Why do gays have “an outsized place in the public imagination”?
A few times recently when I was having trouble writing, I scanned Ann Althouse’s blog, both because I enjoy her snark and in order to find some trenchant morsel to cut and paste into a post, linking her and providing fresh material for you. That diva does have a way with words.
Yesterday, she offered this catchy title to a post, ”Americans Have No Idea How Few Gay People There Are” which included only this tidbit, “Surveys show a shockingly high fraction think a quarter of the country is gay or lesbian, when the reality is that it’s probably less than 2 percent.” Turns out that the words aren’t Althouse’s, but those of Garance Franke-Ruta, a senior editor at The Atlantic:
One in ten. It’s the name of the group that puts on the Reel Affirmations gay and lesbian film festival in Washington, D.C., each year. It’s the percent popularized by the Kinsey Report as the size of the gay male population. And it’s among the most common figures pointed to in popular culture as an estimate of how many people are gay or lesbian.
But what percentage of the population is actually gay or lesbian? With the debate over same-sex marriage again an emerging fault line in American political life, the answer comes as a surprise: A lower number than you might think — and a much, much, much lower one than most Americans believe.
“Such a misunderstanding of the basic demographics of sexual behavior and identity in America”, she adds, “has potentially profound implications for the acceptance of the gay-rights agenda.” Toward the end of the article, she offers that “gays aren’t the only minority population that has an outsized place in the public imagination.”
Glenn, in linking the article quipped, “That’s because there are so many on TV.“
Speculating why that is could engenders some pretty stimulating discussions, leading perhaps to important insights on the nature of human sexuality.
Anyway, it’s a great piece and well worth your time. Great food for thought.
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We have become a minority-victim driven culture. Victims and victim groups of all kinds play an outsized and disproportionate role in our society. For example, as gays are to the general straight world, so transgenders have become to the “LGBT” demographic: vastly overrepresented in the narrative imagination.
Comment by EssEm — June 2, 2012 @ 5:30 pm - June 2, 2012
This survey seems to me to be suspect. It’s inconceivable that Mainstream America thinks we could be 25% of the population. I’d be surprised if a true-section of Middle America even thinks that 10% are G/L just based on their own personal experiences. Most maybe know one or two “gay” persons…either in their own families…or in their communities. Even in a big, metropolitan city, if they don’t live near a “gay ghetto” it’s doubtful there’s more than a few lesbians in the neighborhood…fewer if in a small city or town unless a gentrified neighborhood. We might be in their neighborhood, but do they know that?
Comment by Ted B. (Charging Rhino) — June 2, 2012 @ 5:43 pm - June 2, 2012
People make similar mistakes when they are asked about the foreign aid budget, maybe people are just not that good with this sort of estimation regardless of the topic if it receives large amounts of attention.
Comment by Leo — June 2, 2012 @ 6:09 pm - June 2, 2012
I’m not surprised that gays only make up about 2 percent of the population. I went through most of my 20-year long life without meeting a single (openly) gay person. In my high school class of over 100, not a single one, to my knowledge, was openly gay (but there was one person who seemed to be gay, but he denied it). That’s anecdotal evidence, though (and coming from someone who lives in a fairly small town, so I suppose there wouldn’t be as many gay people per capita here as there are in bigger cities). Anyway, I agree with Ted B. that that survey is suspect.
Comment by Rattlesnake — June 3, 2012 @ 12:01 am - June 3, 2012
Part of it is the free market. With a disproportionate amount of DINKs in gay couples, it’s a mareting demographic, IIRC.
Comment by The_Livewire — June 3, 2012 @ 6:25 pm - June 3, 2012
It is because gheys insist upon themselves.
Comment by V the K — June 3, 2012 @ 10:44 pm - June 3, 2012
I’m not sure I get the point of the quote, though. Is it OK to discriminate against really small minorities? Because the somehow don’t matter?
What’s right and wrong changes based on how many votes the community can deliver come election day?
Comment by Zendo Deb — June 4, 2012 @ 1:40 am - June 4, 2012
@Zendo,
Define discriminate. When I turn down a guy because I don’t swing that way, I’m discriminating.
I think the point the original is making is that GBLs appear to be larger than they are. (kind of the opposite of the objects in the rear view mirror). The question is “Why?”
