This posting summarizes several issues involving homosexuality and Christians. This is a frequently asked question, so I do not post the question each time it occurs. Rather this is an attempt to summarize the postings we get when we have a discussion. It summarizes arguments for allowing Christian homosexuality, since most people asking the question already know the arguments against it. The most common -- but not the only -- question dealt with herein is "how can a Christian justify being a homosexual, given what the Bible says about it?" First, on the definition of 'homosexual'. Many groups believe that there is a homosexual "orientation", i.e. a sexual attraction to members of the same sex. This is distinguished from actual homosexual sexual activity. Homosexuals who abstain from sex are considered by most groups to be acceptable. However in a lot of discussion, the term 'homosexual' means someone actually engaging in homosexual sex. This is generally not accepted outside the most 'liberal' groups. In this paper I'm going to use 'homosexual' as meaning a person engaging in sexual acts with another of the same sex. I haven't heard of any Biblical argument against a person with homosexual orientation who remains celebate. I think most people now admit that there is a predisposition to be homosexual. This is often called a 'homosexual orientation'. It is not known whether it is genetic or environmental. There is evidence suggesting each. The best evidence I've seen is that homosexuality is not a single phenomenon, but has a number of different causes. One of them is probably genetic. There are several groups that try to help people move from being homosexual to heterosexual. The best-known is Exodus International". The reports I've seen (and I haven't read the detailed literature, just the summary in the minority opinion to the Presbyterian Church's infamous report on human sexuality) suggest that these programs have very low success rates, and that there are questions about how real even the successes are. But there certainly are people who say they have converted. However this issue is not as important as it sounds. Those who believe homosexuality is wrong believe it is intrinsically wrong, defined as such by God. The fact that it's hard to get out of being a homosexual is no more relevant than the fact that it's hard to escape from being a drug addict. If it's wrong, it's wrong. It may affect how we deal with people though. If it's very difficult to change, this may tend to make us more willing to forgive it. One more general background issue: It's common to quote a figure that 10% of the population is homosexual. I asked one of our experts where this came from. Here's his response: Kinsey (see below) is the source of the figure 10 percent. He defines sexuality by behavior, not by orientation, and ranked all persons on a scale from Zero (completely heterosexual) to 6 (completely homosexual). According to Kinsey, one-third of all male adults have had at least one experience of orgasm homosexually post puberty. Ten percent of all adult males have most of their sexual experiences homosexually. That was in 1948. The percentages held true in a followup study done by the Kinsey Institute, based on data in the early seventies but not published until the early 80s or so, by Bell and Weinberg, I believe. I can't put my hand on this latter reference, but here is the online information for Kinsey's own study as it appears in IRIS, the catalog at Rutgers: AUTHOR Kinsey, Alfred Charles, 1894-1956. TITLE Sexual behavior in the human male [by] Alfred C. Kinsey. Wardell B. Pomeroy [and] Clyde E. Martin. PUBLISHER Philadelphia, W. B. Saunders Co., 1948. DESCRIP xv, 804 p. diagrs. 24 cm. NOTES "Based on surveys made by members of the staff of Indiana University, and supported by the National Research Council's Committee for Research on Problems of Sex by means of funds contributed by the Medical Division of the Rockefeller Foundation." * Bibliography: p. 766-787. OTHER AUT Pomeroy, Wardell Baxter, joint author. * Martin, Clyde Eugene, joint author. SUBJECTS Sex. * U. S. -- Moral Conditions. LC CARD 48005195 This figure is widely used in all scholarly discussions and has even been found to hold true in several other cultures, as noted in the recent NEWSWEEK coverstory "Is this child gay?" (Feb. 24, 1992). A journalist is running the rounds of talk shows this season promoting her book that allegedly refutes Kinsey's study, but the scholarly world seems to take her for a kook...... I've seen some objections to the Kinsey's study, but not in enough detail to include here. If someone would like to contribute another view, I'd be willing to include it. I've enclosed a couple of summaries of studies showing smaller numbers at the end, but they are critical. So I do not yet claim to have both sides on this issue. Most Christians believe homosexuality (at least genital sex) is wrong. Not all, however. A few denominations accept it. The Metropolitan Community Churches is the best-known -- it was formed specifically to accept homosexuals. However the United Church of Christ also allows it, and I think a couple of other groups may as well. The Episcopal Church seems to accept it some areas but not others. In churches that have congregational government, you'll find a few congregations that accept it (even among Southern Baptists, though the number is probably only one or two congregations). But these are unusual -- few churches permit homosexual church leaders. How carefully they enforce this is another issue. I don't have any doubt that