Americans Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population | Hacker News Reader

Americans Greatly Overestimate U.S. Gay Population

news.gallup.com

91 pointsrajnathani98 comments

Is it possible that what you're seeing in this data is less about inaccuracy and more about how comfortably out people are?

It says the estimates skew greater for younger people and women responding. Well are younger people and women more likely to know which of their friends are LGBT, because of a host of societal reasons that tend to influence men or older folks to wall off their feelings and communicate less about such things?

I'm just saying, having lived in more than a dozen locations in five states and a Canadian province for the past several decades, the 4.5% number feels low to me (as in, impossibly so).

4.5% self-report as LGBT. That's an important distinction to make, and I too would be surprised if it's accurate.

It's risen by 1 percentage point since 2012 when they started tracking this, and for millennials, the number is around 8.2%. They don't seem to have data for zoomers yet. [1] This would suggest (imo) that 4.5% is in fact a significant underestimate, but I don't know necessarily that it's as far off as 20%

[1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...

Its also important to remember that as humans we tend to vastly over-estimate the incidence of relatively rare things. We tend to think that something happens based on how often we encounter it, without considering the total number of encounters.

4.5% is about 1 in 22. 8.2% is 1 in 12. Even accounting for the fact that most LGBT people are as private about their sexuality as straight people are, its often enough that you're likely to encounter LGBT people on a frequent basis.

Also, the "what's your estimate" question specifies "gay or lesbian", whereas the self-identity question apparently includes the B and T. Obviously this would make the high estimate for just "gay or lesbian" even further off, but it still doesn't say anything good about the article's conclusion.

Maybe a minor point, but I think sexual fluidity remains under-addressed by these polls. Some people are, for all intents and purposes, identifying as LGBT during, say, their college years, but then go on to settle down with an opposite-sex spouse.

If the person once identified as LGBT, but doesn't today, is it based on what they "actively" are? Or if you ever once identified as LGBT, for purposes of polling, you remain in that category for life?

Not a minor point at all. I think sexual fluidity is one of the most relevant aspects of sexuality and I would love to see it measured. Labels like "Gay" and "Bi" are way too simplistic.

The medical terminology is better, its often "Men who have sex with men" or something similar that removes the need to understand the subjects mental state and simply focus on the important clinical data.

That's better, but doesn't separate men who have sex with manly men from those who only have sex with traps. It also excludes those who don't have sex at all for one reason or another.

  sexual fluidity

Based on your context, "sexual preference fluidity" would be the appropriate term.

What's the ambiguity here? For self-identity matters we already have the expression "gender fluidity".

Because sexual preference and gender identity are completely different things.

Yes, I've addressed that in my comment. I was wondering if there was some third aspect I wasn't considering.

> the 4.5% number feels low to me (as in, impossibly so).

I think it's contextual to location. A lot of LGBT people move to cities for acceptance. If you live in a big city, you're more liking to know relatively more LGBT people than if you lived in a rural or suburban area.

Age is also huge. It's easy to forget that half of the population is over 38.

If your an urbanite you have a huge observational bias simply if you accept that rural homosexuals are more likely to migrate to the city.

Reason for the migration include less discrimination, but also higher concentration (making hooking up easier).

Therefore your perceived rate of homosexuality would be grater.

For what it’s worth the self reported rate of 5 percent is the same when I first cared to look it up, about 15 years ago. I would imagine that, if the self reported rate had significant error with it, the decreasing stigma would have changed it

The second thing I thought / wondered... 'do most people underestimate how many rural or and suburban people are out there?' - if most people polled are from well internet-connected areas and skew mostly urban cities, it might not be overestimating for the area as opposed to underestimating the amount of people that are not city dwellers. Maybe another poll is needed or has been done. /random-thought

I dislike to come across as overly sensitive, but I dislike how clinical sounding "homosexual" is. Just say gay people or LGBT. It isn't a condition. The DSM was wrong for a long period of time.

