John wrote about the importance of the LGBT community being counted. The demographer, Dr. Gary J. Gates, who came up with the "3.5% of adults are LGB" -- or rather, 3.5% of adults are willing to admit to a stranger that they're LGB -- number has an article in the Washington Post detailing why it is so important to come up with an accurate number and basically admits to several glaring problems and inconsistencies while attempting to justify his data.
I recently reviewed findings from 11 large surveys conducted since 2004, seven in the United States and four internationally. Averaging across the U.S.-based surveys, I found that nearly 9 million Americans (3.8 percent of adults) self-identify as LGBT. That’s equivalent to the population of New Jersey.
An estimated 19 million Americans (8.2 percent) report having engaged in some same-sex sexual behavior, and nearly 26 million (11 percent) report some same-sex sexual attraction. The latter figure is equivalent to the population of Texas.
But as a population scientist, I don’t want to have to comb research for pertinent data to average. I’ve attended dozens of meetings with representatives from federal statistical agencies to ask them why they are not counting the LGBT population. They tell me that they worry about survey respondents refusing to answer such questions or, even worse, terminating the survey. They also wonder exactly what questions to ask.
Should they count only those who explicitly identify themselves using terms such as “lesbian,” “gay” or “bisexual”? Or should they measure sexual behavior? Or sexual attraction? For the transgender population, should they include only those who have explicitly transitioned from one gender to another, or should they consider a broader group of people who express their gender in ways that do not easily conform to traditional notions of male and female?
Sorry, I'm not buying it.
The most absurd statement has to be this from Dr. Gates:
As a demographer, I look at it a little differently. I’m amazed at how close we are to equality, given how small the community is.
Uh, thanks for nothing, Pollyanna. Like John wrote:
And it's all well and good to say "gosh, our civil rights shouldn't be based on how many people we are," but sorry Charlie, numbers matter, especially in politics.
NOTE FROM JOHN: It's terribly difficult to get good data on our community, so a part of me is sympathetic to federal agencies that say "how can we measure your community?" Having said that, you can get basic numbers, that are a bare bones bottom line, like the numbers Gates is talking about - they don't reflect how many people we are, but they are a bottom line population figure, meaning at least we know we're MORE than that number. The problem, of course, is that those bare bones numbers will be taken by the media, and our enemies, as "real" numbers that accurately reflect our true population - and they're not.
I'm not sure what the scientists and the agencies should do, but they need to be darn careful proceeding in this area. And quotes like the one Tim cites just above are decidedly not helpful.
People For The American Way today issued an extensive expose of the tactics used by the Christianist right to keep anti-gay bullying legal and frequent. An excerpt:
