Is 10% of the Population Really Gay?

THE OBSERVER: Drawing on the widest survey of sexual behaviour since the Kinsey Report, David Spiegelhalter, in his book Sex By Numbers, answers key questions about our private lives. Here he reveals how Kinsey’s contested claim that 10% of us are gay is actually close to the mark

For a single statistic to be the primary propaganda weapon for a radical political movement is unusual. Back in 1977, the US National Gay Task Force (NGTF) was invited into the White House to meet President Jimmy Carter’s representatives – a first for gay and lesbian groups. The NGTF’s most prominent campaigning slogan was “we are everywhere”, backed up by the memorable statistical claim that one in 10 of the US population was gay – this figure was deeply and passionately contested.

So where did Bruce Voeller, a scientist who was a founder and first director of the NGTF, get this nice round 10% from? To find out, we have to delve back into Alfred Kinsey’s surveys in 1940s America, which were groundbreaking at the time but are now seen as archaic in their methods: he sought out respondents in prisons and the gay underworld, made friends with them and, over a cigarette, noted down their behaviours using an obscure code. Kinsey did not believe that sexual identity was fixed and simply categorised, and perhaps his most lasting contribution was his scale, still used today, in which individuals are rated from exclusively heterosexual to exclusively homosexual on a scale of 0 to 6.

Kinsey’s headline finding was that “at least 37% of the male population has some homosexual experience between the beginning of adolescence and old age”, meaning physical contact to the point of orgasm. He claimed that 13% of males were predominately homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55 (scoring at least 4) and that 4% of males were exclusively homosexual all their lives (scoring 6). For 30-year-old US men, he estimated that 83% would score 0 (totally heterosexual), 8% would be 1 or 2 on the scale, and 9% would be at least a 3. He acknowledged that people could move on the scale during their lifetime, and indeed Kinsey himself is said to have moved from a 1 or 2 when younger to a 3 or 4 in middle age. » | David Spiegelhalter | Sunday, April 5, 2015

Gay Britain: what do the statistics say?: How many people in the UK are gay, lesbian or bisexual? The Office for National Statistics reckons it's 1.5% while the Kinsey report says it's 10%. Who's right? »

WIKIPEDIA: Kinsey scale.

‘When My Wife Fawned over Richard Gere, I Was Secretly Thinking, Phwoar!’: The People Who Come Out in Later Life

THE GUARDIAN: Olympic athlete Kelly Holmes spoke openly about her sexuality last month for the first time at the age of 52. But she is not alone. We meet five people who embraced their true selves in their fifties and beyond

Norman Goodman: ‘When my wife died in 2017, part of me went with her. But at last I could shout about my sexuality.’ Photograph: Richard Saker/The Guardian
There is no right age or time to come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans. These days, it is a rite of passage associated with the young; over generations, the average age for coming out has fallen. For some, though, it takes a little longer: last month, after 34 years in the public eye, the Olympic athlete Dame Kelly Holmes came out at the age of 52, for the first time speaking openly about her sexuality. She is by no means the only one. For some, it is a self-realisation that comes out of the blue; others may have spent a lifetime grappling with prejudice, with memories of a time when homosexuality was still criminalised, or a culture that once encouraged silence. Here, five LGBTQ+ people who came out later in life share their stories, proving that there is always time to embrace and explore identity or your sexuality.

Norman Goodman, 72, Manchester

When I was very young, I thought I was gay. It’s why, in the 1950s, I found school rather uncomfortable. Being Jewish meant being gay was never a possibility in my mind, even if our family wasn’t particularly orthodox or religious. With nowhere to turn, I became confused about my gender and sexuality. I was taken to doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists. I was admitted into a psychiatric unit and given a course of electroconvulsive therapy. Later, I had aversion therapy. … » | Michael Segalov | Thursday, July 14, 2022

More Than One in 10 Young Women in UK Identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Other

THE GUARDIAN: Of females aged 16-24, 11.4% said they were lesbian, gay, bisexual or other in annual ONS population survey

Participants in the annual Pride in London parade in 2019. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/Reuters
More than one in 10 young women in the UK identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or other, according to official figures that suggest more than 2 million people define themselves that way.

Of females aged 16-24, 11.4% said they were lesbian, gay, bisexual or other based on an annual population survey by the Office for National Statistics that relates to 2020. It is the first time since the research began in 2014 that the percentage has breached the 10% mark.