LGBT doesn't mean homosexual. Gay doesn't mean homosexual. Homosexual means LG.

Scientific terms are not value judgements.

Don't worry about how you come across, worry about how you are.

To be fair, I think it can be difficult to appreciate how it sounds if you aren't LGBT. If you're straight, you haven't been exposed to being demoralized because of your sexual orientation.

I understand the perfectly valid scientific use of it-- I'm just saying that sometimes people weaponize it. When you come across anti-gay rhetoric, it almost never uses the word 'gay'. It has phrases like "the homosexual agenda". The wording is specifically chosen to imply the group is lesser than others.

The preferred word of the ingroup will become the insult from the outgroup while the ingroup settles on a new term and round and round.

You can't really expect the written word to use the current preferred term.

The problem is never the words, it's the person behind them.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?geo=US&q=gay%20agen...

I hear “gay agenda” just as often, not to mention it was by far the more common high school taunt.

I’m sorry you feel that way, but “gay” sounds more offensive to me (e.g. “the gays” or “that’s gay”) and, ironically, euphemistic. LGBTQ sounds clinical (it’s an abbreviation!) and only half the letters relevant here.

Homosexuality is the most precise word (literally same-sexuality) to denote LG and DSM is hardly the originator of the word (the DSM was, is, and always will be, a mess. But that’s another issue).

The 30% figures others have mentioned seem high to me (as in, impossibly so).

I left the US in 2005. My gay friends and many in the gay community in S.F. estimated amongst themselves at the time that about 10% of people were gay or lesbian, while the general public estimates were more like 4%. They estimated higher because they knew people who were not out of the closet. But even the gay community didn't think it so high as 30%.

I gather that there is some kind of virtue signal "brownie points" thing going on in the US now (from what I read, I'm not there and perhaps I've been mislead, If I'm wrong I'm wrong, no offense intended) which makes people behave in ways designed to signal virtue to each other for social brownie points, and perhaps this is what is contributing to these high estimations. This new social norm disproportionally affects younger people and women.

The debate is really down to who 'counts' as gay. Kinsey (who really pioneered this work), for example, included everybody who had ever had a consensual same sex sexual encounter or who regularly had same sex fantasies, no matter how they self identified.

Well are younger people and women more likely to know which of their friends are LGBT

Studies about various social things plus first-hand experience lead me to say "probably."

These people were asked to choose between 6 options. Every number in every option was higher than the true value. Is it any wonder people overestimate when primed this way? I wonder how many other poll results people rely on are this obviously biased.

Edit: I now believe this is incorrect, see below.

You've misinterpreted. The data is presented in six bins. But that doesn't imply the question was multiple choice. If it had been, then there's no way to get a mean of ~25% from the answers.

The question asked was: "Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?"

Thanks, I think you're right. But wow what a misleading presentation. They really ought to state the answer format explicitly rather than make you infer it.

Eh, it's clear priming didn't have too much of an effect here. The single most selected answer in every year was >25%. Respondents thought the number was too low to begin with.

There are a lot of sources of sloppiness here, though.

The question is sloppy relative to the definitions. They asked "Just your best guess, what percent of Americans today would you say are gay or lesbian?", but the measuring stick is what portion of people identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. I would be a little surprised if people use exactly the same framework to decide if someone else is gay as they use to decide if they want to personally identify as gay.

There's no I-have-no-clue choice.

If you assume some fraction of all respondents are just guessing, and they know they're guessing based on a 100% scale, it would make some sense for the results to skew towards a choice given 75% of the scale.

Young people give estimates that are significantly higher, but a cursory search (not sure about the veracity) suggests that LGBT self-reports also sort very strongly by age (https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/visualization/lgbt-st...). As far as I can tell, the survey Gallup is using (on identification) doesn't provide an age breakout. I don't want to be too hyperbolic, but the change in the acceptability of identifying as LGBT over the last 70 years is pretty profound, and it seems at least plausible from the data that much of the difference in age groups (and, for that matter, partisan affiliation) could disappear if controlled for different identification rates among people's actual peer groups.