there are homosexual pastors of just about every denomination, some more open than others. As to the arguments over the Biblical and other issues, here's an attempt to summarize the issues: The most commonly cited reference by those favoring acceptance of homosexuality in previous discussions has been John Boswell: "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality", U Chicago Press, 1980. The argument against is pretty clear. There are several explicit laws in the OT, e.g. Leviticus 20:13, and in Rom 1 Paul seems pretty negative on homosexuality. Beyond these references, there are some debates. Some passages often cited on the subject probably are not relevant. E.g. the sin which the inhabitants of Sodom proposed to carry out was homosexual *rape*, not homosexual activity between consenting adults. (There's even some question whether it was homosexual, since the entities involved were angels.) It was particularly horrifying because it involved guests, and the responsibility towards guests in that culture was very strong. (This is probably the reason Lot offered his daughter -- it was better to give up his daughter than to allow his guests to be attacked.) If you look through a concordance for references to Sodom elsewhere in the Bible, you'll see that few seem to imply that homosexuality was their sin. There's a Jewish interpretive tradition that the major sin was abuse of guests. At any rate, there's no debate that homosexual *rape* is wrong. I do not discuss Leviticus because the law there is part of a set of laws that most Christians do not consider binding. So unless NT justification can be found, Lev. alone would not settle the issue. The NT references are all in Paul's letters. A number of the references from Paul are lists of sins in which the words are fairly vague. Boswell argues that the words occuring in these lists do not mean homosexual. Here's what he says: The two Greek words that appear in the lists (i.e. I Cor 6:9 and I Tim 1:10) are /malakos/ and /arsenokoitai/. Unfortunately it is not entirely clear what the words actually mean. /malakos/, with a basic meaning of soft, has a variety of metaphorical meanings in ethical writing. Boswell suggests "wanton" as a likely equivalent. He also reports that the unanimous interpretation of the Church, including Greek-speaking Christians, was that in this passage it referred to masturbation, a meaning that has vanished only in the 20th Cent., as that practice has come to be less frowned-upon. (He cites references as late as the 1967 edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia that identify it as masturbation.) He translates /arsenokotai/ as male prostitute, giving evidence that none of the church fathers understood the term as referring to homosexuality in general. A more technical meaning, suggested by the early Latin translations, would be "active mode homosexual male prostitute", but in his view Paul did not intend it so technically. For a more conservative view, I consulted Gordon Fee's commentary on I Cor. He cites evidence that /malakos/ often meant effeminate. However Boswell warns us that in Greek culture effeminate is not necessarily synonymous with homosexual, though it may be associated with some kinds of homosexual behavior. Given what Boswell and Fee say taken together, I thing there's a good chance that it does mean effeminate, but that this is not precisely the same thing as homosexual. While Fee argues against Boswell with /arsenokotai/ as well, he ends up suggesting a translation that seems essentially the same. The big problem with it is that the word is almost never used. Paul's writing is the first occurence. The fact that the word is clearly composed of "male" and "f**k" unfortunately doesn't quite tell us the meaning, since it doesn't tell us whether the male is the subject or object of the action. Examples of compound words formed either way can be given. In theory it could refer to rapists, etc. It's dangerous to base meaning purely on etymology, or you'll conclude that "goodbye" is a religious expression because it's based on "God by with ye". However since Boswell, Fee, and NIV seem to agree on "homosexual male prostitute", that seems as good a guess as any. Note that this translation misses the strong vulgarity of the term however (something which Fee and Boswell agree on, but do not attempt to reproduce in their translation). More recently I've seen an interesting conjecture that /arsenokoitai/ is a reference to Lev 18:22. Unfortunately I didn't keep the original posting. But as I recall, it claimed that the Septuagint (an early Greek translation of the OT, which was commonly used in Paul's time) for Lev 18:22 justaposes words using the same roots as /arsenokoitai/. If Paul really invented the word, he would presumably have intended his readers to understand it. An allusion to the LXX is something that he might reasonably have expected people to catch. However it's also possible that it was current slang, and that none of our writings from the period preserve it because we have mostly literary works. In my opinion, the strongest NT reference to homosexuality is Romans 1. Boswell points out that Rom 1 speaks of homosexuality as something that happened to people who were naturally heterosexual, as a result of their corruption due to worshipping false gods. One could argue that this is simply an example: that if a homosexual worshipped false gods, he would also fall into degradation and perhaps become heterosexual. However I find this argument somewhat forced, and in fact our homosexual readers have not seriously