3.6m people in Britain are gay - official

[kweerwolf]

Six per cent of the population, or about 3.6 million Britons, are either gay or lesbian, the government's first attempt to quantify the homosexual population has concluded.

Whitehall officials have answered the much-debated question 'how many of us are gay?' by declaring that the true number is one in 16.66. Previous answers have ranged from one in five to as few as one in a hundred, and many people have believed the figure to be one in ten.

Treasury actuaries came up with the estimate when analysing the financial implications of the new Civil Partnerships Act, which comes into force this month and allows same-sex partners to marry and gives them similar rights to married couples in areas such as tax, pensions and inheritance.

<snip>

'This is a significant moment,' said Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, the gay equality campaign group. 'For the first time the government has robustly acknowledged the existence of a substantial number of gay people in modern Britain. This is welcome and long overdue.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,1664690,00.html

I'm guessing that the 6 percent figure will hold pretty true in the U.S. as well. That would make us a sizeable minority. By comparison, the Jewish population of the U.S. is approximately 3 to 4 percent.

It's long been a bone of contention here in the U.S. with various studies only muddying the waters. Many LGBTs like to site the "1 in 10" figure, but that comes from some questionable results of Kinsey's studies. Conversely, the right-wingnuts claim were are only 1 percent of the population, but their methodology in that "study" is highly suspect. The most realistic U.S. studies I've heard of place the U.S. gay population at somewhere between 4 and 7 percent.

[ruggerson]

1. I fully believe it's somewhere between 5 and 7 percent

Kinsey's 10% was based on flawed statistics. The religious rightwing's 1% is based on even more laughable statistics.

The exit polls in the last few national elections show 4-5% willing to self identify to a pollster as gay or lesbian. Add another couple of percentages for the folks who are not willing to tell a pollster and you come up with 5-7%.

Which, as you note, is a huge chunk of the population, larger than the percentage of jews in this country.

It means in the U.S. alone, we are 20 million strong.

20 million. That's a lot of economic/voting power if it can be harnessed.

[foreigncorrespondent]

5. Yeah!

But how do we harness it? You know what this community is like, ruggerson. It is each to their own. We have that many off shoot communities with in the larger LGBTIQQ community it really isn't funny anymore.

I ran a gay rights Web site and action group for a great number of years. Trying to get the community to work for their rights is like Bush* trying to get milk out of his male horse.

Further, Sapph and I have run a binationals support/action group for years. Trying to get them to at least take an interest in the PPIA has been even worse. It is that bad, neither Sapph or I post in the group any more.

The trouble is the gay community doesn't realize if we raised our heads and began to sing loudly at those who hate us, we would actually get a lot more than we currently have. Too many are more interested in where their next fuck is going to come from, rather than where full equality is going to come from.

[Meldread]

8. Agreed.

There is even a psychology among some people that they don't "need or want" and in some case "don't even deserve" full equality.

As sad as it is to mobilize LGBT people we are going to need more tragedy to wake people up, and then a real leader to emerge to take things to the next level.

I've long said that if LGBT people worked together and voted as a block we could sway close elections and for politicians to NOT take us for granted.

[foreigncorrespondent]

9. And it is very true too!

But where is our MLK?

I have seen many good people right here on DU who would make wonderful LGBT community leaders have their voices slammed down by those who don't believe in full equality for us, right here on DU.

I am just so damn angry with our community, and with the holidays fast approaching my anger is getting a lot worse. It is the idiots like the LCR and those you make mention of who ruin it for all of us.

The question I have to ask people like that is if they don't want full equality why do they chose to come out of the closet for? Don't they realize it is just ruining that chance for the rest of us. Or is it because they don't want it, the rest of us can't have it?

I give up, Meldread! I really do.

[Meldread]

11. No, I don't think that's it at all.

You know, I used to be angry at such people but more and more I am feeling a sort of pity for them. It is sometimes difficult to be objective when we are under such assault, and we see certain people who are suffering with us seeming as if they do not care. No, I think it goes much deeper than that.

We are a mess of psychological problems. There is a reason LGBT people have a high risk for depression, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide. We live in a society and a world that is constantly telling us that we are not welcome, that we are not equal, that if we speak up bad things will happen. Even our own allies here in the United States try to "encourage" us to keep silent when election times come around for fear of putting our "leaders" on the spot and having to stand up for what is right.

Eventually there are some of us who simply give in. There are some of us who can no longer fight, or some who simply do not have the will to fight - not every one is like us. Even we suffer - at least I know I suffer - horrible burn out from time to time. Our opposition seems huge and overwhelming, and it is much easier to simply accept what is than really strive for what should be.

