What Happened to Ten Percent?

In his latest rant, Andrew Sullivan urges Kathryn Jean Lopez to “come clean” and admit that opposing gay marriage “necessitates marginalization and second class citizenship.”

Sullivan wrote of marriage: “We are not redefining it. We are making it available for the tiny minority of human beings and citizens who otherwise have no secure legal or social protection for their relationships.”

Tiny minority? What happened to the oft quoted ten percent of humans being gay? Because ten percent is certainly not a tiny minority. It seems that the infamous ten percent number may not be as hard and fast as the media would’ve liked us to believe. When the gay agenda changes, do demographics change as well?

In an essay published in 1993 in The New Republic, Sullivan himself referred to homosexuals as “a sizable and inextinguishable part of society.”

Sizable or tiny, Andrew? Which is it? It seems the answer may be whichever is convenient at the time.

The Family Research Institute quotes both Newsweek and Fortune Magazine using the infamous ten percent number from the Kinsey Report as well as many homosexual activists.

1. Newsweek, 2/15/93, p. 46: “For years, the gay-rights movement has sought safety in numbers. Its leaders have long claimed that homosexuals constitute 10 percent of the American population. They cited Alfred Kinsey, who interviewed thousands of men and women for landmark studies on human sexuality in the 1940s and 1950s. Activists seized on the double digits to strengthen their political message–that millions of citizens are excluded from the mainstream by anti-gay discrimination. Policymakers and the press (including NEWSWEEK) adopted the estimate–despite protests from skeptical conservatives–citing it time and again.

2. Fortune, 1991, p. 42: “Kinsey’s classic 1948 studies suggest that about 10% of American adults are homosexual, a figure that more recent surveys support.”…

3. Cathy Renna, co-chairwoman of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, said, “I feel the 10 percent figure is probably about right’ because many homosexuals fear to admit their sexual orientation.”

But some even admit now that they knew that number wasn’t accurate but used it anyway. In Newsweek: “Some gay activists now concede that they exploited the Kinsey estimate for its tactical value, not its accuracy. ‘We used that figure when most gay people were entirely hidden to try to create an impression of our numerousness,’ says Tom Stoddard, former head of the Lambda Legal Defense Fund.”

Now some, like Sullivan, obviously believe it’ll help their cause if gays constitute a smaller number so they start minimizing the number with words like “tiny.” Is this science? Nah. It’s sophistry. It’s politics.