If so, the headline is more like, "Most Americans assume everyone in America is a bit more like their peers than they are."

This feels a little bit like asking one set of people "How many Americans have ever cheated on a test?" and asking another set "Have you ever cheated on a test?" and then publishing an article about how "Americans Greatly Overestimate How Many Americans Have Cheated on a Test"

> it seems at least plausible from the data that much of the difference in age groups (and, for that matter, partisan affiliation) could disappear if controlled for different identification rates among people's actual peer groups

This assumes that homosexuality is evenly distributed across age groups, something that is directly contradicted by the data. Your bias makes you think that this is caused by unacceptability of identification, but you would need to show that the change in acceptability has only affected younger generations.

As a counter-example, people who have worn LA lights sneakers are disproportionately under 30. It has become culturally acceptable to wear LA Lights sneakers over the last 15 years, perhaps older people are under-reporting their wearing of the sneakers?

> "How many Americans have ever cheated on a test?" and asking another set "Have you ever cheated on a test?" and then publishing an article about how "Americans Greatly Overestimate How Many Americans Have Cheated on a Test"

This metaphor seems directly contradicted by: > the change in the acceptability of identifying as LGBT over the last 70 years is pretty profound,

The change in ever cheating on a test over the last 70 years does not seem pretty profound to me.

It's clear that your personal bias is that there is an iceberg of non-identifying homosexuals who still feel oppressed. Even in SF, the number barely reaches 15% [1]

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Unite...

Sigh. I probably didn't phrase something clearly enough. Or perhaps we're not occupying the same universe. Since I was feeling free to impute sloppiness to Gallup last night, I'll do my best to take your imputation of bias in stride.

> This assumes that homosexuality is evenly distributed across age groups, something that is directly contradicted by the data. Your bias makes you think that this is caused by unacceptability of identification, but you would need to show that the change in acceptability has only affected younger generations.

Exactly the opposite. It is possible that a significant fraction of the age correlation the poll observed might disappear if they controlled for different identification rates at different ages. They don't try to use the data to investigate the possibility that the rates young people guess and the rates old people guess are actually pretty similar (even if over-estimated!) relative to identification rates in their peer group. It directly assumes the rate (at least of identification) can differ.

> This metaphor seems directly contradicted by... The change in ever cheating on a test over the last 70 years does not seem pretty profound to me.

The point of the metaphor isn't a time-correlated rate change. It's that the narrative of the release (Americans don't know Americans) is trying to compare quantities that might be expected to differ (because they measure different things) and then making news out of the fact that they aren't the same.

> It's clear that your personal bias is that there is an iceberg of non-identifying homosexuals who still feel oppressed. Even in SF, the number barely reaches 15% [1]

I have no strong opinion on or suspicion about what portion of the population does or doesn't identify as gay. If anything, I think the entire project of ontologizing our sexuality is fraught.

This is a really excellent observation, because it doesn't even have anything to do with the definitions of the terms of the survey, simply its format.

It appears that "Less than 5%" was an option. Where are the six you see?

5 is larger than 4.5, agreeing with my statement that all the numbers are bigger.

The LGBTQ community seems to be especially visible online. If you spend a lot of time online, it's possible to have your perception skewed for that reason.

You also have to consider that different people define these things differently. Some people will self identify as bisexual based solely on feeling attracted to other people, having no actual experience. Meanwhile, there are people who feel that you have to actually have (substantial) sexual experience with both genders to qualify for the label.

I've seen advocates say things like "You don't have to give your sexual history to prove you are bi." and I've seen people talk about feeling attracted to members of their own sex and realizing they are actually bi, but don't yet have experience with members of their own sex because of taboos.

So you can potentially have two different people look at the exact same data and draw different conclusions concerning who qualifies for what label.