In 2014, only 3.1% of young women identified that way – fewer than young men – but they now far outstrip them, with the largest group of those not identifying as heterosexual – 7.6% – saying they are bisexual. » | Robert Booth, Social affairs editor | Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Paedophilia 'Culturally Accepted in South Afghanistan'
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: British forces were advised by a military study that paedophilia is widespread and culturally accepted in southern Afghanistan.

Older, powerful men boosted their social status by keeping boys as sexual playthings and the practice was celebrated in song and dance, a military study claimed.

British officers in Helmand requested the study to help them understand the sexual behaviour of locals and Afghan comrades after young soldiers became uneasy they were being propositioned.

American social scientists employed to help troops understand the local culture reported that homosexual sex was widespread among the Pashtun ethnic group in southern Afghanistan.

Strict separation of men and women, coupled with poverty and the significant expense of getting married, contributed to young men turning to each other for sexual companionship.

"To dismiss the existence of this dynamic out of desire to avoid western discomfort is to risk failing to comprehend an essential social force underlying Pashtun culture," the report said.

The study, called 'Pashtun Sexuality', said that as well as willing sex between young men, "boys are appreciated for physical beauty and apprenticed to older men for their sexual initiation". >>> Ben Farmer, Kabul | Thursday, January 13, 2011

Pashtun Taliban Sexuality

Afghan Profile >>>

MAIL ONLINE: Imam ‘raped boy, 12, as he attended mosque for religious lessons’ >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Thursday, January 13, 2011

UK Chief Treasury Secretary Resigns Amid Scandal


Related here

MAIL ONLINE: Muslim hate preacher is let into Britain despite Tories' pledge to keep out radicals: Home Secretary Theresa May faces outrage after her officials allowed an Islamic hate-preacher to enter Britain.

Zakir Naik, who has said ‘every Muslim should be a terrorist’ and claimed Western women are easy rape targets because of their revealing clothes, is to speak in a tour of the country. >>> Daily Mail Reporter | Sunday, May 30, 2010

David Laws Resigns Over Expenses Claim
THE TELEGRAPH: David Laws has resigned from the Coalition Cabinet after revelations that he claimed £40,000 of taxpayers’ money to pay rent to his boyfriend.

David Laws and James Lundie. Photographs: The Telegraph
Government sources said the senior Liberal Democrat stepped down as Treasury Chief Secretary while parliamentary watchdogs investigated his expenses claims.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, were understood at first to have been willing to let Mr Laws remain in his key post, at least over the weekend.

However, The Sunday Telegraph learned that at least two Lib Dem Cabinet ministers, Vince Cable and Chris Huhne, believed that the circumstances of Mr Laws’s parliamentary expenses claims “did not look good at all”. They suggested that he was left with no choice other than to step aside.

The Lib Dem Scottish Secretary, Danny Alexander, will take over from Mr Laws, 44.

Mr Laws, a former banker, won his key Cabinet post after impressing Tory negotiators in the talks that set up the coalition.

He won praise for his assured start at the Treasury, where he was in charge of imposing proposed swingeing cuts to state spending.

However, on Friday night Mr Laws referred his own case to Parliament’s standards commissioner after The Daily Telegraph disclosed that he claimed as much as £950 a month in parliamentary expenses for eight years to rent rooms in two London properties.

The houses were owned by his partner, James Lundie, a political lobbyist. In 2006, MPs were banned from “leasing accommodation from a partner”. >>> Patrick Hennessy, Melissa Kite and Patrick Sawyer | Saturday, May 29, 2010

Sadly, Mr Laws Has Done the Right Thing
THE TELEGRAPH: The nature of David Laws's job made it impossible for him to remain in post.

The right move: David Laws's portfolio demanded that he be untainted by the MPs' expenses scandal. Photograph: The Telegraph
At a time when the country desperately needed an unusually able individual to fill the role of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, there had been almost unanimous agreement that David Laws, the Liberal Democrat MP for Yeovil, promised to be outstanding in the role. We face an unprecedented budget deficit. Painful cuts are necessary. Mr Laws had the financial background – he made a fortune as a successful banker before he became an MP – to understand the importance of reducing the deficit, and the political acumen to work out how to begin making the cuts in the fairest, most efficient and least damaging way possible.

