid as you suggest, any such genetic tendency to poor vision (or any other mildly disadvantageous trait) would have been bred out of the population long ago.
More seriously than nearsightedness, there are a wide variety of inheirited genetic diseases that can cause very serious problems like blindness or deafness. These would obviously affect the individual’s chances of reproducing. Again, these genetic conditions persist despite the fact that humans have been around for far more than 100 generations!
Of course, many genetic conditions are the result of a group of genes, not a single one. And you never have one subpopulation with a single “undesirable” (in the sense of reducing the chance of reproduction) gene vs. another subpopulation which is perfectly adapted to the environment: you always have an incredible assortment of less-than-perfectly-adapted genes, with evolution merely culling out the least fit.
Evolution is seldom rapid or tidy, which is why evaluating a given trait is so difficult.