The 10 percent problem.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Unplugged - Gay movement - Viewpoint essay

Uh, about that 10 percent. For as long as I can remember, the gay movement has proudly proclaimed that we're 10 percent of the population. Ten was a nice round number, easy to work with, looked good on protest signage, and was--it turns out--totally wrong.

I don't know how the 10 percent thing got started. It was probably Alfred Kinsey or Liam Neeson.

Here's what I think happened. An early gay or lesbian pioneer, say Frank Kameny or Barbara Gittings, was being interviewed, and was asked vet again some version of the snarky, "So what is the population of this so-called gay community?" They were probably tired from working fulltime jobs by day and doing organizing by night, so Barbara of Frank looked the hostile reporter right in the eye and answered authoritatively, "The gay population is 10 per cent of the general population." The figure stuck. And it was great branding.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender movement has come a long way since Barbara Gittings's Daughters of Bilitis, and Frank Kameny's Mattachine Society. We have wonderful sociologists, historians, statisticians, and endowed institutes dedicated to producing high-quality LGBT research. A recent study from the Williams Institute estimates that the percentage of adults in the United States who identify as L, G, or B is 3.5 percent. The percentage who identify as Transgender is 0.3 percent. That brings our combined LGBT total to 3.8 percent of 9 million LGBT Americans, roughly equivalent to the population of New Jersey. But don't tell Governor Chris Christie. He'll refuse more federal funds.

As you might imagine with such a downgrade the traditional family values folks are having a nonstop gloat fest. The exodus ex-gay movement is claiming full responsibility. Jerry Falwell might even come back!

Many LGBT critics complain that the new figures play into the hands of the fundamentalists, ignoring the fact that everything does: natural disasters, high school proms, bathrooms.

The Williams Institute survey and others show two of the challenges of getting accurate LGBT numbers. First is the...