To use my favourite example, Lefties are roughly 10% of the population. There is no disproportionate amount of representation on TV, no ‘Sinister Cinema’ festival, and the only two comic book icons I know of are Hellboy and Thunderstrike.
Comment by The_Livewire — June 4, 2012 @ 7:46 am - June 4, 2012
[...] Why do gays have “an outsized place in the public imagination”?(gaypatriot.net) [...]
Pingback by "Americans Have No Idea How Few Gay People There Are" - The Atlantic | RandyThomas.Co — June 4, 2012 @ 11:03 am - June 4, 2012
I think homosexuality is not just an act anymore it is an identity. Anyone who partakes in any sexual behavior with some one of the same sex is automatically labeled gay, bisexual, whatever. There are plenty of people who have had one or more same-sex experience in there life but for whatever reason don’t identify as gay. Maybe that could be the cause of inflation.
Comment by MV — June 4, 2012 @ 12:25 pm - June 4, 2012
I tend to believe that many, maybe most, Americans really do believe that there are more homosexuals than there really are, and that’s a testimony to the success of gay activists’ propaganda campaign. And it’s another reason why I resent the idea of “gay rights”. Why should 2% of the population shove itself into the collective face of the other 98%? Why should that 2%, a fringe if there ever was one, be able to dictate the definition of marriage and family to the other 98%? Why should that same fringe be able to bend the education system to its will, compelling schools to indoctrinate children to adore their sexual behavior, no matter what parents may believe? In short, why should the 2% gay tail be able to wag the 98% straight dog? Talk about a tyranny of the minority. And I resent it. I really do.
Comment by Seane-Anna — June 4, 2012 @ 11:04 pm - June 4, 2012
I don’t blame you.
Comment by Rattlesnake — June 5, 2012 @ 12:19 am - June 5, 2012
Seane-Anna, how large does a minority have to be before they qualify for equal civil rights and status? If the majority has the right to trample on a 2% minority, how about 15%, or even 49%? Or should the majority, by default, always have the right to trample on minorities, and deny them the good things in life that the majority is privileged to enjoy? After all, the majority is comprised of the good righteous people who deserve special rewards and rights for being superior – and if you don’t believe it, just ask them.
You wrongly use phrases such as, “shove itself into the collective face of the other 98%,” “dictate the definition of marriage and family,” “be able to bend the education system to its will,” “compelling schools to indoctrinate children,” and “tyranny of the minority.” I can only wish and dream that we had that much power, but the fact is that life has improved for gays because rational people have come to realize that being gay is a normal variation of human existence that has no adverse impact on the lives of anyone else.
You must have a tenuous grasp on self esteem and general well-being if you feel that a 2% minority having equal rights and status will somehow diminish your life and the lives of others.
The huge factor that “straight” people failed to anticipate as gay people came out of the closet is that gays exist in every ethnic group, extended family, race, religion, education level, economic status, and political affiliation. Dead-enders like you with so much investment in bigotry just can’t believe they are the ones being backed into a corner. So they shout and flail hysterically in disbelief as fewer and fewer people pay attention to them.
Comment by Richard R — June 5, 2012 @ 9:25 am - June 5, 2012
Richard again spills his bile, but can’t answer my simple question.
I wonder how he feels about the contraception mandate?
Comment by The_Livewire — June 5, 2012 @ 10:12 am - June 5, 2012
I don’t think we know for sure, even within 1% what the actual figure is. I think it is more like 3% or 4%. But, I could be wrong. Heck, maybe it’s only 1%. Whatever. Seane-Anna, even if 4% is correct, we don’t have the power by ourselves to wag the dog, as you say. We would need at least 46% straight people to believe that we should have the same fundamental rights in order to obtain them.
We may be a “fringe” group, but now persons who oppose homosexuality, and even oppose homosexuality to become as mainstream as other minority groups (such as Blacks, Armenian descent Americans, left-handers, etc.) are becoming the fringe.
You may have one point here. Sometimes when there are changes, we have one extreme go to the other. Gay persons had to endure a lot of sh&t, of one form or another, for hundreds, thousands of years. And in some cases, many still do. But now, as you say in your example, we may have gone overboard with some of the education mandates. Fair enough. However, two things. 1. This is NOT nearly anything that gay persons have endured, so need to fret too much. 2. You get a majority of people to agree with you to change it, then you can repeal the education mandate you dislike.
