The third kind of life
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics!” (Mark Twain, attributed to Benjamin Disraeli)
The British Government has just surveyed 450,000 people to discover their sexuality.
And come up with a surprisingly low number. Only around 1 percent of interviewees claimed membership of our club.
Half a percent said they were bi, another 0.5 percent said “other”, and 3.3 percent told the questioners it was none of their business. If the sample is accurate, there would be only 480,000 gays and lesbians in the UK. Around 725,000 if you add in the bi brigade. And that can’t be right.
Because 2.2 million Brits — 6.7 percent — have a Gaydar profile, pretty much in line with previous Government estimates of a GLBTI population of 5-7 percent.
Especially as some sluts will have multiple profiles! Incidentally, if only 1 percent of the Aussie population were gay that would mean there were only 224,736 Bent Bruces and Sapphic Sheilahs: it’s not that hard to find a decent husband!
But the stats are suspect. A Government census taker knocked on around half a million doors and asked the occupants about their sexual preferences.
Would you tell the man from the ministry what you liked in bed? Small wonder not many owned up to membership of the rainbow brigade. Who knows who might have been listening?
The survey also shows that nearly half of those who told the snoops they were gay are managers or professionals, compared with fewer than one in three of those who admitted to being heterosexual. Which also looks a bit odd.
What the survey is really telling us is that around 960,000 relatively secure middle class Brits would be happy for the Government to know they aren’t straight, while 1,584,000 citizens of unknown socio-economic status would tell them to sod off. That gets us comfortably back to the 5-7 percent range suggested by earlier Government estimates — and Gaydar.
The survey does not ‘prove’ that only 1 percent of the UK population is gay, as jubilant UK ‘Christians’ have claimed.
Why am I banging on about a survey in the UK? Because our opponents worldwide are sure to try and use it against us.
The 1 percent figure has already been bandied about in the past by the mulish berks in the Australian ‘Christian’ movement, and we can expect to hear it again.
But, truth or lie, the exact number does not matter.
In a country where we are still unequal, where stigma still generates depression and suicide, schoolyard and workplace bullying remains rife, and far too many still live desperate lives, especially in rural regions, low numbers are not an excuse for inaction.
Especially when misinterpretation turns them into lies.
