Gallup: 3.4% of US adults are LGBT

[davidn3600]

NEW YORK (AP) - A new Gallup survey, touted as the largest of its kind, estimates that 3.4 percent of American adults identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

The findings, released Thursday, were based on interviews with more than 121,000 people. Gallup said it is the largest study ever aimed at calculating the nation's LGBT population.

The report's lead author, demographer Gary Gates of the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, said he hoped the findings would help puncture some stereotypes about gays and lesbians while illustrating the diversity of their community.

"Contemporary media often think of LGBT people as disproportionately white, male, urban and pretty wealthy," he said. "But this data reveal that relative to the general population, the LGBT population has a larger proportion of nonwhite people and clearly is not overly wealthy."

According to the survey, which was conducted between June and September, 4.6 percent of African-Americans identify as LGBT, 4 percent of Hispanics, 4.3 percent of Asians and 3.2 percent of whites. Overall, a third of those identifying as LGBT are nonwhite, the report said.

There was a slight gender difference _ 3.6 percent of women identified as LGBT, compared to 3.3 percent of men. And younger adults, aged 18 to 29, were more likely than their elders to identify as LGBT.

One striking difference: among 18-to-29-year-olds, 8.3 percent of women identify as LGBT, compared with 4.6 percent of men the same age.

http://news.yahoo.com/gallup-study-3-4-percent-us-adults-lgbt-184059184.html

[msongs]

1. plus a huge bunch of closet cases and downlow cowards nt

[MicaelS]

2. Wow, that's much lower than I thought.

I always thought about 10% of Americans were LGBT.

[Fawke Em]

3. Just shows you exactly how bad Gallup's polling is.

[bullwinkle428]

9. Beat me to the punch - precisely the point I was going to make!

[davidn3600]

5. I dont think this takes into account those who are "in the closet"

So the number is probably a bit higher.

[Indpndnt]

8. Yes, it's always been said to be 10%.

This is way off. It has to be.

[LiberalFighter]

16. The percent likely higher in metro areas

But still think it is a bit low and doesn't match by race. I would think it would be closer.

[YayArea]

4. Then there's all the family and friends.

My brother and cousin are gay. Marriage equality is an extremely important and personal issue for me.

That's what these social cons don't get - for LGBT person out there, there are several friends and family.

[begin_within]

6. That's who will identify.

In my opinion same-sex activity is far more widespread than just 3.4% of the population but it's never discussed or identified. I think men are more likely to engage in same-sex activity but far less likely to admit it or discuss it.

[Zorra]

11. Yep. The bisexual population of this country alone is probably more than that. nt

[bhikkhu]

12. Far more widespread, as in close to 100%

just not identified as such. Plenty of "normal" behavior has more or less homoerotic elements. I think the most sensible perspective I have heard came from Gore Vidal, who said:

"But what I was saying, that early on, before the word gay had really been invented, was there's no such thing. Only a country, basically as mindless about these matters - based upon our peasant superstitions, religious superstitions - would they make categories. Everybody's everything. And I was talking about the normality..."

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/08/04/npr-warmly-recalls-gore-vidal-denouncing-america-very-primitive-country-#ixzz29hskrvSu

Of course, acting on ones thoughts is one thing, but having that switch there but always turned off and never on is another thing (the Mormon trick hilariously parodied here:

). People are entitled to their self-identity, to be sure, but the biology suggests we all are born with all options open, and social trends are towards more personal and interpersonal variety and freedom.

[Egalitarian Thug]

7. No way in hell is that accurate. It is at least double that. n/t

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

10. Does Rmoney lead in that demo too?

[LiberalFighter]

17. Romney is 60% gay? Hmm

[dsc]

13. a few things

One, more people either didn't know or refused an answer than identified as LGBT (3.4% vs 4.4%). Usually I would also discuss the MOE but since they interviewed so many people the MOE is actually negligible (.0013) or .13% making the range of the LGBT 3.27 to 3.53. The MOE thus has some effect but the non response is a much bigger problem. If you make the not unreasonable assumption that a fairly large number of the refused/don't know are actually lgbt then we could be as high as 8% (3.4 + 4.4 + .26 which is the yes + don't know/refuse + 2 MOE one on each number).

Two, many of the other conclusions become problematic based on the non response problem. It would be one thing if the non response problem were randomly distributed across categories but it clearly isn't (based on both what we know and the crosstabs)

Age is our biggest problem.

Here is the age breakdown

18 to 29 yes 6.4 Don't know/no response 3.5
30 to 49 yes 3.2 Don't know/no response 3.2
50 to 64 yes 2.6 Don't know/no response 4.3
over 65 yes 1.9 Don't know/no response 6.5

The non response increases greatly with age. This is going to affect many categories. It takes a lot of time to get graduate degrees so the first age category is going to be far less likely to have holders of them. Income also goes up with age for many people. Since lgbt are twice as likely to be in the first age category it makes sense that fewer lgbt have degrees and that the incomes are lower. But in reality I don't think we are twice as likely to be in the lowest age category due to the non response issue. Thus our incomes and education levels may well not be lower even as the polls shows them to be.

Finally one other anomaly which has nothing to do with polling and non response. AIDS decimated or even worse the male lgbt population of a certain age. People who came of age from say 67 to 87 who would be between 43 and 63 now saw a massive reduction in gay males. It might well be enough to throw off the age and the gender cross tabs.

In short, with a non response number over the yes number even a huge sample size won't overcome the myriad of problems.

[LiberalFighter]

18. I would go as low as 6% but not any lower based on your post.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

14. I'd love to hear a montage of them calling people from the South. nt

[dsc]

15. I actually think if you add the non responses to the yesses you get a pretty good estimate of the

true proportion of lgbt. Here's why.

For the four age categories you get the following when you add
18-29 9.9 (9.7 to 10.1) women total 12.1 while men total 8.9
30-49 6.4 (6.2 to 6.6)
50-64 6.9 (6.7 to 7.1)
over65 8.4 (8.2 to 8.6)

Now so far those numbers look way to all over the map to be a true estimate but there are two separate issues that need to be addressed. One is that there is a massive amount of extra lgbt women in the 18 to 29 age range. Let's assume that this is due to women who are experimenting as has often happened and will end up identifying as straight. If that is the case then the true number for 18 - 29 is 8.9 (8.7 to 9.1)

The second issue is the AIDS factor. 617,025 people died of AIDS of which 70% were gay 431,918 gay deaths. Most of those death are of people who would be in the last 3 cohorts. But, since some of them would have died before reaching 65 anyway the numbers in that cohort are far less of a problem. (there are going to be way more women over 65 than men over 65 in the population). In short, many of these men would have died before 65 anyhow. For gays who came of age prior to 1987 AIDS was very deadly. Call that age 42 and above. It likely hit the cohort above age 47 the hardest. That means that the middle two cohorts are missing a good deal of gay men they otherwise would have. If you assume that 25% of gay males died in that cohort then we are missing .25 * 4.2 or about 1 percent. Hence those middle numbers would become 7.4 and 7.9 respectively. That is leading to a center of about 8. Now, there are many assumptions in here but I do think this is closer to the truth than the yes number is.