proposed that this is what Paul meant. However I am not convinced that Rom 1 is sufficient to create a law against homosexuality for Christians. What Paul is describing in Rom 1 is not homosexuality among Christians -- it's homosexuality that appeared among idolaters as one part of a whole package of wickedness. Despite the impression left by his impassioned rhetoric, I'm sure Paul does not believe that pagans completely abandoned heterosexual sex. Given his description of their situation, I rather assume that their heterosexual sex would also be debased and shameless. So yes, I do believe that this passage indicates a negative view of homosexuality. But in all fairness, the "shameless" nature of their acts is a reflection of the general spiritual state of the people, and not a specific feature of homosexuality. My overall view of the situation is the following: I think we have enough evidence to be confident that Paul disapproved of homosexuality. Rom 1 seems clear. While I Cor 6:9 and I Tim 1:10 are not unambiguous and general condemnations of homosexuality, they do not seem like wording that would come from someone who approved of homosexuality or even considered it acceptable in some cases. On the other hand, none of these passages contains explicit teachings on the subject. Rom 1 is really about idolatry. It refers to homosexuality in passing. The result of this situation is that people interpret these passages in light of their general approach to Scripture. For those who look to Scripture for God's Law about issues such as this, it not surprising that they would consider these passages to be NT endorsement of the OT prohibition. For those whose approach to the Bible is more liberal, it is not surprising that they regard Paul's negative view of homosexuality as something that he took from his Jewish upbringing without any serious reexamination in the light of the Gospel. As readers of this group know by now, the assumptions behind these approaches are so radically different that people tend to foam at the mouth when they see the opposing view described. There's not a lot I can do as moderator about such a situation. A number of discussions in the past centered around the sort of detailed exegesis of texts that is described above. However in fact I'm not convinced that defenders of homosexuality actually base their own beliefs on such analyses. The real issue seems to rest on the question of whether Paul's judgement should apply to modern homosexuality. One commonly made claim is that Paul had simply never faced the kinds of questions we are trying to deal with. He encountered homosexuality only in contexts where most people would probably agree that it was wrong. He had never faced the experience of Christians who try to act "straight" and fail, and he had never faced Christians who are trying to define a Christian homosexuality, which fits with general Christian ideals of fidelity and of seeing sexuality as a mirror of the relationship between God and man. It is unfair to take Paul's judgement on homosexuality among idolaters and use it to make judgements on these questions. Another is the following: In Paul's time homosexuality was associated with a number of things that Christians would not find acceptable. It was part of temple prostitution. Among private citizens, it often occured between adults and children or free people and slaves. I'm not in a position to say that it always did, but there are some reasons to think so. The ancients distinguished between the active and passive partner. It was considered disgraceful for a free adult to act as the passive partner. (This is the reason that an active mode homosexual prostitute would be considered disgraceful. His customers would all be people who enjoyed the passive role.) This supports the idea that it would tend not to be engaged in between two free adult males, at least not without some degree of scandal. Clearly Christian homosexuals would not condone sex with children, slaves, or others who are not in a position to be fully responsible partners. However Fee's commentary on I Cor cites some examples from ancient literature of homosexual relationships that do seem to involve free adults in a reasonably symmetrical way. Thus the considerations in this paragraph shouldn't be pushed too far. Homosexuality may have been discredited for Jews by some of these associations, but there surely must be been cases that were not prostitutes and did not involve slaves or children. Some people have argued that AIDS is a judgement against homosexuality. I'd like to point out that AIDS is transmitted by promiscuous sex, both homosexual and heterosexual. Someone who has a homosexual relationship that meets Christian criteria for marriage is not at risk for AIDS. Note that there is good reason from Paul's general approach to doubt that he would concede homosexuality as a fully equal alternative, apart from any specific statements on homosexuality. I believe his use of the Genesis story would lead him to regard heterosexual marriage as what God ordained. However the way Paul deals with pastoral questions provides a warning against being too quick to deal with this issue legally. I claim that the question of how to counsel homosexual Christians is not entirely a theological issue, but also a pastoral one. Paul's tendency, as we can see in issues such as eating meat and celebrating holidays, is to be uncompromising on principle but in pastoral issues to look very carefully at the good of the people involved, and to avoid insisting on perfection when it would be personally