The Williams Institute just released the results of a study they conducted on gays in America. According to the numbers, the number of gays and lesbians (adults) in the United States is approximately 9 million, that's about 3.5% of the entire population of the U.S. When you hear that the number of homosexuals (those who are willing to admit that they are) is only 3.5% of the number of people living in the country, the natural reaction is to think that 3.5% is not a significant number; that is until you remember that, according to the 2010 census, the number of Asian-Americans in the U.S. is around 4.6% of the population of this country. When you think abut it that way, the number doesn't seem so small.
I know that the intention (at least I hope it's the intention) of the study is to show that yes, there are gay people among us, and that the number is not, when you take it into perspective, so small as to be ignored. Of course, the famous Kinsey study pegged the number of homosexuals at around 7%, and for years I remember hearing it said that approximately 1 in 10 Americans is either gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. No matter what the real number actually is (one can suspect that since homosexuality carries such a social stigma, until we're done with homophobia we'll never really know the true number), the fact is, there are indeed gay people who walk among us. They're our neighbors, mail carriers, our favorite celebrities, even our elected officials... get used to it.
Of course, there are bound to be those who will insist that the purpose, or at least the unintended result of this study is to pound on an issue that is already controversial enough as it is. There are people who ask why is it necessary that the public needs to know how many gay people are in the country? The fact that we dwell on the percentage of gay Americans, they argue, only serves to reenforce fears of "the gay agenda" or that knowing how many gays and lesbians are in the country is important at all. They say that we need to get past all this putting people into categories and labeling people because it's all counterproductive to getting past discrimination.
That's true. There's some logic to the argument that the more we dwell on how people are different, the more we think of people according to those differences. But you can also put it this way: if you feel that you're the only gay person that you know, and you fell isolated, it might help to know that you're not alone -- that there are 9 million other people out there who are dealing with the same thing you're dealing with. They might not all be just like you (meaning their lives and circumstances are different), but there's a chance that at least you'll have someone to date.
I remember when I was in high school, my best friend was gay. I remember that he used to get a lot of shit for being gay (it was quite obvious that he was). Now, I was the straight girl who people thought was gay (there are too many reasons why people thought I was to go into), and I remember when he and I got to know each other, that he said one reason why he wanted to be my friend was because he had heard that I was a lesbian. He said that he needed to be friends with someone that understood what he was going through. Luckily, I've always been gay friendly, so we became fast friends. But the thing is,before we met he felt alone. He didn't know how many or even if there were other gay kids at school. I always felt like an outcst because I wasn't like the other black kids, because i wasn't this or that, and I know how much that absolutely sucked. I wouldn't wish that feeling on anybody.
Maybe a result of this study will be to embolden people. For those people out there who are still too shy or afraid to come out and tell people that they're gay to be able to tell those people who think homosexuality is wrong or abnormal that there are 9 million reasons why being gay or lesbian or transgendered is perfecty normal and more than ok.
Hopefully.
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