The following writing contains math concepts. Do not be afraid.
They will make sense when we’re done. We promise.
Understanding the truth is not always simple.
The problem is, sometimes it is.
When my daughter tells me she has taken a bath when she hasn’t, that isn’t the truth. And knowing that she’s not telling me the truth is simple, too; she kind of smells funny.
Same for when my middle school students tell me they’ve turned in an assignment and they haven’t. If it’s not in my inbox, they’re not telling me the truth. (The often smell funny, too, but that’s not related to their papers.)
Not everything, sadly, is so simple. If my daughter elects to decide “taken a bath” means sometime in the last week, then I guess she is telling the month. If my middle schoolers decide “turned in the assignment” means instead, “I did it,” and it’s still sitting in their backpack, that also could be called the truth.
Whether or not an answer is the truth depends in large part on how you define the question.
Believe it or not, I am kind of OK with this. It’s a sign we’re human. Animals have to make things black and white; if they don’t they get eaten and die. Humans, actually having consciences and other advanced thought patterns, are able to see beyond the obvious and think for ourselves.
This is an enormous pain in the butt.
I mention this in the light of Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson’s comments on promiscuity: “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”(1)
Now, the truth here -- or lack there of -- about bestiality is simple: There is no link between bestiality and homosexuality. (For more on this see last week’s Unbroken Raina Thought, “Duck Dynasty: Faith, facts and the difference everyone seems to miss.”(2))
On the matter of promiscuity, however, the truth is not so clean cut.
As always in these types of debates there’s a lot of non-scientific evidence to support both sides. According to the New York Times, hardly a bastion of gay-bashing: “New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about (half) of those surveyed have sex outside their relationships, with the knowledge and approval of their partners.”(3)
For those who would claim LGBT people are more promiscuous, this is pretty good ammunition. True, the relationships chronicled in the NY Times story don’t strictly reflect
“many transient sexual relationships,” as Google defines promiscuity.(4) For most people, however, sex outside of one’s committed relationship is promiscuous.
On the other hand, a survey of users from OkCupid, the United Kingdom’s largest dating website, found “only a one percentage point difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals in their promiscuity: 98% of gay people have had 20 or fewer sexual partners; 99% of straight people have had the same number.”(5)
Gays are promiscuous! Wait, they’re not! Everybody happy now?
I suppose if all you want to do is confirm your own bias, either of these would be enough. When my daughter tells me she’s had a bath and yet smells funny, I’m occasionally willing to believe her. It just depends on how miserable my day has been.
Bathing my daughter is one thing, unimpeachable data is another. As someone who’s always looking for actual unimpeachable data to support my ideas, these aren’t enough. Especially when a glance at the data suggests Phil Robertson could be right:
** MATH ALERT **
Just remember!
8 Percent is about 1 in 10, 20 percent is one in five,
25 percent is one in four and 35 percent is about 1 in 3
“20 percent of homosexuals said they had had 51-300 different sex partners in their lifetime, with an additional 8 percent having had more than 300… The total of homosexual males in this study reporting more than 50 sex partners in their lifetime is 35.4 percent,” according to a survey in the Aug. 15, 2006 of The Advocate.”(6)
I found these numbers hard to believe, and when the only place I could find them was on anti-LGBT websites I wanted to disbelieve them. However, having looked at the actual physical pages from the Aug. 15, 2006 issue of The Advocate -- a leading LGBT rights publication -- I can tell you these are actual numbers.
More, according to FactsAboutYouth.com, studies revealed in 1982, “the average non-monogamous respondent in San Francisco reported having about 4 partners per month in 1984...In more recent years, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has reported an upswing in promiscuity, at least among young homosexual men in San Francisco. From 1994 to 1997, the percentage of homosexual men reporting multiple partners and unprotected anal sex rose from 23.6 percent to 33.3 percent.”(7)
I have to admit, I found these numbers shocking, as they don’t conform to the LGBT people I know. I wanted to dismiss them, as indeed a lot of people do: “LGB (lesbian, gay and bisexual) people are neither more nor less sexually promiscuous than heterosexuals… There are many myths about LGB people and labels that have been given to this population that are false. These myths and labels generally do not come out of fact, but out of people’s prejudices, hate, ignorance, and fear.”(8)
Unfortunately, just saying it doesn’t make it so, even when it is on a website like TeenHealthFX, which I’ve usually found to be pretty decent. It’s about what can be proven, not just what can be proselytized. Just because Phil Robertson does it doesn’t mean we should.