Different cultures also have different baseline concepts concerning sexuality. Some cultural differences will not be readily captured by the questions used in a survey, especially if they don't take the time to clearly delineate their terms.

Okay, now have them estimate the proportion of, say: Muslims, people who can't walk, two-parent households, and retired military. Are these any more accurate?

People also overestimate the amount of crime in America, the divorce rate, and how much money YouTube "celebrities" make.

Perception is driven by exposure. Both are driven by media.

The old adage: "TV will rot your brain" seems more true the older I get. Probably needs to be updated to include spending too much time on the internet.

The media skews everything. Almost every TV show has a homosexual character, a black computer programmer, and an ass-kicking female martial arts expert. Hollywood has to parade its ideals, after all.

And to some extent, it's showing you how urban sophisticates view their own world, amplifying the same skew.

I remember some really old poll from a NYC high school (decades ago) in which the students estimated the Jewish population of the US at 50 percent, and the black population of the US at 50 percent. Because that was very close to the surrounding neighborhood's actual demographics. Even math like to stay local.

I would actually be interested in seeing a crude analysis of this, because I don't know if there is a skew or if we just tend to notice the things that break our expectations.

There are a few recent shows where a gay character is a part of the core ensemble, but I'm not sure gay characters are overall more than 1 out of every 30.

Few shows have casts in the 30s. It’s almost unheard of.

What modern show doesn’t have a gay character within its main cast?

I'm not sure what ideals "Hollywood" is parading. You'd have a hard time finding a non-stereotypical character played by someone of one of various minority ethnicities, for example.

Certainly 18% of TV characters aren't creationist, or addicted to painkillers.

I guess your affirming the OPs point.

Is this just not classic recency bias? Many TV shows feature a gay couple/character, and gay marriage was in the national news for years. People are shown examples through media constantly, and therefore think it's more prevalent than it really is.

This applies to almost all issues too, plane accidents being one of the more obvious ones (plane travel is many times safer than car travel, and yet many people don't see it that way).

Thinking Fast and Slow is a great book that covers at length recency bias and its affects [1]. Quite eye opening to me was one study where people were asked to spin a wheel with 1-100, and then asked how many African nations are in the UN. The number on the wheel had a profound affect on the number people picked [2], despite the fact that the number on the wheel should clearly has no meaning.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Fast-Slow-Daniel-Kahneman/dp...

[2] https://www.realclearscience.com/lists/10_problems_with_how_...

> Americans' estimate of the proportion of gay people in the U.S. is more than five times Gallup's more encompassing 2017 estimate that 4.5% of Americans are LGBT, based on respondents' self-identification as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

I would have guess it was around 10%, because I’ve read that number from several sources before, so 4.5% is a surprise. Today I also learned that the 10% number I’d read has been pretty controversial in the past. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/apr/05/10-per-cent-...

Looking at Wikipedia’s article, higher numbers among youth globally seem to be a common trend. I would expect it’s not the population changing, but the stigma being shed. I wonder if it will take a few more decades before the numbers stabilize enough to be trustworthy...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orien...

Or that youth is experimenting before they decide one way or another.

This can also be explained by the fact that humans are terrible at estimating percentages. I would assume we'd see similar result for other questions. "3% of the population" sounds ridiculously low, but if you interact with 30 people each day you're likely to meet someone in that small category.

If you look at pride month and the level of marketing and news associated with it, one would estimate that the gay population is huge. Nearly every major corporation on linkedin has a rainbow logo, my uber the other day showed their ride path as a rainbow. The level of influence that LGBTQ currently has in the American mind share far outsizes their population, even now I am worried my account will be banned for mentioning this.

I have actually had many people from different walks of life mention this in the last month, people are taking note.

Corporations are cashing in on the trend. I'm both equally happy and unhappy about it. It means that being LGBT has finally become mainstream enough, but it also shows a two-faced side to the corporations who will also donate to anti-LGBT politicians. It's pandering to us, is what it is. That part, I'm not so much a fan of.

