YouGov Poll: People Are Clueless

Armstrong and Getty read from the YouGov Poll titled, From millionaires to Muslims, small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans,” which starts out by noting:

…. When it comes to estimating the size of demographic groups, Americans rarely get it right. In two recent YouGov polls, we asked respondents to guess the percentage (ranging from 0% to 100%) of American adults who are members of 43 different groups, including racial and religious groups, as well as other less frequently studied groups, such as pet owners and those who are left-handed.

When people’s average perceptions of group sizes are compared to actual population estimates, an intriguing pattern emerges: Amercians tend to vastly overestimate the size of minority groups. This holds for sexual minorities, including the proportion of gays and lesbians (estimate: 30%, true: 3%), bisexuals (estimate: 29%, true: 4%), and people who are transgender (estimate: 21%, true: 0.6%).

It also applies to religious minorities, such as Muslim Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%) and Jewish Americans (estimate: 30%, true: 2%). And we find the same sorts of overestimates for racial and ethnic minorities, such as Native Americans (estimate: 27%, true: 1%), Asian Americans (estimate: 29%, true: 6%), and Black Americans (estimate: 41%, true: 12%)…..

Percentage of Gays

(Originally posted Jun 29, 2017) This grew out of a conversation on my FaceBook and mainly deals with percentages of gays (the high is 2.8% ~ the low is 1.4% ~ but is most likely 1.7%), and behaviors that cause the AIDS epidemic in Africa and here in the states.

Mike Slater went to the San Diego Pride Parade and played “Which Bigot Said It.”

Here’s the study from the Center for Disease Control: “Results—Based on the 2013 NHIS data, 96.6% of adults identified as straight, 1.6% identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7% identified as bisexual

(TOWNHALL) Ten percent of the population is gay. Ten percent has been the number tossed around for a long time, but perhaps understandably, many people think the gay percentage of the population is even higher based on popular culture’s obsession with homosexuality.

The American public estimates on average that 23% of Americans are gay or lesbian, little changed from Americans’ 25% estimate in 2011, and only slightly higher than separate 2002 estimates of the gay and lesbian population.

In actuality, the percentage of gay Americans is tiny.

The survey taken by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked a simple question of 34,557 adults nationwide: “Which of the following best represents how you think of yourself?” The five possible answers were straight, lesbian/gay, bisexual, “something else” and “I don’t know the answer.” Transgenders, the “T” in LGBT, were not included.

The survey found that a mere 1.6 percent of the adult population self-identifies as “lesbian/gay,” and an even smaller 0.7 percent told interviewers they were bisexual. The bisexuals were outnumbered by the 1.1 percent who didn’t know, wouldn’t answer or said they were “something else.”

This result was far from the 10 percent that homosexual rights advocates have claimed since the 1970s.

As I am want to do at various times and seasons, is debate hot topic issues. I do not normally do this but rather those who wish dialogue find me out. Case in point, a post elsewhere on the Net about water bottles quickly led to talk about female hormones and HIV/AIDS. I know, its crazy right? Here is where the conversation gets good. I respond:

AIDS is largely confined to the drug culture and the homosexual. Since this is the way it is most easily passed on to others. Most heterosexual cases can be tied back to some infection passed through this community.

Which is why I have to sit in amazing disgust about the “barebacking” and “bug chasers” are a sad phenomenon and puzzle to us — gay or straight — whom take a common sense approach to life.

That second article says: “The number of gay men looking to become positive seems to be growing. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control (The CDC) reports a new surge in the incidence of HIV among gay males, in part due to this unthinkable practice. But what can drive such a desire? Why would a life with HIV be desirable to some?”

