Study: U.S. has 4M 'gay' adults; 1.7% of populace

sermonindex Apr 8, 2011

A California demographer has released a best guess of how many homosexual adults are in the U.S.

Gary Gates puts the figure at 4 million adults, representing 1.7 percent of the 18-and-over population. That's much lower than the 3 to 5 percent that has been the conventional wisdom in the last two decades, based on other isolated studies. It's also a fraction of the figure put out by Alfred Kinsey, who said in the 1940s that 10 percent of the men he surveyed were "predominantly homosexual."

sermonindex Apr 8, 2011

Does the study track those who are lesbian?

B

boG Apr 9, 2011

Gates has advised the Census Bureau. He's a demographer-in-residence at the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He derived his results [see the following PDF] from five studies that asked subjects about their sexual orientations.

How many people are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender?
by Gary J. Gates, Williams Distinguished Scholar

http://www2.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/pdf/How-many-people-are-LGBT-Final.pdf

sermonindex Apr 9, 2011

It always amazes me that such a small percentage has such a loud voice.