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shocker from the US Census Bureau, via Time Magazine


chair jockey

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chair jockey

The July 28, 2014 issue of Time Magazine briefly reports on a US Census Bureau survey of the sexual orientations of Americans, the first one of its kind ever done by the USCB. The results stunned me. Only 1.6% of respondents said they were gay, only 0.7% said they were bisexual, and only 1.1% said "something else" or "refuse to answer." Presumably, the rest said they were heterosexual.

I can't see Time's lawyers permitting them to publish this unless they could prove it. I also can't see the USCB screwing up a survey. I don't know whether the survey was mandatory like the census is, but USCB surveys are anonymous, and the results are confidential. So what in hell is going on? The anecdotal estimates I've heard is that between 10% and 40% of people are gay or bi. It makes no sense to me that between six and 20 times more people would lie and say they're straight than would honestly say they're gay or bi. It's 2014, for pete's sake.

If anyone has further information or any theories, please post them here. This one bugs me.

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Bad Smell Lingering, on 20 Jul 2014 - 6:27 PM, said:

The July 28, 2014 issue of Time Magazine briefly reports on a US Census Bureau survey of the sexual orientations of Americans, the first one of its kind ever done by the USCB. The results stunned me. Only 1.6% of respondents said they were gay, only 0.7% said they were bisexual, and only 1.1% said "something else" or "refuse to answer." Presumably, the rest said they were heterosexual.

I can't see Time's lawyers permitting them to publish this unless they could prove it. I also can't see the USCB screwing up a survey. I don't know whether the survey was mandatory like the census is, but USCB surveys are anonymous, and the results are confidential. So what in hell is going on? The anecdotal estimates I've heard is that between 10% and 40% of people are gay or bi. It makes no sense to me that between six and 20 times more people would lie and say they're straight than would honestly say they're gay or bi. It's 2014, for pete's sake.

If anyone has further information or any theories, please post them here. This one bugs me.

There's no "proof" required or possible for a survey. People say whatever they want to say; they don't participate if they don't want to, and they're definitely not legally required to answer this kind of question.

I think you're confusing a survey with a study, which is intensive and done over time, not a one-time question that needn't be answered.

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Astrochelonian

A few explanations off the top of my head:

1. You can wildly manipulate surveys based on how you pick your sample and how you word the question. If they, for example, called up random people with landline phones, that eliminates a huge proportion of young people who don't use landlines.

2. It asked people if they identified as gay, and many people don't choose to identify themselves as such. For example, I've seen many studies referring to men who have sex with men (MSM) but don't identify as gay as being a hard demographic to reach for HIV prevention efforts.

3. People didn't want to answer because they didn't believe the survey was anonymous, don't trust the government, or they didn't think it was anyone's business.

Also, I'm not sure where your 10 - 40 numbers come from (maybe if you include people who had fantasies or experimented), but from other studies I've seen, 3-5% gay would be more believable.

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I read this Time magazine article today, too, and I was also surprised. (I'm no expert, but I did think it was a little low.) Surveys can be really skewed though.

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The Census Bureau does not ask about sexual orientation. It asks about who you're living with, and what your relationship is to them.

The Census Bureau publishes information about same sex households. It does not publish information about actual orientation.

According to the Census Bureau, there are about 600,000 same sex households- reported as being same sex partners or spouses- in the US. That's about 1% of all coupled households. Another 300,000 were counted in older surveys because those counted cohabiting same sex adults who were not partners (ie roommates).

The highest estimates I've seen of non-heterosexuality are around 25%, with about 3% of the population being strictly homosexual.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/samesex/

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Well, I'm not sure if previous studies rules out the possibility that less than 2% of Americans would identify as gay given certain definitions. Just because a place contains X% of individuals, and even with repeating studies with different sample size, that does not rule out the possibility that X% may actually be much higher or lower related to the presumed X% when given a much larger sample size as error margins are still a thing. Of course, how things are worded also matters too.

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Touchofinsight

10% and 40% that's a huge spread, sounds suspiciously like guess work to me, or in other words, information created without any actual evidence or foundation to back it up. Sure you here a lot news and media talk about LGTB etc, but that doesn't represent their actual standings and prevalence in the respective communities. I would be fairly surprised if more then say, 20% of people were gay/lesbian, bisexual etc. Even then people can lie in studies and still do so their is some margin of error. Don't ask me why they would lie in anonymous surveys but it does happen (probably because they are so self conscious).

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yeah, the number i've heard is 10%, which sounds about right (although it could be a bit lower). i refuse to believe that gay people are about as rare as asexuals, because i have a good number of queer friends but no ace friends.

It was a CDC survey, not USCB, FYI.

in the original post, it says that it was a us census bureau survey (it was in time magazine).

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