Gary J. Gates is co-author of the book The Gay and Lesbian Atlas and a Distinguished Professor at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. That’s a think tank that specializes in law and public policy related to sexual orientation.
Mister (or should I say Professor) Gates says that the “well known fact” that ten percent of the population is gay is a fallacy. That the number was taken from “an obscure passage” from a book written by Alfred Kinsey and popularized by gay activists in the 1970’s.
Gates goes on to say that he has looked at “surveys designed to try to estimate a characteristic that you can generalize to the population” and he found that in these surveys, approximately four percent of survey responders self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
In the NPR interview (linked below) Gates doesn’t give any specifics. He does not say who funded these studies, how many people were asked to participate in each study, how many responded, et cetera. This seems shady.
One thing I’d like to point out. He says these are people who self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender when answering a survey. He never says that this number represents the true lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender population of the United States.
I call shenanigans.
Image source: HBarrison’s photostream | Interview source: NPR News