Comment by Pat — June 5, 2012 @ 11:12 am - June 5, 2012
@PAt,
All you need is a disproportionate turn out at the ballot box with an apethetic electorate.
(Yes this applies on both sides of any issue.)
Comment by The_Livewire — June 5, 2012 @ 2:54 pm - June 5, 2012
Pat and Richard R, I think my major disagreement with you is that you believe gays are a “minority” in an identity sense, and I don’t. Gays are a minority NUMERICALLY, and that’s it. The notion that “gay” is an identity like black, or Jewish, or Hispanic is a political construct that gay activists have conned people into thinking is an objective truth. It’s not. “Gay” is NOT an identity. “Gay” has no culture, no religious tradition, no color, no ethnicity, no native language, and no country of origin. You can’t find where gay people come from on a map. “Gay” refers to a sexual predilection that affects a tiny portion of the population. It has NOTHING to do with IDENTITY. So, all your talk about “equality” and “civil rights” don’t apply.
Yes, in various times and places people who practiced homosexuality were despised and mistreated, even jailed. But so were people who practiced prostitution, fornication, adultery, bestiality, bigamy, pedophilia, and incest. Did that make prostitution, fornication, adultery, bestiality, bigamy, pedophilia, and incest identities? Were prostitutes, fornicators, adulterers, animal lovers, bigamists, pedophiles, and incest practitioners persecuted minorities? The answer to both those questions would have to be yes if we’re going to be consistent in believing that whom you want to have sex with is an identity and disapproving of such an identity is diabolical bigotry. Of course Pat and Richard R, neither of you apply the politics of identity consistently. In your self-serving universe only gays can claim identity status and benefit from identity politics. No other aberrant sex group need apply.
But just how do you stop polygamists, working girls, or boy lovers from demanding “equality” after you’ve spat on and denounced society’s moral edifice in order to advance your own sexuality? If traditional morality was wrong in condemning homosexuality why isn’t it also wrong in condemning polygamy, prostitution, or pedophilia? I know I won’t get an honest answer from either of you but that’s a deep concern for me. Where will the sexual liberation train stop and who has the authority to stop it? Gays most certainly do not.
Comment by Seane-Anna — June 5, 2012 @ 4:11 pm - June 5, 2012
Seane-Anna, we disagree about homosexuality being an identity. If it’s not 100% genetic, it’s certainly not a choice. It’s only a choice as to whether to act on it and/or unnecessarily stay in the closet. Being Black, Jewish, Armenian, or any other group that is not a WASP is an identity like you state, but we don’t insist that all groups abandon their cultures, religions, or act like WASPs. We don’t (at least not any more) insist that a left-handed person use their right hand. We don’t punish people for any other “predilections” that do not, in and of themselves, abridge the rights of others. Even if I agree with you regarding the identity issue, it still doesn’t change the fact that those who are against the mainstreaming of homosexuality are now becoming the fringe.
And we also disagree with your other point. You seem to think that you have some moral authority, and that gay persons don’t. You have decided (or you let someone else decide for you) what is moral and immoral. Fine, we all have some moral code. But then you think that if someone finds some issue that you find immoral as moral, then they somehow have no moral authority to find any thing else immoral. You have to tell me what on earth gives you that right. I know I won’t get an honest answer from you.
Comment by Pat — June 5, 2012 @ 5:20 pm - June 5, 2012
Livewire, that’s true. If there is an issue that, say, only 40% support, and 60% oppose, but if many of those who oppose don’t feel strongly about the issue, then we can have the situation you suggested.
Comment by Pat — June 5, 2012 @ 5:23 pm - June 5, 2012
I don’t think the poll is accurate at all. How can anyone think that 25% of the population is gay. Is the American public that dumb? And, it is my personal opinion that the percentage of gays is around three to four percent. I will wait until the next poll comes out.
Gays have been discriminated against since the birth of this nation and long before. It does not matter if we only account for even less than one percent of the population to be treated with respect and equality.
Comment by Charles — June 5, 2012 @ 9:23 pm - June 5, 2012