Corporations are cashing in on the trend

This is true. But it's also true that companies are afraid of being "corp-shamed" on the internet.

No marketing or PR department wants to answer the question, "Why don't you support xyz!" on the internet.

Steve Jobs didn't have a Reality Distortion Field half as powerful as Twitter.

I don't have any issue with companies taking no stand, so long as they don't have negative impact on the LGBT community through political contributions.

Do people genuinely _expect_ Apple, et. al. to proactively support LGBT rights? I think it's asking a bit much, but also, I'm no marketing expert.

I get that people want to associate with brands that they feel can 'get them'. And brands can freely choose what they identify with. But this is just marketers getting you to buy, it isn't a real political stance.

So I would say to the person who exclaims, "Why doesn't <corporation X> support <cause>?", is largely ineffective. You got a bunch of social media icons to be rainbow-colored, and no actual legislative agenda for your issue, on behalf of these companies. Can we consider that progress? To me "Support LGBT rights <or else>" does not sound like progress.

Apparently people expect the US embassy to fly the pride flag on the official flag pole.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/11/mike...

I mean...Apple kinda does? Tim Cook is openly gay, and while he's generally extremely reserved about political opinions, LGBTQ+ rights seems to be the exception. (On that, he's merely very reserved, but he does say something sometimes, quietly but with conviction.)

You think, "The level of influence that LGBTQ currently has in the American mind share far outsizes their population".

They gained marriage equality only 4 years ago. They are underrepresented in Congress (10/535, about 42% of expected representation based on the 4.5% number cited in the article). Same sex relationships have only been decriminalized for less than 50 years.

By any standards they are a historically oppressed minority in the US. I wouldn't worry that your, "account will be banned for mentioning this" but I do think your concerns are pretty ridiculous in light of a few rainbow flags and rainbow themed logos.

edit: I left out a bunch of stuff (DOMA, DADT) intentionally but I made an egregious mistake with, "decriminalized for less than 50 years". I forgot that gay sex was still illegal in 14 states until just 2003 (Lawrence v. Texas).

> They gained marriage equality only 4 years ago.

Gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts in 2004.

How obtuse. It’s clear they were talking about at the federal level, nationwide (i.e. 06/26/2015)

It's a fair point and I think it was a good faith observation, made possible because I was ambiguous. I did the same thing using the date of the first sodomy law rollback (state of Illinois, 1960s) vs national (Lawrence v Texas, 2003). I don't think they deserved any downvotes.

Yes, I remember. I am counting from Obergefell v. Hodges.

I would be jaw-on-the-floor shocked if you were banned for your comment, and I think the suggestion otherwise gives your ideas a "too hot for HN" cachet that they haven't earned. There is no evil empire hunting down the renegade free-thinkers who dare to say that LGBT activism is disproportionately influential. If anything, that's the whole point.

"We're here, we're queer" isn't just a catchy rhyme, it's a statement of purpose: the problem isn't just discrimination and violence, but marginalisation. If you can treat a person as an outlier and the group they represent as a rounding error, it's easy to justify mistreating them. I mean, there are always a few angry weirdos who show up at the town hall, right? Just ignore them and they'll go away.

So why throw huge flamboyant parades? Why make flags and shirts and bumper stickers? Why force us to think about them? Well, I can probably name a bunch of groups that you aren't forced to think about, and are doing far worse because of it. That's activism. Being aware of something is a prerequisite to caring about it.

Marginalisation is the big problem. An other community comes in mind that is currently only allowed to congregate in small designated reservation where the general public is warned of their presence. The size of that demographic is estimated to be bigger than the LGBT community and yet holds no political influence and I doubt there has been a single US presidential candidate in history that given them positive focus on the political agenda. Most seems happy to regard them as a few weirdos that can be kept out of sight and mind from the rest of society. LGBT activism and in particular the pride parade are good examples of how to break out of such public perception.