damaging. For example, while Paul clearly believed that it was acceptable to eat meat, he wanted us to avoid pushing people into doing an action about which they had personal qualms. For another example, Paul obviously would have preferred to see people (at least in some circumstances) remain unmarried. Yet if they were unable to do so, he certainly would rather see them married than in a state where they might be tempted to fornication. I believe one could take a view like this even while accepting the views Paul expressed in Rom 1. One may believe that homosexuality is not what God intended, that it occured as a result of sin, but still conclude that at times we have to live with it. The question is whether you believe that homosexuality is in itself sinful or whether you believe that it's a misfortune (or even a disorder) that is in a broad sense due to human sinfulness. If you're willing to consider the latter approach, then it becomes a pastoral judgement whether there is more damage caused by finding a way to live with it or trying to cure it. The dangers of trying to cure it are that the attempt most often fails, and when it does, you end up with damage ranging from psychological damage to suicide, as well as broken marriages when attempts at living as a heterosexual fail. (I have a cousin who was involved in such a marriage. While we didn't find it out until later, her husband had had problems with sexual identity, and was encouraged by fundamentalist parents to marry. The results were not good.) This is going to depend upon one's assessment of the inherent nature of homosexuality. If you believe it is a very serious wrong, then you may be willing to run high risks of serious damage to get rid of it. Clearly we do not generally suggest that people live with a tendency to steal or with drug addiction, even though attempts to cure these conditions are also very difficult. However these conditions are intrinsically damaging in a way that is not so obvious for homosexuality. (Many problems associated with homosexuality are actually problems of promiscuity, not homosexuality. This includes AIDS. I take for granted that the only sort of homosexual relationships a Christian would consider allowing would be equivalent to Christian heterosexual relationships.) In the course of discussing this over the last decade or so, we've heard a lot of personal testimony from fellow Christians who are in this situation. I've also seen summaries of various research and the results of various efforts for "conversion". (Aside from the Presbyterian report mentioned above, there's an FAQ that summarizes our readers' reports on this question.) The evidence is that long-term success in changing orientation is rare enough to be on a par with healing miracles. The danger in advising Christians to depend upon such a change is clear: When "conversion" doesn't happen, which is almost always, the people are often left in despair, feeling excluded from a Church that has nothing more to say but a requirement of life-long celibacy. Paul recognized (though in a different context) that such a demand is not practical for most people, and I think the history of clerical celibacy has strongly reinforced that judgement. The practical result is that homosexuals end up in the gay sex clubs and the rest of the sordid side of homosexuality. Maybe homosexuality isn't God's original ideal, but I can well imagine Paul preferring to see people in long-term, committed Christian relationships than promiscuity. I think such relationships can still be a vehicle for people sharing God's love with each other. However let me say that I can only feel admiration for people with homosexual tendencies who feel called to live a celibate life. There's an issue of Biblical interpretation underlying this discussion. The issue is that of "cultural relativism". That is, when Paul says that something is wrong, should this be taken as an eternal statement, or are things wrong because of specific situations in the culture of the time? Conservative Christians generally insist on taking prohibitions as absolute, since otherwise the Bible becomes subjective -- what is to stop us from considering everything in it as relative? When looking at this issue, it's worth noting that no one completely rejects the concept of cultural relativism. There are a number of judgements in the New Testament that even conservative Christians consider to be relative. The following judgements are at least as clear in the Bible as anything said on homosexuality: - prohibition against charging interest (this occurs 18 times in the OT -- it's not in the NT, but I mention it here because until relatively recently the Church did consider it binding on Christians) - prohibition against swearing oaths - endorsement of slavery as an institution - judgement of tax collectors as sinner We do not regard these items as binding. In most cases, I believe the argument is essentially one of cultural relativism. Briefly: - prohibition of interest is appropriate to a specific agrarian society that the Bible was trying to build, but not to our market economy. - few people believe that American judicial oaths have the same characteristics as the kind of oaths Jesus was concerned about - most people believe that Paul was simply telling people how to live within slavery, but not endorsing it as an institution - for people believe that the IRS is morally equivalent to Roman tax farming The point I'm trying to make is that before applying Biblical prohibitions to the 20th Cent., we need to look at whether the 20th Cent. actions