Something I have pointed out Tammy Bruce says in her book The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values. A great read by the way. You get to see why a conservative gay person is so concerned about our culture and maybe how morally equating all choices and actions hurts it rather than helps it:

….What a difference treatment makes! As researchers succeeded in developing ever more effective drugs, AIDS became—like gonorrhea, syphilis, and hepatitis B before it—what many if consider to be a simple “chronic disease.” And many of the gay men who had heeded the initial warning went right back to having promiscuous unprotected sex here is now even a movement—the “bareback” movement—that encourages sex  without condoms. The infamous bathhouses are opening up again; drug use, sex parties, and hundreds of sex partners a year are all once again a feature of the “gay lifestyle.” In fact, “sexual liberation” has simply become a code phrase for the abandonment of personal responsibility, respect, and integrity.

In his column for Salon.com, David Horowitz discussed gay radicals like the writer Edmund White. During the 1960s and beyond, White addressed audiences in the New York gay community on the subject of sexual liberation. He told one such audience that “gay men should wear their sexually transmitted diseases like red badges of courage in a war against a  sex-negative society.” And did they ever. Then, getting gonorrhea was the so-called courageous act. Today, the stakes are much higher. That red badge is now one of AIDS suffering and death, and not just for gay men themselves. In their effort to transform society, the perpetrators are taking women and children and straight men with them.

Even Camille Paglia, a woman whom I do not often praise, astutely commented some years ago, “Everyone who preached  free love in the Sixties is responsible for AIDS. This idea that it was somehow an accident, a microbe that sort of fell from  heaven—absurd. We must face what we did.”

The moral vacuum did rear its ugly head during the 1960s with the blurring of the lines of right and wrong (remember “situational ethics”?),  the sexual revolution, and the consequent emergence of the feminist and gay civil-rights movements. It’s not the original ideas of these movements, mind you, that caused and have perpetuated the problems we’re discussing. It was and remains the few in power who project their destructive sense of themselves onto the innocent landscape, all  the while influencing and conditioning others. Today, not only is the blight not being faced, but in our Looking-Glass world, AIDS is romanticized and sought after

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left’s Assault on Our Culture and Values (Roseville: Prima, 2003), 96-97.

GAY PATRIOT makes this “moral equivalence” claim as well:

The New York Times has noticed that bareback sex is a thing gay people are doing, which is breaking news from about the mid-1990′s when (according to Wikipedia) gay publications like The Advocate first took note of the phenomenon of gay men having unprotected sex and, in some cases, deliberately seeking HIV infection.

Anyway, the Times, perhaps after failing to find a celebrity to comment on the issue, goes to the next best source for information on epidemiology and behavioral psychology… an English professor from SUNY-Buffalo. Who provides this analysis:

What I learned in my research is that gay men are pursuing bareback sex not just for the thrill of it, but also as a way to experience intimacy, vulnerability and connection. Emotional connection may be symbolized in the idea that something tangible is being exchanged. A desire for connection outweighs adherence to the rules of disease prevention.

And some guys are apparently getting intimate, tangible, emotional connections 10-20 times a night in bathhouses.

It also seems that the readers of the NY Times, based on the comments, are in complete denial that this phenomenon exists, and think the author is just making it up to attack the gay community. Liberals choose to blame the recent dramatic increases in HIV infection rates on “the stigma attached to HIV.” Um, excuse me, but don’t stigmas usually make people avoid those things to which stigmas are attached?

In the real world, stigmatizing a behavior results in less of it: Which is why people don’t use the N-word in public any more and smoking has declined as a social activity. When the social stigma is removed as with HIV infection and teenage pregnancyyou get more of those things.

To which my young antagonist responded:

….But hold on a sec. You think gay people WANT AIDS? I hope you’re able to see that this really makes no sense at all. Sometimes it seems like you believe gay people are some subhuman race of self hating suicidal maniacs who are addicted to sinful pleasures just so that people like you can hate them for it. They are people. Just like us. They want AIDS just as much as you do.

And i don’t see you complaining to the porn industries every time some poor girl has to take one that way for a film shoot. I’m not sure if you want to believe that this is some kind of plague from god, but the truth is, homosexuals make up a small portion of people infected with AIDS. Most studies conducted found numbers as low as 3% of the total population. A New York times study in 1965 found a prevalence of 10%, which is the largest ever found.