> Well, I can probably name a bunch of groups that you aren't forced to think about

Really? So why not name them in the first place? This whole idea that mistreatment of tiny, hidden, unrepresented minorities that aren't actively harming anyone else might somehow be "justified" goes against everything that this country was founded for.

> LGBTQ in the American mind share far outsizes their population

What does that even mean? Population is one thing, but can mindshare be measured? You're comparing apples and oranges.

Well, what other groups make up 5% of the population and get corporate logos changed in recognition of that group?

About 5% of Americans watched the NBA finals, did brands go out of their way to make NBA fans feel included?

Do news shows bring on their NBA correspondent to talk about NBA issues?

The reason for that is NBA fans were not specifically and generally excluded from various societal institutions. The level of public show is an effort not just to recognize inclusion but normalize it. Any attempted change in societal behavior takes concerted effort. For NBA fans (and numerous other small groups) -- there is no change needed.

~12% of American women will get breast cancer, which is about 6% of Americans. And during October there is just as much pink as there are rainbows in June.

> About 5% of Americans watched the NBA finals, did brands go out of their way to make NBA fans feel included?

Yes? The fact that you're even asking this question is mind-boggling.

> Do news shows bring on their NBA correspondent to talk about NBA issues?

There's this little thing on the news program every single day called "The sports segment", where they talk about sports. There are entire channels devoted to sports.

Are you not in the US? Do you not consume any US media? This entire line of comparison makes no sense whatsoever.

Yes? Advertisers always market to sports fans.

When did google rebrand itself in NBA finals rainbows?

Thanks for speaking out! I totally agree with you!!

How does a company pandering to a consumer group have anything to do with the civil rights struggle of that group?

How am I, as a gay man, responsible for the fact that companies see Pride as a valuable advertising angle? I don't know a single LGBT person that is happy about it, other than it means that society doesn't ACTIVELY, VIOLENTLY HATE US ANYMORE.

>I have actually had many people from different walks of life mention this in the last month, people are taking note.

Ah yeah, Uber made the route a rainbow color, so fuck the people who would like to have basic civil protections from being fired for who they love. I love the absolutely non-existent logic of anti-gay idiots.

That must be because of the over promotion of LGBT then.

Also look at this: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/24/lgbtq-a...

"Young people are growing less tolerant of LGBTQ individuals, ... , a survey released Monday shows."

Because the promotion and attention seeking is everywhere, people think it's everywhere. That's why we're starting to see it backfiring now. And, lots of parents just don't want that message broadcasted to their kids all the time, at least not until they're a certain age. Parents realize the whole 'having a weewee doesn't make you a boy' story can be extremely harmful to young children. And so they teach their children to ignore those influences when they encounter them. That starts to reflect now in polls and attitudes.

I bet on the LGBT community to start fighting even harder for tolerance again though, because the activists (who do all the speaking) seem to be quite incapable of self reflection and self examination.

As a gay person I don't see that at all. My sexuality has always been a major hot button such that as a boring, tech-obsessed geek who mostly keeps to himself my presence has been a major source of gossip in my home town, at school, at the places I have worked, and in the urban neighborhoods where I have lived.

As far as I can tell this is mostly related to the psychological mechanism of Altruistic Punishment. Calling someone out on their perceived flaws generates an immediate boost in social status and provides opportunities for bonding. Whether this is the mechanism or not, it is an undeniable fact that my being gay has been a major issue for me in essentially every social context.

When I march in Pride Parades or insist on equal insurance coverage at work this is not me promoting myself or my homosexuality at all. This is me attempting defend myself from the crushing an inescapable force of homophobia in this culture. If people would stop promoting their issues with homosexuality then none of this would be necessary. I am just a person with the same issues and needs as everyone else. It is rampant homophobia that does the most to promote homosexuality as an issue and subject for discussion.

