I don't believe we'll know "what percentage are really gay" because the word, the identity, and the activity have quite fluid meanings.
Those meanings have changed over time. They still vary from person to person, in different contexts, communities, places, and so on.
I skimmed through the report and saw a description of the actual survey:
Quote:
The first of the four cascading sexual orientation questions that were included in the 2013 NHIS, which is asked of all sample adults aged 18 and over, reads, "Which of the following best represents how you think of yourself?" It has five response options, which vary slightly by respondent sex.
For male respondents, they are:- Gay,
- Straight, that is, not gay,
- Bisexual,
- Something else, and
- I don’t know the answer.
For female respondents, the response options are:- Lesbian or gay,
- Straight, that is, not lesbian or gay,
- Bisexual,
- Something else, and
- I don’t know the answer.
Respondents who answered "something else" or "I don’t know the answer" were asked one or more follow-up question(s) to provide additional information on their sexual orientation. However, data from these follow-up questions were not used in this report, and the questions will not be included in NHIS starting in 2015 (see forthcoming methodology report for more information). Although not an explicit response option, respondents could refuse to provide an answer to any of these questions.
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The survey allows people not only to lie, of course, but it provides no definitions for the answers. Whether in the 1950s closet or the 2010s down low, there's a lot of men who have sex with men who do not call themselves gay or bisexual. Some, but not all, have aspects of a gay identity which is different from same-sex sexual activity.
I don't believe that anyone who does not have a very strong sense of themselves as being gay (not "queer" or "genderqueer" or "qestioning" or...)
and also out, to themselves and others is going to choose "gay" or "lesbian" as the answer.
Anecdote: I was a census-taker in 1980 going from house to house to interview people who had not mailed in their 1980 Census forms. I remember one lady who emphatically insisted that I list her race as "Other" and write in "Chicana." My boss was equally insistent that he was not Mexican-American, he was "Castilian" because he claimed his family was purely descended from the Spanish. I didn't ask if he was "White" for the Census. People are who they say they are, not the classifications scientists and demographers want to apply to them.
So. If the survey respondents' lives are segmented, as many people's are, they'll probably say they're straight regardless of who or how many of whatever gender or identity they have some type of sex. (Some people say, "Oral sex isn't sex." To me, any touch, action, speech, or even look - voyeurs, anyone? - that brings sexual gratification is sex. I have a broad definition. And I digress...)
Then there's the whole change in Western cultures, mingling gay and straight and everything else more and more.
I could rattle on and on, wondering if I should be a writer instead of running web sites, but I'm
behind on work as usual. Countering that, I have so many emergencies and unplanned events causing stress that writing seems to alleviate. Running CFS, at least I finally have something to write
about, a lack which had stymied me since my college years.
On to work...
~ Bob