Unfortunately, his frontbench career has now come to an untimely end. As The Daily Telegraph revealed on Friday night, Mr Laws claimed a total of £40,000 in rent for properties owned and inhabited by his partner. Although the newspaper would not have revealed it, Mr Laws volunteered the fact that his partner was a man, James Lundie. Changes to the rules on MPs’ expenses, introduced in July 2006, state that Parliamentary allowances “must not be used to meet the costs of… leasing accommodation from a partner or family member”. On Friday, Mr Laws promised to pay back the money. He said that he did not knowingly break the rules, because he did not think of Mr Lundie as his “partner”, or want to reveal his homosexuality, which he had kept secret from his friends and family. >>> Telegraph View | Saturday, May 29, 2010

Profile of David Laws: The Banker on the Frontbench
THE GUARDIAN: The chief secretary to the Treasury entered parliament in 2001 after quitting a career in the City that had made him a millionaire

The former investment banker David Laws, 44, has risen through the Liberal Democrat ranks since entering parliament in 2001, gaining a reputation as one of a breed of young Lib Dem MPs whose promotion of free market policies contrast with the party's left-leaning traditions.

Laws is co-author of the Orange Book, calling for a return to the "traditional building blocks of liberalism", including free trade and a belief in the effectiveness of the private sector.

He also believes in limits to EU powers and an end to the common agricultural policy. Although his perspective is more centrist than rightwing, when he first stood as a Lib Dem, the Lib Dem leader Paddy Ashdown thought he was a Tory mole. After quitting a career in the City that made him a millionaire, Laws took over Ashdown's Yeovil seat in 2001. He has since rejected overtures from the Tories to defect. >>> The Guardian | Saturday, May 29, 2010


David Laws: Yet Again, Hiding in the Closet Proves [to Be] a Politician's Undoing
THE GUARDIAN: It is hardly credible that in 2010, after all the progress that has been made, the gay liberation message still needs to be heard

The closet causes crises. It is an unhappy place to live and David Laws is not the first person who, on being forced out, immediately talked about the "relief" of no longer having to lie. It is tempting to blame Laws himself: a man who had the ability and determination to earn a fortune by the age of 28, and be in a senior government job at 44, is obviously no shrinking violet. Why wasn't he able to take control of his life and be honest and open with his friends and family and be proud of his relationship?

Laws grew up in the 1970s, a period of lingering bigotry that thrived long after the first partial decriminalisation of gay sex in 1967. His late teens and early adulthood, a time when people discover their sexuality, coincided with the long, dark night of Thatcher (to quote Derek Jarman) when the media were full of hatred, the Conservative leader of Staffordshire county council called for Aids to be dealt with by gassing gay men and police officers in gangs of 50 raided our pubs to check the licences but were too busy to investigate the murders of gay people in Britain's streets and parks or an arson attack on the gay newspaper I then edited. Conservative election posters and Margaret Thatcher derided lesbian and gay rights, while speakers at Tory annual conferences gave us such gems as: "If you want a queer for your neighbour, vote Labour" and, of course, there was Section 28.

Is it surprising that in this atmosphere, reflected in pulpits and playgrounds across the nation, a bright young man buried himself in work and focused his energies on making money?

Many people did come out even then; often, they were angry and demanding gay rights and gay liberation. And the one constant refrain of the lesbian and gay movement was to urge people to come out because the closet is a cold, lonely place that makes you lie again and again to those closest to you and always risks ending in tears. >>> Graham McKerrow | Saturday, May 29, 2010

British Spies Urged to Come Out of the Closet
TIMESONLINE: The intelligence service MI5 has teamed up with Britain’s leading gay lobby group to recruit more homosexuals and to encourage spies to be open about their sexuality.

MI5, which targets home-grown terrorists and foreign spies, has hired Stonewall to advise on how it can attract a broader range of applicants.

Until the early 1990s gays were barred from sensitive government jobs because of fears that they would be vulnerable to blackmail. The ban followed revelations about the notorious Cambridge spy ring, the 1950s group of Cambridge graduates who worked in the intelligence service. Two of the ringleaders, Guy Burgess and Anthony Blunt, were both gay.

This year MI5 will appear in Stonewall’s graduate recruitment guide, which lists gay-friendly employers.

Since the London Underground bombings on July 7, 2005 MI5 has been expanding rapidly. Staff numbers are expected to hit 3,500 by the end of the year, up from 1,500 in 2001.

The drive to recruit British Muslims and speakers of Asian languages has been well reported, but MI5’s targeting of the gay community will come as something of a surprise.

Ben Summerskill, director of Stonewall, said: “I am optimistic that in 10 to 15 years their [MI5’s] employment profile will look very much like modern Britain. There is no reason why there shouldn’t be a lesbian or gay director-general.” Spies Urged to Come In from the Closet >>> By Jonathan Oliver | August 17, 2008

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