Tag Archives: Number

News

New Gallup poll finds that Americans overestimate gay population

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This is from Joe Carter at First Thoughts.

Excerpt:

Let’s take a survey: Are Americans (a) really bad at estimating, (b) really gullible, (c) both really gullible and really bad at estimating? After seeing the results of this Gallup survey, I think the answer is obvious:

U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25% of Americans are gay or lesbian. More specifically, over half of Americans (52%) estimate that at least one in five Americans are gay or lesbian, including 35% who estimate that more than one in four are. Thirty percent put the figure at less than 15%.

As the Gallup articles points out, demographer Gary Gates recently released a review of population-based surveys on the topic which found 1.7% of Americans identify as lesbian or gay and another 1.8% (mostly women) identify as bisexual. Yet, as economist Karl Smith notes, “most Americans believe that there are significantly more gays and lesbians than blacks (12.6%) or Hispanics (16.3%) and 35% of Americans believe there are as many or more gays than Catholics (~25%).”

Why do Americans think there are so many gays in the U.S.? Maybe they are basing their estimations on what they see on television.

At the launch of the 2010-2011 television season, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) examined the five broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, The CW, Fox, and NBC) and found that 41 characters on 84 programs were homosexual. An additional 53 homosexual characters appeared on 30 scripted cable programs. That’s a total of 94 characters on the 114 shows that were counted.

Yipes. The actual number has to be 2-3% or something like that.

You can see more of the results here.

Polemics

Which types of unions have the highest rates of divorce?

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A quiz for you, from Ruth Blog.

Question:

Same sex couples have had the legal right to form domestic partnerships in several European countries.  Denmark was the first to introduce registered partnerships, in 1989. Norway was second, in 1993, then Sweden in 1995. Data from 2 of these landmark countries, Norway and Sweden, as well as California,  have been studied enough to answer this question:

What types of unions have the highest rates of divorce?

  • Opposite sex married couples: men and women are so different, it is a wonder they ever stay married.
  • Male unions: men are naturally less committed, and less monogamous, so their partnerships don’t endure.
  • Female unions: women get so emotionally distraught over things. A union of two women, without any male counter-balancing their roller-coaster, is very unstable.

Hint: the answer is the same in all three countries!

And here’s the answer:

Female unions seem to have the highest divorce rates, followed by male unions, followed by opposite sex unions.

“For Sweden, the divorce risk for partnerships of men is 50% higher than the risk for heterosexual marriages, and that the divorce risk for female partnerships is nearly double that for men.”

“For Norway, divorce risks are 77% higher in lesbian partnerships than in those of gay men.”  (The Norwegian data did not include a comparison with opposite sex couples.)

In California, the data is collected a little differently. The study looks at couples who describe themselves as partners, whether same sex or opposite sex. The study asks the question, how likely is it that these couples live in the same household five years later. Male couples were only 30% as likely, while female couples were less that 25% as likely, as heterosexual married couples, to be residing in the same household for five years.

The only contradictory data I have found to this pattern is from the Netherlands. In the Dutch data, same sex couples have a 3.15 times greater dissolution rate than opposite sex cohabiting couples, and a 3.15 x 3.66 or 11.5 times greater dissolution rate than opposite married couples. But, female couples seem to be more stable than male couples.

Do you know what else is bad for relationships? Premarital sex and cohabitation. And that’s not my opinion, those are the facts. (See the studies below) Either we are going to get serious about constraining our selfish behavior to protect children from instability, or worse, or children are going to suffer. When adults substitute their own selfish ideologies for God’s design for marriage, children suffer.

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News

More details from that new study on the benefits of delaying sex

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Remember that study I wrote about on Christmas Eve?

It was also reported on by Fox News, but with more details. (H/T Mysterious C)

Excerpt:

In the new study, Busby and his colleagues looked specifically at timing of sexual relations. They recruited 2,035 heterosexual individuals who had an average age of 36 and were in their first marriages. Participants reported when they first had sexual relations with their current spouse; they also answered communication questions, which evaluated how well they could express empathy and understanding toward their partners, how well they could send clear messages to their partners, and other questions.

Other items on the questionnaire focused on relationship satisfaction and stability, with the latter gauged by three questions: how often they thought their relationship was in trouble; how often they thought of ending the relationship; and how often they had broken up and gotten back together.

Individuals were categorized as either having:
• Early sex (before dating or less than one month after they started dating).
• Late sex (between one month and two years of dating).
• And those who waited until after they married.

Relationships fared better and better the longer a person waited to have sex, up until marriage, with those hitting the sack before a month showing the worst outcomes.

Compared with those in the early sex group, those who waited until marriage:
• Rated relationship stability as 22 percent higher
• Rated relationship satisfaction as 20 percent higher
• Rated sexual quality as 15 percent better
• Rated communication as 12 percent better

“Curiously, almost 40 percent of couples are essentially sexual within the first or second time they go out, but we suspect that if you asked these same couples at this early stage of their relationship – ‘Do you trust this person to watch your pet for a weekend many could not answer this in the affirmative’ – meaning they are more comfortable letting people into their bodies than they are with them watching their cat,” Busby said.

He added that those couples who wait to be sexual have time to figure out how trustworthy their partner is, how well they communicate, and whether they share the same values in life “before the powerful sexual bonding short-circuits their decision-making abilities.”

That’s why I always encourage men to remain chaste before marriage. You do not want to have your decision-making capabilities ruined by sex. Not in a climate where a woman can divorce you and take you to the cleaners. And you also want to avoid harming women by making them commit physically and then breaking up – that turns them into nasty vengeful feminists, and God knows we don’t need any more of those… Not only that, but if there are children involved, you definitely do not want to be wrecking their lives with an unstable union entered into when you were not in your right mind. And lastly, you want to avoid harming yourself by turning yourself into the kind of person that uses people (even if they want to be used) and then just abandons them. It will mess up your ability to have close friendships and to love other people self-sacrificially.