- This article or section should be merged with Prevalence of heterosexuality into Demographics of sexual orientation. See Talk:Prevalence of heterosexuality.
The factual accuracy of the final paragraph and the presentation of statistical summaries is disputed.
Estimates of the prevalence of homosexuality vary considerably with the definition of what "homosexuality" actually is. Some consider its most important aspect to be sexual behavior between members of the same sex ("homosexual acts"), while others stress inclination or orientation. Three primary definitions are same-sex sexual activity, same-sex sexual inclination, and same-sex sexual identity. These may be further divided.
For example, same-sex sexual behavior may occur among people who do not identify themselves as "homosexual" (see gay sex and MSM). This is common in macho cultures which distinguish between the "active" and the "passive" sexual partner, where the "active" partner does not usually consider himself to be homosexual.
Conversely, persons who identify as same-sex loving are not always sexually active, whether due to necessity, circumstances, or personal choice. Similarly, a person may have same-sex sexual thoughts or inclinations without ever acting on them or regarding themselves as having a same-sex sexual orientation. All of these might fall under the umbrella of "homosexuality", and may or may not be included in research surveys. A survey that counts only same-sex sexual contact, for example, will exclude all celibate homosexuals.
Incidence versus prevalence
Another significant distinction can be made between what medical statisticians call incidence and prevalence. For example, even if two studies agree on a common criterion for considering someone to be homosexual, one study might regard this as applying to any person who has ever met this criterion, whereas another might only regard them as being so if they had done so during the year of the survey.
As a result of these fundamental problems, the results and conclusions of studies on homosexuality are invariably challenged. Indeed, unclear definitions, social stigmas, and political influences make it essentially impossible to accurately determine the number of "homosexuals" in a given society. In general, most research agrees that the number of people who have had multiple same-gender sexual experiences is fewer than the number of people who have had a single such experience, and that the number of people who identify themselves as exclusively homosexual is fewer than the number of people who have had multiple homosexual experiences.
Historical patterns
In past societies, especially those not under the sway of the Abrahamic religions, the attraction of males for each other, especially along the pederastic model, was largely taken for granted. In many states in ancient Greece the practice was mandated by law or custom and thus engaged in by the great majority of the male population, it being a cause of shame for a young man if he had not found a lover.
In ancient Rome free men routinely used their male slaves for sexual release, and, as Edward Gibbon mentions, of the first fifteen emperors, "Claudius was the only one whose taste in love was entirely correct."
In premodern Japan same-sex love between men was constructed variusly as acolyte love in the monastries, love bond between apprentice and experienced samurai, and celebrity cults around beautiful male kabuki actors (doubling as prostitutes off the stage), who were so popular with the adult male population that laws had to be passed restricting the dress of the youths so as to restore public order. The majority of the shoguns kept beautiful boys for their pleasure.
In Melanesia native tribes engaged in boy insemination rites in which the entire male population participated.
Modern survey results
At one extreme, the Kinsey report (1948) reported that 37% of men in the U.S. had achieved orgasm through contact with another male after adolescence. However, Kinsey's work was based on a population sample that was likely to have been heavily biased and consequently his results have been disputed. Since Kinsey, a number of large-scale cross-cultural studies, involving tens of thousands of subjects selected at random, have consistently reported a percentage lower than Kinsey's estimate. For example,
- Smith's 2003 analysis of National Opinion Research Center data [1] (http://www.norc.uchicago.edu/issues/American_Sexual_Behavior_2003.pdf) states that 4.9% of sexually active American males had had a male sexual partner since age 18, but that "since age 18 less than 1% are [exclusively] gay and 4+% bisexual". In the top twelve urban areas however, the rates are double the national average.
Smith adds that "It is generally believed that including adolescent behavior would further increase these rates," with Turner et al.(1997) finding that in a computer questionnaire 5.5% of adolescents 15 to 19 reported same-sex activity. (Science, 280 (5365): 867)
The European rates corroborate the figure of 4.9%, though when broader criteria are used (including manual contact) the rates almost triple, to 13.4% (Netherlands).
- A 1998 survey by Christopher Bagley and Pierre Tremblay gave a figure of 15.3% of men who "reported being homosexual to some degree" including "overlapping homosexual (5.9%) and/or bisexual (6.1%) self-identification". [2] (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9736328&dopt=Abstract)
- The NHSLS survey reported an incidence of male homosexuality of 4.9% "over the last 18 years" [3] (http://cloud9.norc.uchicago.edu/faqs/sex.htm)
- In 1993 the Alan Guttmacher Institute ("a nonprofit organization focused on sexual and reproductive health research, policy analysis and public education" [4] (http://www.guttmacher.org/)) found 1.8 to 2.8 percent of men reported a sexual contact with another male within the last ten years.
In general, surveys quoted by anti-gay activists tend to show figures nearer 1%, while surveys quoted by gay activists tend to show figures nearer 10%, with a mean of 4-5% figure most often cited in mainstream media reports.
It is important to note, however, that these numbers are subject to many of the pitfalls inherent in researching sensitive social issues. It is possible that survey results may be biased by under-reporting, for instance. (See note 1.) The frequent use of non-random samples (white college students) in many studies could also serve to skew the data.
In addition, major historical shifts can occur in the prevalence of homosexuality. For example, the Hamburg Institute for Sexual Research conducted a survey over the sexual behavior of young people in 1970, and repeated it in 1990. Whereas in 1970 18% of the boys aged 16 and 17 reported to have made same-sex sexual experiences, the number had dropped to 2% by 1990. [5] (http://www.lsbk.ch/articles/gunter_schmidt.asp) "Ever since homosexuality has become the subject of public debate, boys' fear to be seen as queer has increased," the director of the institute, Volkmar Sigusch, suggested in a 1998 article for a German medical journal. [6] (http://www.bvvp.de/artikel/jugendsex.html)
See also
Footnote
[1]: Survey responses are often conditioned by the desire not to express opinions or supply information of which the respondent suspects society or the questioner may not approve. Revealing one's sexual orientation may well fall into this category, so affecting the accuracy of some surveys and under-estimating the actual scale of homosexuality. A similar phenomenon affects survey data on minority religions, on personal views on controversial matters such as abortion, and on degrees of political support for a political party. (Classic examples of this are not 'admitting' support in surveys in the late 1990s for the British Conservative Party, or controversial parties like the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Féin in Northern Ireland, etc. with such parties getting a higher vote in the privacy of a ballot box than reported in surveys.) The NORC data has been criticised because the original design sampling techniques were not followed, and depended upon direct self report regarding masturbation and same sex behaviors. (For example, the original data in the early 1990s reported that approximately 40% of adult males had never masturbated--a finding inconsistent with some other studies.)
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