Sent: Sunday,
June 14, 2009 12:21 PM
To: James
Cantor
Subject: the
10% statistic
Dear Jim,
I
was looking through your webpage & found where you said that that the 10%
of males are gay was incorrect & too lengthy to discuss. I can tell you
where the figure came from because I was there. It came out of the Gay Activist
Alliance (GAA) in the early 1970s. There was a Press or PR Committee headed by
Bruce Voeller and Ron Gold. Ron was an experienced PR man & Bruce a
researcher at Rockefeller. The media always wanted to know how many men were
homosexual. When Bruce would talk to them about statistics and sampling
problems, their eyes would glaze over. The press does not want to know about
sampling probabilities. So Bruce decided to tell them that 10% of males were
gay, since that was a neat and easily understood figure. It then became the
mantra of gay liberation. I’m sure that Bruce got 10% from somewhere in the
first Kinsey book, but can’t remember specifically where. Nor did anyone at the
time care how accurate it was. We were fighting for our rights and publicity
was extremely valuable to our cause.
I’ll
be at APA in Toronto & hope that we’ll get a chance to meet. I
enjoy both your good humor on the list-serve and your research – not
necessarily in that order.
Charles
Silverstein
212-799-8574
www.doctorsilverstein.com
