First published in the Chicago Free Press on November 2, 2005.
In mid-September, the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, released a 55-page study claiming that 4.1 percent of both men and women ages 18 to 44 labeled themselves homosexual or bisexual.
In addition, the survey found that 6 percent of men 15 to 44 have had oral or anal sex with another man and 11.2 percent of women 15 to 44 have had some sort of unspecified "sexual experience" with another women. For men age 25 to 44 the figure was 6.5 percent and for women 25 to 44 the figure was 10.7 percent.
Finally, the survey found that, depending on age group, between 2.6 and 3.3 percent of men have had oral or anal sex with another man in the last year and anywhere between 2.4 and 7.7 percent of women have had a "sexual experience" with another women in the last year.
As with most such surveys, the study made claims for its rigor and accuracy and was accepted uncritically by the mainstream press. It was, after all, based on information from 4,928 men and 7,643 women and derived "sensitive" information about sex by having respondents enter their answers into a laptop computer rather than telling the interviewer directly.
But careful analysis revealed ambiguities, inadequacies, inconsistencies and omissions.
The most obvious problem was that more than 20 percent of the people contacted refused to participate. Why did they refuse? A distrust of privacy assurances? Shyness about sex? A desire to cover up something? Although women generally tend to be more reticent about sex, a higher proportion of men (22 percent) than women (20 percent) refused to participate.
Another problem was that while only 4.1 percent of both men and women labeled themselves "homosexual" or "bisexual," almost the same number (3.8 to 3.9 percent) labeled themselves "something else" than either of those or "heterosexual."
No doubt some people, especially at lower educational levels, did not understand the terms homosexual, bisexual or heterosexual. Kinsey often pointed out that standardized questionnaires offer no way to clarify meaning or adapt language to the level of the respondent.
Then too, some people may insist on an affirmative term such as "gay" or "lesbian" rather than the clinical sounding "homosexual." Or they may prefer some argot term such as queer, kinky, swinger or polyamorous. Similarly, some African-Americans insist they are not gay, which they associate with whites or effeminacy, but say they are "down low" or "same-gender loving." This latter seems especially likely since a stunning 7.3 percent of Hispanic men and 7.5 percent of black men-more than three times the percentage of whites-said they were "something else."
Other black and Latino men think of sex with other men as just "having fun with friends" but insist that "sex" is only what you do with women, so they might actually think of themselves as heterosexual or "something else."
In addition, a much higher percentage of black (3.2 percent) and Latino men (3.5 percent) than white men (0.7 percent) refused to answer the sexual orientation question at all. So another disadvantage of questionnaires is that there is no way to pressure people to answer. But it is worth remembering that Kinsey pointed out long ago that if he met resistance anywhere it was when he reached questions about homosexuality.
Then there was the problem that the survey asked men only about the disease-transmitting behavior of oral and anal sex, but asked women about any "any sexual experience" at all with another woman-which could include kissing, "making out," body rubbing, or masturbation with a partner.
The study does not explain why it was so much more interested in any sort of female same-sex eroticism. But by refusing to include analogous male same-sex body rubbing, interfemoral (intercrural) sex and masturbation with a partner, the latter a common enough activity among some gay men, the survey artificially depressed the quantity of gay sex, the number of gay men and, accordingly, its reliability as an index of sexual behavior.
There were other problems too. If the survey wanted to find out how many gays there were or how much homosexuality there was, why ask if people had engaged in same-sex sex at least once-which could mean just once or a very few times? Asking, as the survey does, about same-sex sex in the last year is a little more relevant, but you would think the survey would ask something about how frequently with how many partners. But no.
And what about the 23 percent of the self-defined "homosexual" men who said they were attracted only to women? Kinsey would never have let anyone get away with such an obvious contradiction. Did they mean they like women better as friends, or are attractive to women, or want to be attracted to women, or are attracted to the idea of being women? Who knows? With a standardized computer questionnaire, no one could notice the discrepancy at the time and find out.
This is what the CDC offers as state of the art sex research.