Not Ten-Percent; Not Seven-Percent

You heard of the 10% assertion?

Like this:

The 10% myth for the number of homosexuals is connected to the Kinsey study and an individual, Bruce Voeller. Laumann,et al. in a footnote, on page 289, in their book, The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States, links the two together. In a 1990 claim made by Bruce Voeller, who was in the late 1970s chair of the National Gay Task Force, takes credit for the origination of the 10% myth. Voeller writes in his article “Some Uses and Abuses of the Kinsey Scale” how he came up with the 10% number. This article is found in the book, Homosexuality/Heterosexuality Concepts of Sexual Orientation. The use of this myth beginning in the late 1970s by the modern gays rights movement’s campaign was to convince politicians and the public that “We [gays and lesbians] Are Everywhere.”...The 10% myth is widely used in older books and articles published advocating for homosexuality. Kirk and Madsen in their book published in 1989, After the Ball How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of the Gay’s in the 90s, wrote about this 10% figure...Others say that up to 10% are homosexual. “According to estimates, at least 1 in 10 teenagers struggles with issues regarding sexual orientation.” (Garofalo, Wolf, Kessel, Palfrey, and DuRant, “The Association Between Health Risk Behaviors and Sexual Orientation Among a School-based Sample of Adolescents,” p. 899-890)...

Well, we now have this:

UK's homosexual population size revealed: Just 1.5% of Britons say they are gay, lesbian or bisexual

Just one in 100 people in the UK say they are gay or lesbian, the first ever survey of British sexual identity has revealed. A further one in every 200 people are bisexual, according to the data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). More than 480,000 consider themselves to be gay or lesbian and a further 245,000 say they are bisexual.

The data revealed men were twice as likely as women to describe themselves as gay or lesbian while London was revealed to have the highest numbers polled and Northern Ireland the lowest. The figures fall short of previous estimates which have put the gay population at between 6 and 7 per cent (picture posed by models)

The information collected as part of the new Integrated Household Survey (IHS) means that nearly three-quarters of a million UK adults say they are gay, lesbian or bisexual. The IHS is the largest social survey ever produced by the ONS and contains information provided by nearly 450,000 people - the biggest pool of UK social data after the Census.

The research showed that 95 per cent said they were heterosexual, 1 per cent gay or lesbian, 0.5 per cent bisexual and 0.5 per cent other. Nearly 4 per cent of those asked refused to answer, said they did not know or described themselves as 'other'.

The figures are well short of previous estimates used by the government and gay rights charity Stonewall which have put the gay population at between 6 and 7 per cent - which works out at 3.6 million people.

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