Sorry dude. But AIDS is everyone’s problem.

As you can seer this convo is rolling along now. Not only do I have to deal with an engrained myth of 10% of the population is gay, I have to answer the topic of “the porn industry.” Fun time!

The 10% is a myth. There are entire books on Kinsey’s craziness, the least of which was his study accuracy. I have written and posted great audio about the transition of human sexuality, here is a great example of this idea from my post:

  • the new study finds only 1.4% of the population identifying with same-sex orientation….Among women 18-44, for instance, 12.5% report some form of same sex contact at some point in their lives, but among the older segment of that group (35-44), only 0.7% identify as homosexual and 1.1% as bisexual. Read more: RPT

So with such a low number of gay men it is a tragedy that they make up for about 70% of AIDS cases. And as I have pointed out previously both from Tammy Bruce’s book and other studies there is a growing segment within the gay community who practice unsafe sex and bug chasing as a badge of honor? That is a fact.

Yes, AIDS is transmitted through sex the easiest, so the porn industry, as you rightly point out, is a vehicle for passing it I imagine. However, even this most recent AIDS scare in the porn industry had its genesis in Derrick Burts:

  • But that didn’t put the matter to rest. The new question became: How did Derrick Burts, who says that outside of work his only sex partner was his girlfriend, get infected? The answer to that question may reveal some hard truths about the porn industry. Burts’ girlfriend tested negative. And no HIV-positive performer has stepped forward to admit to working with Burts. When it comes to working in a sex industry, however, “straight” is a flexible term. Like many male porn actors, Burts sometimes went “gay for pay,” performing in both straight porn with women under the name Cameron Reid, and gay porn with other men under the name Derek Chambers. The reason for two distinct names is that in the porn industry, doing both gay and straight porn—called “crossing over”—is both relatively common and also fairly taboo. Many female performers believe that the risk of contracting HIV during a scene is vastly increased if their male partner participates in gay porn. In October, when the alarm bells were first sounded about the still anonymous Patient Zeta, porn star Courtney Cummz told The Daily Beast she was “terrified” by stars who cross over, and thought the Occupational Safety and Health Administration should step in to prevent it…. For one thing, according to a recent study by the CDC, men who have sex with men are 44 times more likely to contract HIV than men who don’t. But perhaps the larger perceived problem is that HIV testing standards are completely different in gay porn than they are in straight porn. While most of the straight porn industry mandates a monthly HIV testing regimen, a significant portion of the gay porn world uses condoms—yet doesn’t require its performers to get tested. (DAILY BEAST)

SO EVEN in this industry, it seems that the homosexual side of it is masochistic.

Here is the response to my post:

The article i posted showing the results of numerous studies could be worth taking another look at. You say the 10% is a myth (even though most studies find somewhere between 3-6% prevalence) yet you offer me nothing substantial to back that claim up. I understand you get some info from books, but if the studies exist and have credibility, they should be as available as the studies I found. I question your understanding of the disease and its impact on the human race. You may have a bias to condemn people you see to be sinful, but if this were an act of god, then why is it striking Africa harder than any other country? why are 50% of all people with AIDS black. Did they somehow piss god off too?

Maybe if we look at HIV/AIDS for what it is, a non discriminatory disease, the big picture will make a little more sense.