are the same. When Christian homosexuals say that their relationships are different than the Greek homosexuality that Paul would have been familiar with, this is exactly the same kind of argument that is being made about judicial oaths and tax collectors. Until fairly recently Christians prohibited taking of interest, and many Christians regarded slavery as divinely endorsed. (Indeed, slavery is one of the more common metaphors for the relationship between God and human beings -- Christians are often called servants or slaves of God.) I am not trying to say that everything in the Bible is culturally relative. Rather, I'm trying to say that *some* things are, and therefore it is not enough to say that because something appears in the Bible, that ends the discussion. We need to look at whether the action we're talking about now has the same moral implications as the one that the Bible was talking about. If Christians conclude that that there are reasons to think that the prohibitions against homosexuality are still binding, I can understand that. My problem is with those who say that the question doesn't have to be considered. There are a lot of people who simply ignore the rules listed above, and then about homosexuality say "the Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it". One thing that worries me is the great emotions that this issue creates. When you consider the weakness of the Biblical evidence -- some laws in Leviticus, a passage in Rom whose subject matter is really idolatry rather than homosexuality, and a couple of lists whose words are ambiguous -- the amount of concern this is raising among Christians seems rather out of proportion. This should suggest to people that there are reasons other than simply Biblical involved. This is true on both sides -- clearly homosexual Christians are as strongly motivated to find ways of discrediting the Biblical arguments as conservative Christians are to find Biblical arguments. But I can't help feeling that the Bible is being used by both sides as a way of justifying attitudes which come from other sources. This is a dangerous situation for Christians. On the other side of the issue, I would like to note some problems I have with the pro-homosexual position as it is commonly presented. One of the most common arguments is that homosexuality is biologically determined. I.e. "God made me homosexual", and I have no choice. I think "God made me homosexual" is a fine view for people who already believe on other grounds that homosexuality is acceptable. But I don't see it as an argument for acceptability. Many people think that alcholism is largely biological, and drug addiction may turn out to be as well. That doesn't mean it's OK. Most of us have particular things we tend to do wrong. Some people get angry easily. Others tend to be arrogant. Others tend to be attraced to women who are married to someone else. Homosexuality (if we view it as wrong) wouldn't be different than any of these other things. If we are going to follow God, we all end up at one time or another having to work to overcome bad habits and particular temptations that cause us problems. None of us can sit back and say that because God made us the way we are we can just relax. As Jesus said, we all have to take up our cross daily. This concept of dying to self (which also appears throughout Paul's letters) seems to suggest that there are going to be things about ourselves that we we are called on not to accept. Paul's letters and the experience of Christians throughout history show us that sin is ingrained in us, and the battle against it is lifelong and difficult. The fact that homosexuality is difficult to fight doesn't necessarily say it's OK. Maybe this isn't the place where we have to die to self. But I'd like to make sure that those who think it isn't are fighting the battle somewhere else, and not rejecting the concept that all Christians have to fight against the deeply engrained habits of sin. Path: igor.rutgers.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU!HALSALL From: HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU (Paul Halsall) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: 1 percent? Message-ID: <930917102940.204052a5@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU> Date: 17 Sep 93 14:29:40 GMT Sender: Free Catholic Mailing List Lines: 138 Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU Return-Path: <@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU:owner-catholic@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> Return-Path: <@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU:HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU> John Everman reported the figure that only 1% of the population is homosexual. The survey on which this is based is simply inaccurate. Here is an article which discussess the figure. I have others which specifically address the issue of the 1% figure. Paul Halsall halsall@murray.fordham.edu *********************************************************** Kinsey's famous figures by Paul H. Gebhard Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University Retired Executive Director, Kinsey Institute for Sex Research Indiana Alumni, Sept/Oct 1993, p. 64 The growing controversy over the role of homosexuals in society, culminating in the question of their military service, has focused attention on Alfred C. Kinsey's 1948 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male". Two of Kinsey's findings have received particular publicity: - "37 percent of the total male population has at least some overt