NO OF GAY PEOPLE UNDERESTIMATED
An American study has found that the size of the gay and lesbian population has most probably been substantially underestimated.
Conducted by researchers from Ohio State University and Boston University, the paper concluded that when people are surveyed about their sexual orientation or sexual behaviour they tend to give answers that may not be accurate and that are instead “socially acceptable”.
The scientists ran an experiment on 2,516 participants who were randomly divided into two groups.
Both groups were asked about their sexual orientation and their feelings on the issue. However, while one group was asked questions using standard “best practice” methods, the other group was asked using a more anonymous “veiled elicitation method”.
The researchers found that the veiled method, in which people were more sure of not being identified, “increased self-reports of non-heterosexual identity by 65% and same-sex sexual experiences by 59%”.
The results, they say, show that the current best practice method of surveying people about their sexuality leads to a “substantial” bias in their answers.
While this suggests that many more people may be LGBT or have had same-sex experiences than what scientists may have previously believed, the study also revealed a more disturbing reality.
The scientists discovered that the veiled method also increased the rates of anti-gay sentiment or homophobia in those surveyed.
“Respondents were… 71% more likely to say it is okay to discriminate against lesbian, gay, or bisexual individuals.”
The scientists concluded that “non-heterosexuality and anti-gay sentiment are substantially underestimated in existing surveys, and the privacy afforded by current best practices is not always sufficient to eliminate bias.”
They added that “our results identify two social norms: it is perceived as socially undesirable both to be open about being gay, and to be unaccepting of gay individuals”.
The issue of the number of LGBT people in the wider population has always been one of great controversy and debate.
Estimates have varied from 10% of the population to less than 5%, depending on the study.
Earlier this month gay groups slammed a UK government report that stated that there are less than a million lesbian, gay and bisexual adults in the UK.
Critics argued that the study had not used the American best practices method and was most likely extremely inaccurate.
Ian Johnson, CEO of the LGBT marketing consulting company Out Now, warned that these kinds of inaccurate reports could be “used by those who may not ‘like’ gay, lesbian or bisexual people to undermine their rights” and “to reduce funding for government and NGO initiatives focused on LGB people…”
The study was published in the October edition of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
There is a natural law or phenomenon called the Pareto Principle. Pareto was an Italian economist that studied the distribution of wealth in Itlay (I think as far back as the 1600’s) and found that 80% of the wealth was held by 20% of the population. This became known as the “80/20 rule”. It was later found that this rule or phenomenon is present all over the globe, in nature, human behaviour, industry, you name it. Now, it is a scientifically proven fact that sexual orientation is determined before birth when certain “flags” on one’s DNA are either there or not. The exact explanation is best left to the specialists. The possibility strongly exists, in my opinion, that the 80/20 rule applies to sexual oreintation along with many other things. It doesn’t matter where on the surface of this earth people are born, there will always be some that are born gay. As many as 20% of the global population? Who knows and who will tell? In my opinion, there could well be as much as 20% of our global population that are gay and I would estimate that at least half of them, if not more, are in the closet, for one or more of many reasons. Such reasons may be that in the country where they reside, being gay is outlawed; or that being gay is a taboo and socially unacceptable, or the individual’s circumstances (maybe immediate family mindset) are such that it would not be wise to disclose his/her sexual orientation. There could be many other reasons not mentioned here. Importantly, there are choices we have and there are choices we don’t have. We do not have a choice concerning our sexual orientation (as well as our gender, our parents, our race, our siblings and so-on), but we do have a choice regarding the way, manner and style we choose to EXPRESS our sexual orientation. There are many different ways that gay people choose to express their sexual orientation and their own personal identity. Some, I call militant “in-your-face” gay, others are less overbearing and more subtle and then there are those that try not to draw attention to their sexual orientation at all. I think we all need to understand that we are created in God’s image, by Him and for His pleasure (Genesis) and that God is love – He is the “factory” of love. Love is a blessing/gift from God. If God blesses two people of the same gender with love for one another, who then are we to judge God? Many people in today’s fast-paced material world confuse love with lust and we all know that lust dwells in the shade of the tree of knowledge of good and evil and that love dwells in the shade of the tree of righteousness, where God’s grace pours down in such abundance that it is more than enough for all the people in this earth, but not everyone chooses to accept it. Being gay, in my opinion, is not a perversion, it is a fact of life…it is natural. Persecuting a minoriy group is cowardly, because one is relying on the support of a majority without really examining the circumstances of the minority. Interpreting the Bible to suit one’sself is very easy and is done all the time. The Old Testament is written by and for the tribe of Israel and one needs to look at the context of that which was written and the purpose of what was written and who is the target of those writings at the time. The New Testament is all about Jesus and LOVE. This is where I feel people should place a lot more emphasis in today’s world. The power of love is like a candle in the darkness – it displaces darkness just like love displaces aggression, tension, hatred, bigotry, bias and so many other negative issues we carry with us today. So, let’s love our neighbour as we were commanded to do and let’s follow the example of Jesus and not discriminate against minority groups, whoever they may be!