The great civil liberties campaigner Peter Tatchell is, as I have noted before, not the greatest maths guru on earth. But Tatch is delighted with a new poll from America which, he argues, shows that the dictatorship of we straight folk over the oppressed LGBTQA+ community is drawing to a close. Well er… not really Tatch. Lies, damned lies and statistics and all that.
The Gallup poll showed that 86% of Americans identified as straight and 7.2% as LBTTQA, up from 7.1% last year. 7% refused to answer. Fifty years ago I’d have assumed many of the refuseniks were terrified closeted gays. These days I’d assume they were folks cheesed off with the woke agenda and thus straight. The bottom line, even if we pro-rata, is it is that the “dictatorship continues”.
Tatch takes heart from the poll showing that 19.7% of those of generation Z ( 19 to 26 year olds ticked the box. But of those 66% (as opposed to 58% of all ages) were bisexual and, as Tatch well knows, 90% of bisexual identifying folk appear to sleep only with folks of the opposite gender.
Thirty years ago it was different. But not today. So if we count the bis not by what they say but what they actually do, the surge in queerness among young folks disappears very dramatically, and the increase in those identifying as LGBTQA among the population as a whole, which was 3.5% in 2012, becomes very marginal indeed. As we consider what is taught in our schools or shown on TV it is not much of a dictatorship but for what it is worth, the real numbers, suggest that it is continuing.
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