> Calling someone out on their perceived flaws generates an immediate boost in social status and provides opportunities for bonding.

The important part here is 'perceived flaws'. The whole dynamic you're pointing at is one where people will virtue-signal and pretend to be "altruistic punishers", in order to abuse/bully someone that they hate for other, concealed reasons - often, this is an inflated sense of self-worth or status that the targeted person is threatening in some way. The abuse is just as likely to involve allegations of, e.g. homophobia as homosexuality! These things are simply immaterial to the deeper facts of what's going on. Most often, others will go along with the thinly-veiled bullying simply out of habit, or as a ploy to engage in their own signaling and raise their status in the surrounding community.

Yes, it's interesting that the overestimate seems to be occurring on both sides. If more people realized just how small the whole LGBTQQetc. minority is, attitudes around these issues would be a lot more relaxed.

How does the percentage of LGBT folks change whether I should have equal rights? How does the percentage of LGBT folks change whether I could be fired because my boss hates gay people?

"more relaxed"? What does that even mean? What is uptight exactly?

> How does the percentage of LGBT folks change whether I should have equal rights?

I'm not making this argument at all, but apparently some people are; they seem to be saying that we should be extremely careful not to underestimate LGBT percentages, or they might be mistakenly regarded as "too small" of a minority to have legitimate "rights".

Which strikes me as deeply weird, given that this whole range of notions of "rights", "agency" and so on and so forth are meant to apply to the individual first and foremost; who is, by definition, the smallest and most vulnerable - and, all too often, the most heavily oppressed minority of them all!

How can we be certain the "actual" U.S. Gay population is 4.5% of the population? We know not everyone who is LGBT is out or identifies on these surveys.

Sure, there's undeniably a large cap between ~20% and 4.5%. But it's kind of meaningless to say what the absolute difference is, if we can't be certain how many remain closeted.

It’s not meaningless as it’s important to plan for populations based on size. From a health perspective, there are programs targeting helping gay populations and allocating funds accurately is important so the most people are helped.

There are many practical reasons for know demographics. There are limitations and it’s probably difficult to know the exact percentage, but we still need to know as accurately as possible.

The cynical part of me says this is done intentionally for politically posturing.

This... Makes perfect sense. And it's really odd that the population would increase instead of decreasing, for obvious reasons.

Whatever the case, there must be something wrong with millennials and younger, but I'd bet it's more likely to be overreporting instead of underreporting.

8.55% of males on OkCupid indicated they weren't straight. 28.95% of ESFJ males said they weren't straight. If normed to the general population (given personality type frequency), 15.7% of males are not straight.

Alternative headline: Gallup greatly underestimates US Gay Population.

Sure, but you better have research to back it up. Gallup has theirs.

Honestly I don’t know why 5% is controversial. It’s one in twenty. 25% would be one in four. Do you really know one in four homosexuals unless you live in, say, San Fran?

Well, sexuality is a spectrum. The exact number of gay people depends on what is defined as a cut-off. It seems reasonable to me that at least 1 in 4 people wouldn't be 100% straight.

Doubtful:

"Thus, Gallup's methodology is not the only way to estimate the percentage of the population that is gay or lesbian. Still, all available estimates of the actual gay and lesbian population in the U.S. are far lower than what the public estimates, and no measurement procedure has produced any figures suggesting that more than one out of five Americans are gay or lesbian."

How did they come up with the selection of these bins? Looks like one of these studies that are designed with a result in mind.

Something is weird about this poll. They are talking about the average person thinking it’s 20%, which is already crazy, but the most picked answer was 25% or more. What would the average have been if Gallup had allowed people to pick higher values?

the most useful thing that article points out is that there isnt a clear way to count LGBT populations, as these are all different things.

There are also other groups of people wishing to be included in non-cisgender and non-hetero movements.

It means the cisgender and heterosexual population is greatly overestimated but simply easy to conform to.

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