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

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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."

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sermonindex Apr 8, 2011

Does the study track those who are lesbian?

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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

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sermonindex Apr 9, 2011

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