Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
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From: nelson_p@apollo.hp.com (Peter Nelson)
Subject: Re: New Study Out On Gay Percentage
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Date: Wed, 21 Apr 1993 15:06:05 GMT
References: <C5K5LC.CyF@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <15427@optilink.COM> <116288@bu.edu>
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In article <116288@bu.edu> kane@buast7.bu.edu (Hot Young Star) writes:
>In article <15427@optilink.COM> cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer) writes:
>
>>Homosexuals lie about the 10% number to hide the disproportionate
>>involvement of homosexuals in child molestation.  They also lie
>>about "10%" to keep politicians scared.
>
>1. You haven't shown any disproportionate involvement.
>
>2. The Janus Report, which came out recently, gives 9% as the percentage
>of exclusively or predominantly gay men.

  I thumbed through the Janus Report in a bookstore recently looking
  for a clue about their methodology.   They were very unclear about
  it, but as far as I could tell they relied on their professional
  associates in the psychotherapy profession to provide the subjects,
  interviews, and numbers.    If so, this would hardly represent an
  average cross-section.    I posted to Usenet at the time asking for
  more data about their methodology but answer came there none.  (I
  must have been out of my mind for even asking for factual information
  on Usenet!)


>3. No one is presumably going to say they're gay if they're not. But
>some no doubt are going to hide their homosexuality in surveys. Thus
>the 1-2% is a lower limit.

  This is the problem.  People have to have a lot of confidence in 
  the anonymity of a study before they can counted on to speak 
  freely about stuff like that.    But I agree that if someone's 
  going to lie it will be in the direction of a gay person claiming
  to be straight rather than the other way around.


>I still say that weighing all the evidence gives a most likely percentage
>between 5 and 7%.

  I don't see why there's any more evidence for this figure than any
  other.    It seems totally arbitrary.  



---peter