Firstly, one should note God was never part of our discussion. This is telling. I used references to gay authors, court cases, articles, and the like. The fact still remains that in America the gay population is 1.7% but make up over 70% of the AIDS cases. Now the antagonist in the picture is bringing in worldwide statistics on AIDS, not only that, but also has imported God into the picture! I never used theology or my faith to make any of the points. In fact, I will post here the referenced blog I did on the stats aspect of this:


Michael Medved’s article on a recent poll that the above radio show is based on (with emphasis thanks to Kicking the Darkness): 

Key Concept

The nation’s increasingly visible and influential gay community embraces the notion of sexual orientation as an innate, immutable characteristic, like left-handedness or eye color. But a major federal sex survey suggests a far more fluid, varied life experience for those who acknowledge same-sex attraction. (from Medved article)

The results of this scientific research shouldn’t undermine the hard-won respect recently achieved by gay Americans, but they do suggest that choice and change play larger roles in sexual identity than commonly assumed. The prestigious study in question (released in March by the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) discovered a much smaller number of “gays, lesbians and homosexuals” than generally reported by the news media. While pop-culture frequently cites the figure of one in 10 (based on 60-year-old, widely discredited conclusions from pioneering sex researcher Alfred Kinsey) the new study finds only 1.4% of the population identifying with same-sex orientation.

Moreover, even among those who describe themselves as homosexual or bisexual (a grand total of 3.7% of the 18-44 age group), overwhelming majorities (81%) say they’ve experienced sex with partners of the opposite gender. Among those who call themselves heterosexual, on the other hand, only a tiny minority (6%) ever engaged in physical intimacy of any kind with a member of the same sex These figure indicate that 94% of those living heterosexual lives felt no physical attraction to members of the same sex, but the great bulk of self-identified homosexuals and bisexuals feel enough intimate interest in the opposite gender to engage in erotic contact at some stage in their development.

A one-way street

In other words, for the minority who may have experimented with gay relationships at some juncture in their lives, well over 80% explicitly renounced homosexual (or even bisexual) self-identification by age of 35. For the clear majority of males (as well as women) who report gay encounters, homosexual activity appears to represent a passing phase, or even a fleeting episode, rather than an unshakable, genetically pre-determined orientation.Gay pride advocates applaud the courage of those who “come out,” discovering their true nature as homosexual after many years of heterosexual experience. But enlightened opinion denies a similar possibility of change in the other direction, deriding anyone who claims straight orientation after even the briefest interlude of homosexual behavior and insisting they are phony and self-deluding. By this logic, heterosexual orientation among those with past gay relationships is always the product of repression and denial, but homosexual commitment after a straight background is invariably natural and healthy. In fact, numbers show huge majorities of those who “ever had same sex sexual contact” do not identify long-term as gay. Among women 18-44, for instance, 12.5% report some form of same sex contact at some point in their lives, but among the older segment of that group (35-44), only 0.7% identify as homosexual and 1.1% as bisexual.

The once popular phrase “sexual preference” has been indignantly replaced with the term “sexual orientation” because political correctness now insists there is no factor of willfulness or volition in the development of erotic identity. This may well be the case for the 94% of males and 87% of females (ages 18-44) who have never experienced same-sex contact of any kind and may never have questioned their unwavering straight outlook — an outlook deemed “normal” in an earlier age….

…(read more)…

(Nope… not God in that post.) It is obvious to anyone that when backed in a corner many liberals merely start to use ad hominem attacks, creating straw-man arguments, and the like. I will come back to the African connection, as it is very important for the reader to be able to respond to such positions/”facts”. However, let us return to the conversation as found on the Net. So picking back up, here is my first response:

If you do not know about Kinsey, I suggest – in the least – reading the second chapter of a book entitled “Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas.” The second chapter which deals with Kinsey is entitled “‘SCIENCE: How a Pervert Launched the Sexual Revolution.” This is where the 10% myth came from, Kinsey.

I have read the major biography of him (“Alfred C. Kinsey: A Life”) as well as two great books entitled:

1) Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America (there is a generous preview of the book at Amazon)
2) Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences: The Red Queen and the Grand Scheme

All this is to say, I know where the 10% myth came from. And, I linked to one of my posts which not only had audio regarding the study PROVING my point, but also a link to the largest most in-depth study to date. I would listen to the audio portion as well, a gay man calls at the very end of the show making the point supported by the best evidence available yet.

[….]