homosexual experience to the point of orgasm" (p. 650); and - "10 percent of the males are more or less exclusively homosexual ... for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55" (p. 651). Recent surveys have reported strikingly smaller percentages. Let's look at this discrepancy. Both of Kinsey's figures suffer from a pioneering flaw: his sample had a disproportionate percentage of college-educated people. And so in an attempt to obtain figures more accurately representing the U.S. population, he devised what he called "Total Population - U.S. Correction", in which he statistically weighted the sample in favor of people whose education ended with grade school or high school. The end result was a sample more like the 1940 U.S. Census. Fortunately, Kinsey presented all his raw data separately from the weighted figures because the grade school and high school-educated samples contain far too many people with prison experience. People with less education were harder to recruit for interviews than the better educated, who also were more likely to belong to service clubs or fraternities, places where Kinsey would lecture free of charge in exchange for group cooperation. So when Kinsey found poorly educated inmates at the Indiana State Farm willing to be interviewed in exchange for free cigarettes and soft drinks, he used them as a major source. At that time we had no proof that their sexual histories were any different from those never incarcerated. Some years later, in preparing the volume on women, we found that the sexual lives of women in prison were indeed different from women with no prison experience, and Kinsey agreed to exclude women with prison experience from the book. Years later, when Alan Johnson and I were analyzing the data collected both before and after 1948 for our 1979 book "The Kinsey Data", we excluded from the sample anyone with jail or prison experience. (We also excluded anyone from a group (for example, a homosexual organization) we knew in advance to be sexually biased. Instead of Kinsey's 37 percent, we came up with 36 percent for white college-educated males and 39.8 percent for white males with less education. As a control group for our study of sex offenders, we interviewed a separate group of 477 white males with less than a college education and no prison experience. That group gave us 34 percent. A cynic might say that this corroboration simply reflects some constant error in our work, but two other surveys gave similar results. In 1970 the magazine "Psychology Today" polled its readers. Of about 20,000 returns, precisely 37 percent reported a homosexual experience. In 1983 "Playboy" did a similar survey. From about 100,000 returns came a figure of 35 percent. I consider Kinsey's original figure, despite its methodological flaws, to be close to the truth. It appears that homosexual experience is uniformly distributed over most population groups. The 10 percent figure also suffered from the inclusion of prison inmates. They were excluded from our 1979 study, which indentified persons with 21 or more partners of the same gender and/or 51 or more homosexual experiences. For white college-educated males the percentage was 9.9; for the less than college-educated, 12.7 percent. These figures are gratifyingly close to Kinsey's 10 percent. For the white college-educated women the percentage was 3.7; for women with less education, 1.6 percent. Not all of these people were predominantly homosexual. But in our society, where even a lesser amount of homosexuality is enough to label someone gay, we can say that Kinsey's 10 percent, misinterpreted as it was, is again close to the fact insofar as white, better-educated men are concerned. If we ask what percentage of better-educated white males are predominantly homosexual, I must repeat what I found in a study I did for the National Institute of Mental Health in 1972: about 4 percent of college-educated white males and 2 percent of college-educated white females are more homosexual than heterosexual. Unfortunately, no one has data for whites with less education or for blacks, Hispanics, and other minority groups. So why are these new surveys - such as the Chicago National Opinion Resarch and the Batelle Human Affairs Research Center survey - coming up with tiny percentages? I think it is because of some serious flaws in their work: - The surveys use pollsters who have only a few days of training in sexual interviewing. They don't use professional researchers who have spent years interviewing in their specialty. They interviewers for the Chicago and Batelle surveys were primarily middle-aged women, mostly without college education. - The Kinsey interviews were extensive. After having covered topics such as masturbation fantasy, dream content, number and gender of friends, erotic response to various stimuli, and preadolescent sex play, we had a rather good idea as to a person's sexual orientation before we asked about homosexuality. Therefore, if a person whom we suspected of having homosexual experience denied it, we were able to ask additional probing questions and try to establish a better rapport. - Random probability sampling, while excellent for most data gathering, is inappropriate for ascertaining the incidence of homosexuality. Homosexuals migrate from rural communities, where it is hard to conceal their orientation, to tha anonymity of large cities, so rural samples will be largely devoid of them. In the cities the homosexuals congregate in gay communities. These are usually relatively small and therefore easily missed in random sampling. Worse yet, the custom of interviewing only one member of a household is disasterous in a gay community, where everyone in a household is apt to be homosexual. In summary, Kinsey's two famous figures, despite their methodological flaws, are not bad estimates of reality and can be used for practical purposes in determining social policy and in estimating the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Path: igor.rutgers.edu!newsserver.jvnc.net!