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How many gays are there? It's a question that has roiled gays, homophobes and statisticians but now the British government says it has the answer.

It isn't ten percent as most gay activists have maintained for decades.  It isn't the one percent that most anti-gay groups claim.  It's six percent according to number crunchers in the British Treasury. And that's official.  At least as far as the government is concerned.

The Treasury wanted to find out what the impact of Britain's new civil partnership law might be. After all the Treasury wanted to know what the impact would be on the economy since the new law gives domestic partners rights in areas such as tax, pensions and inheritance - all impacting on tax revenues.

Using actuarial tables and estimates supplied by the Department of Trade and Industry the civil service set out to "scientifically guestimate" the number gays in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Trade and Industry said its own surveys showed 1.5 million to two million gay men, lesbians and bisexuals in the 30 million-strong workforce.  The numbers were then applied to actuarial tables to figure how many gays were not in the workforce - either because they were school, retired, or unemployed. 

The result: 3.6 million gay and lesbian Britons out of a total population of just under 60 million people.

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Originally posted by Michelle:
My question is, who gives a damn? I mean, I guess it's nice to know for interest's sake, but when it comes to the impact of gay civil unions (ick) on the treasury, who cares? That should play no part in the government's reasoning for gay marriage one way or the other.

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The *actual* potential red flag I see here is the use of actuarial tables, etc. I'm really not convinced of that methodology for the study of demographics, but I also admit that I haven't yet had the opportunity to know enough to totally discredit it either so.....

[ 11 December 2005: Message edited by: kurichina ]

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Originally posted by kurichina:
But if he are to give them the (admittedly very large) benefit of the doubt and say they will implement it, then knowing the numbers could ease planning.

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[ 11 December 2005: Message edited by: kurichina ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
My question is, who gives a damn? I mean, I guess it's nice to know for interest's sake, but when it comes to the impact of gay civil unions (ick) on the treasury, who cares?

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An agreement on general principle from The Scotsman:

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Who cares if police walk the pink beat?

IT may be that there are millions of the general public who have a burning desire to know what proportion of the police force is gay.

But I can't recall anyone being that interested. Regardless, the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland are to ask all 15,000 officers and civilian staff if they are homosexual and if they have suffered any discrimination.
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The question is, why do they want to hire more homosexuals in the first place and what difference will it make?
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I can understand the desire to make the police force appear representative of the community.
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But you can't "see" if a police officer is gay... well, not unless he's done a Rocky Horror remodelling job on his uniform and he pulls his notebook out of a pink sequined handbag.
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On duty, whether they are the palest Caucasian Scottish white or from some other ethnic group, we expect them to conduct themselves like police officers and, yes, that often does require some macho posturing and a commanding presence. Mincing doesn't usually cut it with the boys from the 'hood.
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With the exception of rent boys soliciting, it's difficult to even think of any criminal area where insider gay knowledge would be an asset in fighting crime. Most gay people I know are exceptionally law-abiding.

If the idea is to make the gay community feel included, a simple poster campaign saying the force welcomes gay recruits would have done the trick.

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Is everyone else heterosexual?

What if you never had sex, or haven't had sex in a many years? Are you considered straight?

Are Priests counted as straight?

If your last sexual experience was gay, and you haven't had sexual activity for the last 5 years, are you still gay?

If you had one gay experience and 200 straight experiences, are you gay? If you had 200 gay experiences and one straight experience are you straight?

As long as these figures are just being used for actuarial information to plan for government social programs, then I suppose it's something that can be useful, but as a measure used to determine anything else, I think it's pretty well a "besides the point" kind of thing.

[ 12 December 2005: Message edited by: No Yards ]