Again, if you follow the links in my post you would have found this (PDF):

I suggest you listen to the 16-minute audio also found in the post in regards to this study.

More modern survey data has modified even that claim. In fact, an overwhelming majority of the population are exclusively heterosexual. However, of the small number of people who have ever experienced homosexuality on any of the three measures of sexual orientation (attractions, behavior, and self-identification), the number who have been exclusively homosexual on all three measures throughout their lives is vanishingly small—only 0.6% of men and 0.2% of women. Even if we go by the measure of self-identification alone, the percentage of the population who identify as homosexual or bisexual is quite small. Convincing evidence of these has come from an unlikely source—a consortium of 31 of the leading homosexual rights groups in America. In a friend-of-the-court brief they filed in the Supreme Court’s Lawrence v. Texas sodomy case in 2003, they admitted the following:

✦ The most widely accepted study of sexual practices in the United States is the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). The NHSLS found that 2.8% of the male, and 1.4% of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. See Laumann et al., The Social Organization of Sex: Sexual Practices in the United States (1994). So it’s fair to say that the “ten percent” myth has been discredited even by pro-homosexual groups themselves.

More:

  •  The CDC reported that a 2002 National Survey of Family Growth set the number closer to 2.8% of adults claiming homosexuality.
  •  In 1993, USA Today reported that only 2.3% of males ages 20 to 30 said they had a same-sex experience in the last decade.
  •  In 1991, the National Opinion Research Center found that respondents who claimed they were active homosexuals only numbered .7%.
  •  As far back as 1988 a Canadian survey found that 98% of first-year college students under 25 indicated they were heterosexual.
  •  And the 2000 Census found that only .42% of American households consisted of same sex, unmarried couples as heads of households. This is less than 1%.

Still, the largest and most thorough study done yet puts the number of firmly gay people at 1.7%. Some studies put it at slightly more, some less.

So what about Africa? One of my favorite columnists/authors is Michael Fumento. He has some great insights into the problem of Africa. I will post his article on the issue, as, i think it is an important topic… I will highlight portions I think are fitting for this discussion. you will see Michael’s true care and concern near the end:

Why is HIV So Prevalent in Africa?

Ninety-nine percent of AIDS and HIV cases in Africa come from sexual transmission, and virtually all is heterosexual. So says the World Health Organization, with other agenciestoeing the line. Some massive condom airdrops accompanied by a persuasive propaganda campaign would practically make the epidemic vanish overnight. Or would it?

A determined renegade group of three scientists has fought for years – with little success – to get out the message that no more than a third of HIV transmission in Africa is from sexual intercourse and most of that is anal. By ignoring the real vectors, they say, we’re sacrificing literally millions of people.

These men are no crackpots. John Potterat is author of 140 scholarly publications. He began working for the El Paso County, Colorado health department in 1972 and initiated the first U.S. partner-tracing program for AIDS/HIV.

Stuart Brody, who has just accepted a full professorship in Psychology at University of Paisley in Scotland, has published over 100 scholarly publications, including a book called “Sex at Risk.” Economist and anthropologist David Gisselquist has almost 60 scholarly publications to his name and is currently advising the government of India on staunching its potentially explosive epidemic.

These renegades point out that a reason we know vaginal sex can’t be the risk in Africa it’s portrayed to be is that it hasn’t been much of one risk in the U.S. Here 12 percent of AIDS cases are “attributed to” heterosexual transmission, meaning they claimed to have gotten it that way. Of these, over a third are males.

Yet San Francisco epidemiologist Nancy Padian evaluated 72 male partners of HIV-infected women over several years, during which time only one man was infected. Even in that case, there were “several instances of vaginal and penile bleeding during intercourse.” So even the small U.S. heterosexual figure appears grossly exaggerated.

The chief reason it’s so hard to spread HIV vaginally is that, as biopsies of vaginal and cervical tissue show, the virus is unable to penetrate or infect healthy vaginal or cervical tissue. Various sexually transmitted diseases allow vaginal HIV infection, but even those appear to increase the risk only by about 2-4 times.