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!paladin.american.edu!auvm!MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU!HALSALL From: HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU (Paul Halsall) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.catholic Subject: 1 Percent ? Again Message-ID: <930917103806.204052a5@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU> Date: 17 Sep 93 14:38:06 GMT Sender: Free Catholic Mailing List Lines: 96 Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU Return-Path: <@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU:owner-catholic@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> Return-Path: <@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU:HALSALL@MURRAY.FORDHAM.EDU> Here is more refutation of the 1 percent figure. Paul Halsall halsall@murray.fordham.edu ********************************************************************** To: Multiple recipients of list SOCWORK Gottschalk, Kurt. (1993 May, 31). The 1 percent solution. Anti- gay forces look for safety in low numbers. _In These Times_ pp. 6-7 (Excerpts). As organizers and activists across the country prepared for the Lesbian, Gay and Bi March on Washington last month, a four-page press release from a research group began appearing over fax lines in the newsrooms across the country. A new study, the release announced, had found that only 1 percent of the adult male population in this country is gay and religious right forces hoping to take the wind out of the march's sails. The study, entitled the "1991 National Survey of Men," was published in March/April 1993 issue of Family Planning Perspectives. Conducted by researchers from the Battelle Human Affairs Research Center in Seattle, the study surveyed 4,751 men concerning patterns of sexual behavior. Participants were asked, among a host of other questions, if they engaged "exclusively" in same-sex activity, to which only 1 percent replied in the affirmative. If the figure is correct, there are some 2.6 million gay men in the United States. They certainly seem to get around: CNN estimates that 1.7 million people showed up in Washington for the gay-rights march. (Organizers estimated that at least 1 million people participated; the "official" park police count of 300,000 includes only the number of people in the Capitol Mall not the entire parade route--at any given time.) Now, in the wake of the March's success, anti-gay forces are using the study in an effort to convince Congress that the gay population isn't actually as large and powerful as it claims. ... "[The study] made it easier for us. We're on a more even playing field," Kelly Mullins, director of the media relations of the D.C.-based Traditional Values Coalition, told _In These Times_. "Before, we had to fight this myth that there's 10 percent [gays in the total population]." Previous studies have varied greatly in counting the gay population. The landmark Kinsey study in 1948 came up with commonly cited 10 percent figure; other studies asking about behavior, desire and self-definition have found that as many as 80 percent of Americans report some level of homosexual inclination. The Battelle study is not the first find less than 10 percent, but its findings have been wildly misinterpreted, and its methodology has received considerable criticism. The surveys were conducted door to door, largely, by female interviewers. Thirty percent of those polled refused to participate, and those that did were asked for their name and Social Security Number and employer before being asked to reveal intimate details about their sexual behavior. The 1 percent "exclusively homosexual" figure also effectively rules out bisexual men as well as men who were involved with women before coming out. Clearly, some men are going to be inclined to withhold some aspects of their sexuality from a strange woman who has just asked for his employer's name. But the questionable methodology has not been referred to in many of the media reports. ... Hidden within the answers to other questions are some telling, if convoluted, numbers: 3 percent reported performing or receiving oral sex with another man; of the 20 percent who reported engaging in anal sex, one-fourth (or 5 percent of the total sample) reported male partners; slightly more than 2 percent reported any same-gender activity." In the commentary to the study, researchers admit that "some respondents may underreport their sexual behavior..., because of embarrassment or social unacceptability." The study was not, in fact, even designed to count gay men. "[Media reports are] missing the point," Korsy Taufer, one of the senior researchers for the study, told the _Washington Blade_. "[The study[ was specifically done to look at risky behavior among heterosexuals. If we wanted to count gays, we would have done a totally different study," she said. One that probably would have been closer to the commonly accepted 10 percent mark--and one that Henry J. D'Souza School of Social Work University of Nebraska at Omaha 60th and Dodge Omaha, NE 68182 Phone (402)-554-2843 email: dsouza@cwis.unomaha.edu