WHERE ANGELS FEAR TO TREAD... II...

The Unrequited Bear said...

I'm always suspicious of data or statistics. I also need my calculator to keep up with your numbers! LOL.
Defining gay is also tricky. In my estimation, I'd say sexual orientation is truly a bell curve, perhaps leaning slightly towards straight, but when it comes to check the box, 90% choose the straight box because few will admit to be gay or have gay leanings openly and thus define this data.

BearMan:

I am not attempting to define "gay" -- God knows I haven't even been able to do it for myself, so how could I even THINK about tackling society at large?

No, what I am saying is that we can for the purposes of discussion put Kinsey [with his subterranean reasons for inflating the number of people who qualified as "gay" in one way or another] at one end of the scale, and the Big Bad Conservative Researchers at the other end. That yields us supposedly learned "guesstimates" of 2-10%. [Can we compromise at 6% for argument's sake? My own hunch is that we're right there with Jews, at 2-3%.]

Of course you need a calculator to follow the numbers -- how do you think I came up with them???

My argument on this issue is that even if we take the figures that make gay men look MOST interested in something resembling marriage, you get a figure of about one in six REAL VERMONT GAY MEN, and that is without even taking into consideration that the three first years HAVE to be at least in part clearing a "back-log" of folks who would have done it earlier if they could have [so it might be one in nine, one in twelve...] If you take the Kinsey figure [which I don't, being a BBCR kind of guy], you get a selection of fewer than one in TWENTY FIVE. And if we take a middle position [say, 6%], we get a selection of one in SIXTEEN.

There are two points here: the shouting match that is threatening to tear the country apart is about a microscopic issue, when we have HUGE issues on the table, like the fact that one in six Americans [almost 50 million people!] don't have basic health insurance, just for starters, not to mention the Incredible Ballooning Deficit, which our grandchildren will still be paying off when they die, or the countries that begin with "A" and "I". Now, call me paranoid, but I don't think this is an accident. Who is wooing whom with the inflation of this issue? What makes people so desperate to insert their heads so far into such a warm, dark place that they can't see the forest for the one tree they're obsessed with? This goes for people on all sides of the "issue" -- a pox on ALL their houses, say I.

And I am damned if I can remember the second point, UB. Maybe tomorrow, after I finally, really and truly finish my taxes... But don't hold your breath.