As I mentioned before, these numbers seemed completely contrary to my own personal experience, and as I dug into the data I began to understand why. For one thing, the study I quoted earlier, from FactsAboutYouth, talked only to men who were open and out, which in the 1990’s was still a pretty small set of people.
I wondered if the study was conducted today, where more people are comfortable and out with their LGBT status, if those numbers would go down. A 2000 survey in Australia suggests they would: “Men who were associated with the gay community were nearly four times as likely to have had more than 50 sex partners in the six months preceding the survey as men who were not associated with the gay community.”(7)
More interesting, however, was how the data in these surveys broke down. It turns out those averages aren’t so average at all, as you have a very small number of people doing a very large number of, well, people.
“There is a small number of gay men who accumulate an extremely large number of partners. For instance, if we look at the median number of sex partners in the National Health and Social Life Survey (a nationally representative sex survey conducted in the United States), we see that gay men only outpace heterosexual men by one. Thus, the majority of gay and heterosexual men are actually pretty similar in this regard.”(9)
** MATH ALERT **
Have no idea what the difference between “median” and “average” is?
See citation No.10!
Other evidence backs this up as well. The aforementioned OkCupid survey showed that just 2 percent of gay people that were having 23 percent of the total reported gay sex.(5)
So what does this all mean? Are LGBT people more promiscuous or not? Evidence seems to suggest they are, if just a tiny bit. But are they as promiscuous as dozens of anti-LGBT media operations would like you to believe? Not even close.
And that’s the -- non-simple -- truth.
References:
1) 'Duck Dynasty' Star Phil Robertson Makes Anti-Gay Remarks, Says Being Gay Is A Sin [UPDATED]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/duck-dynasty-phil-robertson-gay_n_4465564.html
2) RainaBowe.Weebly.com: Duck Dynasty: Faith, facts and the difference everyone seems to miss.
http://rainabowe.weebly.com/2/post/2013/12/duck-dynasty-faith-facts-and-the-difference-everyone-seems-to-miss.html
3) The New York Times: Many Successful Gay Marriages Share an Open Secret
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/us/29sfmetro.html?_r=0
4) Google, definition: Promiscuity
https://www.google.com/search?q=definition%3A+promiscuous&oq=definition%3A+promiscuous&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.3746j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8
4a) No, I am not in favor of letting ignorance about the actual meaning of the word carry the day. But let’s face it: Having sexual partners outside of marriage fits most people’s everyday definition of promiscuous. If you’re going to change people’s minds about things, you have to meet them where they are.
5) The Guardian: So you think gay men are promiscuous?
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/oct/19/gay-men-promiscuous-myth
6) Americans for Truth: Are ‘Gay’ Men More Promiscuous than Straights?
http://americansfortruth.com/2006/09/28/promiscuity-among-homosexuals/
7) Facts About Youth: Promiscuity
http://factsaboutyouth.com/posts/promiscuity/
8) TeenHealthFX: Are Homosexuals More Likely To Be Promiscuous Than Heterosexuals?
http://www.teenhealthfx.com/answers/sexuality+sexual+health/48377
9) Political Stew: gays are more promiscuous, and other myths
http://www.politicalstew.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=111701
10) Have no idea what the difference between median and is average is?
The MEDIAN of a set of numbers is that number where half the numbers are lower and half the numbers are higher. The AVERAGE of a set of numbers is the total of those numbers divided by the number of items in that set. The median and the average could be equal, or they might not be. It all depends on which numbers you’re using.
For instance:
Here are 11 fictional people interviewed on their hypothetical number of sexual partners:
Person 1: 1
Person 2: 2
Person 3: 4
Person 4: 6
Person 5: 7
Person 6: 8
Person 7: 10
Person 8: 15
Person 9: 20
Person 10: 150
Person 11: 300
The MEDIAN number of partners for these 11 people is 9. Five people had fewer partners than 8, five people had more partners than 8. The AVERAGE number of partners for these 11 people is 47.5. That's what you get if you add up all those numbers of sexual partners and divide by 11. Obviously, a HUGE difference, yet both numbers are accurate, though only one, I would submit, reflects the truth.
(See, I told you it would make sense when we were done.)