So if vaginal intercourse can’t explain the awful African epidemic, what can? Surely it’s not homosexuality, since we’ve been told there is none in Africa. In fact, the practice has long been widespread.

For example, German anthropologist Kurt Falk reported in the 1920s that bisexuality was almost universal among the male populations of African tribes he studied. Medical records also show that African men who insist they’re straighter than the proverbial arrow often suffer transmissible anorectal diseases.

Yet almost certainly greater – and more controllable – contributors to the African epidemic are “contaminated punctures from such sources as medical injections, dental injections, surgical procedures, drawing as well as injecting blood, and rehydration through IV tubes,” says Brody.

You don’t even need to go to a clinic to be injected with HIV: Almost two-thirds of 360 homes visited in sub-Saharan Africa had medical injection equipment that was apparently shared by family members. This, says Brody, can explain why both a husband and wife will be infected.

For those who care to look, there are many indicators that punctures play a huge role in the spread of disease. For example, during the 1990s HIV increased in Zimbabwe at approximately 12 percent annually, even as condom use increased and sexually transmitted infections rapidly fell.

Or consider that in a review of nine African studies, HIV prevalence in inpatient children ranged from 8.2% to 63% – as many as three times the prevalence in women who’d given birth. If the kids didn’t get the virus from their mothers or from sex, whence its origin? Investigations of large clinical outbreaks in Russia, Romania, and Libya demonstrate HIV can be readily transmitted through pediatric health care.

Good people can differ on exactly how much of the HIV in Africa is spread vaginally – including our three renegades themselves. Nevertheless, their findings readily belie the official figures. AIDS studies in Africa, Potterat says, are “First World researchers doing second rate science in Third World countries.”

There’s no one reason for the mass deception. In part, once people have established any paradigm it becomes much easier to justify than challenge.

“These guys are wearing intellectual blinders,” says Potterat. “Only a handful are even looking at routes other than sex. They have sex on the brain.” Other reasons:

● Grant money goes to those who follow the dictates of the paradigm, not to those challenging it. “Sex is sexy,” notes Potterat.
● There’s fear that blame for the epidemic will fall on the medical profession.
● To the extent vaginal sex does play a role in spreading the disease, there’s fear people will stop worrying about it.

Finally, says Brody, for researchers to concede they were wrong would be “to admit they’re complicit in mass death. That’s hard to admit that to yourself, much less to other people.” Hard, yes. And too late for many. But not too late for millions more in Africa and other underdeveloped nations – if we act now.

So what has been done in the above. The porn industry example was annihilated, the Africa example decimated, and the 10% myth blown apart, and the best available evidence puts AIDS as an epidemic in the bi-sexual, gay, and drug culture, except in Africa, where it is partly the medical fields issue as well. Why is this a problem with anal intercourse?

Homosexuals also continue to contract and spread other diseases at rates significantly higher that the community at large. These include syphilis, gonorrhea, herpes, hepatitis A and B, a variety of intestinal parasites including amebiases and giardiasis, and even typhoid fever (David G. Ostrow, Terry Alan Sandholzer, and Yehudi M. Felman, eds., Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Homosexual Men; see also, Sevgi O. Aral and King K. Holmes, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases in the AIDS Era,” Scientific American). This is because rectal intercourse or sodomy, typically practiced by homosexuals, is one of the most efficient methods of transmitting disease. Why? Because nature designed the human rectum for a single purpose: expelling waste from the body. It is built of a thin layer of columnar cells, different in structure than the plate cells that line the female reproductive tract. Because the wall of the rectum is so thin, it is easily ruptured during intercourse, allowing semen, blood, feces, and saliva to directly enter the bloodstream.

This is why any anal sex should be rejected even in hetero relationships/marriage.

Ahhh, just another day in the trenches… this one just a bit deeper than others.