Look at the ex-gays for example. They are so afraid of their own shadow, so afraid of "going to hell", that they are willing to live a lie and try and divorce themselves from their own reality. It is hard to hate something that I see as sad and pathetic. Look at the Log Cabin Republicans, some of them - certainly not all - have divorced themselves from the Democratic Party for various reasons. Not all of them are invalid reasons, of course, but some have certainly joined the Republicans because they feel that it is an "easy ticket" out. It is the equivalent of a black person siding with the slave owner, telling them of their fellow slaves plan to escape in hopes of gaining favor.

When I look at the LGBT community as a whole I see it as a community that suffers in the same way an abused and battered person suffers after prolonged abuse. They eventually just learn to take it and find ways to deal with it. Our way of dealing with it is by fighting back, others is substance abuse, and others is suicide and still others choose to do other things that are not in their best interest. We are still human and while our path may be the best for us in the long run, human minds rarely operate under a state of logic. We are fueled by our emotions which often lead us to do things that, rationally, we probably shouldn't or wouldn't do under normal circumstances.

We need to find a way as a whole to see our community healed from within - by finding a way to create a feeling of hope. We need to find someone who can reach down deep and inspire people and move them in such a way as to get them to move toward a sure goal. It is inevitable that such a thing will happen, I think, or we will keep struggling winning a few victories here and there until the population at large accepts us - which may or may not be in our life times - and we get our full rights.

I firmly believe that no matter what happens, in the end we will be victorious.

[Brian_Expat]

12. I'll be the MLK or failing that. . .

. . . back him or her wherever (s)he is.

Although, I think that if each of us is a personal MLK, think of what we can accomplish!

[kweerwolf]

13. How very true, Brian_Expat

I hear people talk a lot about how the LGBT movement needs an MLK, but in the same breath they will add, "But we'll never find one because we end up tearing each other down more efficiently than our enemies ever could."

The truth is that instead of looking and waiting for our own version of MLK to emerge, we need to focus on being our own personal MLKs. The power of millions is, indeed, awesome ... but think how much more powerful we as a movement would be if each of us is led by the same type of vision and drive for justice as MLK.

[ruggerson]

10. Well the problem is

we don't all go to the same church and have the same sermon preached to us every Sunday. Gays are a pretty diverse bunch, and I'm not sure that that's such a bad thing. As I point out to homophobes, when they stereotype and yap about the gay "lifestyle", how much in common does the lesbian migrant farm work in Cambodia have with the in-the-closet gay businessman in Raleigh, North Carolina? Not much, but they're both gay, aren't they? Kind of makes them think about the whole idiocy of the "lifestyle" meme.

It is frustrating, as you note, however. Here we have southern state after state passing these ridiculously discriminatory Jim Crow "marriage amendments" and where are the gay people marching in the streets as their own Crystalnacht proceeds unabated? Where is the anger and for Pete's sake, where are the leaders?

[Meeker Morgan]

2. I don't know. I tend to be skeptical ...

... of any "official" statistics.

Though whether these are too high or too low I cannot say.

[Sapphocrat]

6. Too low, I say, and that's not wishful thinking...

For every out gay person I've ever known, there have been two more in the closet, and two more bisexuals who refuse to label themselves for anybody, lest they cop it from both sides.

Or: You can't count Jodie Foster if she refuses to be counted.

If every L&G came out at once, I'm convinced we'd be looking at at least 15% of the population. If all the B's & T's decided to join us... well, now that would literally make us a "Queer Nation"! :)

I understand why people are afraid to come out. But at my age, I'm tired of being understanding when their lack of action does nothing but make my life even harder than it has to be. It just pisses me off. *sigh*

[Boomer]

3. The "official" count will always be too low

There is no way to account for all the closet gays who would not admit that they married to hide their shameful secret or to quantify all the gay teenagers who committed suicide when they realized the could never live up to their parents' expectations for a straight child.

And then there are the stragglers who simply haven't figured they're gay and may never make that connection. They are usually the women who believe they are "frigid" because sex with their husbands and boy friends has never been fulfilling, physically or emotionally. It's just their bad luck of the draw and they will go to their graves feeling guilty for their inadequacies as a wife.

[Maat]

4. Due to my experience as a social worker ...

I'm now since retired for five years ... I firmly believe also that the figure in this country, and worldwide, is between 5 and 10 percent. This is entirely compatible with that!

Thank you for posting this.

This PFLAGer can use to information to educate the community at large.

[Brian_Expat]

7. This is typical Labour party BS "statistics"

They're doing this mostly to prove that the pension system isn't going bankrupt and that Tony Blair's £30 billion deficit this year isn't so bad. . . a little demographic "adjustment" and suddenly, it looks much better.