SURVEY: 8% GAY, 7% LESBIAN, 15% HAD GAY SEX

A significant new survey in the US, involving almost 6,000 people, has found that 8% of adult men identify as gay or bisexual while 7% of women identify as lesbian or bisexual.

Described as the “largest nationally representative study of sexual and sexual-health behaviours ever fielded”, the survey was conducted by Indiana University sexual health researchers.

In addition to the people who identify as gay and lesbian, researchers found that a larger number of people had reported having some form of same-sex sexual experience at least once.

According to the survey 15 percent of men aged 50-59 said that they had received oral sex from another man at some point. Among women in their 30s, 14 percent said they had performed oral sex on another woman at some point in their lives.

The results contradict a recent government survey in the UK, which found that only 1.5 per cent of the people polled identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual.