comment: >
  
  My grandpa would have liked me more if I were gay.  :/
context: Shocking to absolutely nobody, Brighton & Hove has the highest percentage. >
  
  And having been there 10% still seems very high. It's gay af but it didn't seem like that queer. >
  
  It's about the same 3-3.5% reported for most human population studies. Except in Russia. There are no gay people in Russia. >
  
  ‘Everybody Lies’ has some interesting analysis of homosexuality by state. Surveys show lower percentages in gay-unfriendly states, even when looking at under-18s. Analyzing search data shows consistent percentages across all states.
  The big difference: in gay-unfriendly states more marriages end over partner sexuality than in gay-friendly states. So the anti-gay policies ruin ‘traditional’ families. That’s some proper irony. >
  
  I'm old and I've always believed that everybody lies about sex. >
  
  It's the American in me but something about tracking and counting my people puts me on edge which is pretty ironic since I was a census enumerator during the 2020 census.  (I did read the article so I'm aware this is in the U.K.) >
  
  Given that Texas just compiled a list of persons that have applied for a different sex on their official records it is a reasonable concern.
  Source >
  
  Y... you know census data is a thing, right? It's pretty regular to track demographics. You can do it without storing identifying information of the people you're censusing. >
  
  The requested list they're talking about wasn't census data, it was a literal list of names with addresses etc of those who applied for a marker change on their drivers licenses and other documents
  In Texas 
  What do you think the government in fucking Texas wanted to do with a literal list of trans peoples names and adresses? >
  
  What do you think they wanted to do with the list? >
  
  Are you aware of all the anti-trans legislation in Texas? They're extremely set on effectively removing every trans person from ever existing publicly in that state. Get out or get back in the closet type stuff. If they had their way, transness itself would be criminalized.
  What do you think a government like that would do with a list of trans people who have managed to change their official documents? These are people who aren't "legally" identifiable as trans anymore, meaning their anti-trans legislation wouldn't be able to target them properly. What do you think they'd want a list like that for? >
  
  Texas - the small government leaders...so small they can crawl into everyone's bed.    Yeah,  it is going to get worse in 2023...one guy has already proposed legislation that says life begins at fertilization.  :-( >
  
  yeah that's a whole other thing that is genuinely just harming people over there.
  They'll push themselves further and further into both your bedroom and between you and your doctor. >
  
  Interesting, Netflix always had me believe it's more like 20-30% (it's a joke, don't kill me). >
  
  The over-representation is definitely over done. >
  
  Right, except... how many protagonists are gay? Less than 1% I reckon. It's always a side character whose only function is to come in every now and then for comic effect and is also stereotypical AF.
  Even gay main characters are rare. Also, J.K. Rowling's
  "actually this main character was always gay" doesn't count. >
  
  There is absolutely no reference to Dumbledores sexuality in any Harry Potter media before her coming to that conclusion. >
  
  Both of those things indicating he was gay were written before she stated Dumbeldore was gay in a speech for the first time.
  I'm sorry, but you would have to be intentionally ignoring it not to recognise the high heeled boots and him banging grindelwald as being very obvious references. The grindelwald one in particular, no other character got such a thing in a series of books almost entirely devoid of reference to sex.
  I feel like this is a reddit and twitter thing, where people read that there was no reference to him being gay prior to JK stating it, and just accept it as scientific fact without actually looking it up themselves and it just gets passed along over and over and over as a self-sustaining falsehood. >
  
  Raising a white flag ain't gay, and neither is wearing heeled boots. >
  
  You are intentionally ignoring the reference then.
  Which sounds like a you problem more than a Dumbledore problem tbh, especially as OP himself agreed with me that these are references indicating Dumbledore is gay. >
  
  Is OP the author of the Harry Potter books? No? Then why does anything they say matter more than anything I say?
  I've read the books and I know the exact parts you're referring to, they don't indicate anything about Dumbledore sexuality, at best his interactions with Grindelwald suggest a friendship, but a lack of explicit mention means that it's probably safe to assume that the author, who is a big ol' transphobe, probably didn't intend for the character to be gay until it was marketable. >
  
  People need to remember that the figures aren't yet broken down by age. I expect the figure for younger people to be much higher. Even though this is the UK, don't forget that prior to 2003, you could still legally be arrested in certain parts of the US for having gay sex. LGBTQ rights have changed night and day over the course of many individuals' lives. I'm sure there are a lot of older people in the closet with families and children who will never come out or ID themselves, not to mention older people who (due to internalized homophobia) think that wanting to bang their same-sex BFF somehow doesn't make them gay. >
  
  I’m also interested in the proportion breakdown of the various identities within each age cohort. Gallup polling data in the US has shown that roughly half of Gen Z LGBT people self identify as bisexual, while less than a quarter of GenX and up do. Furthermore, a far larger percentage of young bisexuals have had primary or only romantic relations with members of the opposite sex compared with older bisexuals. >
  
  Dropping this here for anyone who needs an interactive map of the statistics. >
  
  Basically under 3% of the population admits in the UK.  I wonder how much higher it is due to closet cases? >
  
  Who dear, me dear, gay dear, no dear. How very dare you. >
  
  Read this in Stephen Fry’s voice for additional ironic hilarity. >
  
  
  "The data will not, on its own, address issues negatively impacting many LGBT people such as the cost-of-living crisis, access to healthcare and affordable housing," he said. "It must be understood as the first step in a longer project of change."
  
  Everyone is struggling with all of those things. I don't get it. >
  
  Seems low, but the ~7% that didn't answer and 6% that didn't disclose (was that a separate choice?) likely differ in  breakdown compared to the overall info (i'm sure some did so as they didn't agree it should be a question, but suspect higher portions of people identifying with typically oppressed options would fall into those categories. >
  
  If I remember correctly it was an optional question and one of the answers if you did answer it was 'prefer not to say' >
  
  According to Netflix, there's one in 8. >
  
  I think "did not answer" is also quite telling.. >
  
  I'm straight and i allways pick that >
  
  Recently, I did one of those little online surveys that pops up and ask you endless questions if you just keep on answering them. In one of the sets of questions, it asked about how the respondents identify. Roughly 10% of them fit into LGBT. You get better results when people think there is absolutely no way they can be connected to their answers. Considering how many gay people I know, it did not surprise me in the least. >
  
  I think most people would absolutely say the opposite, if there is no way to tie them to results. People are more likely to lie or pick quick answers to get through it faster >
  
  I’m not sure I explained well enough. Clearly with 5 downvotes, at least five people did not understand what I said. Of course I got downvotes, it’s Reddit. 
  It’s a multiple-choice question. Clicking on heterosexual, gay, trans, whatever, all take the same amount of time. You don’t save any time saying you’re gay when you’re not. If you really want to save time, don’t do stupid little online surveys where there is no compensation for your answers. I do them because I like to see the results, and it gives me something to do when I’m sitting in chemotherapy for four hours, which doesn’t involve reading news. I feel bad enough getting chemo therapy once a week without immersing myself in bad news. Surveys are pretty harmless as an amusement. Plus, I take a professional interest in them.
  I do a lot of safety culture and organizational culture surveying for work, and I’ve seen what happens when we do not emphasize the anonymity of the results. The less anonymity people have, the more likely they are to tailor their responses to what they think a surveyor wants to hear, and to what they feel will not get them in trouble with their boss, because these are all work related surveys. These surveys are not worth the paper they’re printed on because people are not candid or honest with their answers. 
  When we assure complete privacy, and explain how we manage that privacy, we get results back which not only track closer to what we understand is the truth, but also often elaborate personal notes are attached to those responses in which people basically spill their guts for us. 
  For example, I recently did a follow up survey at a company. The first survey had been done less than a year before. Someone from the safety department of the company had taken my form and just passed it out to groups and telling them to complete it. The results were obviously pencil-whipped. Some people completed the survey by drawing a line down through the most positive responses. There wasn’t a single additional comment on any of the returned surveys. 
  When I came out to redo the surveys a year later, I explained very carefully that I did not work for the company, and there were no personal identifiers on the forms. I explained that I would put the surveys into an envelope, seal it up, take it back to my office, turn the results into some graphs and charts, and drop the surveys into the shredder. That way, when I share the results with the company, they wouldn’t even be able to see the employees’ handwriting. I’ve never seen a group of employees unload so much hostility on their company and on the safety department in my whole career. Some of them filled in the entire back of the survey page with paragraphs of detailed incidents over the years which had turned them sour on their employer. This very disgruntled bunch of people belong to a union, and they were well paid, but they have not been happy for at least a decade. That’s what anonymity gets you: honesty. Without anonymity, don’t expect people to tell the truth. With anonymity, you might learn a few things. >
  
  They did include asexuality. From the article:
  
  Of those who selected "other sexual orientation":
  
  112,000 (0.23%) identified as pansexual
  28,000 (0.06%) described themselves as asexual
  15,000 (0.03%) said they were queer
  10,000 (0.02%) wrote in a different sexual orientation >
  
  no thanks, my life is not a bargaining chip >
  
  No worries I was half joking as well >
  
  I understand the need for an illustration but that picture doesn’t even seem to fit since I feel like anyone who looks like anyone can cuddle w anyone nowadays and it’s not judged as it used to be. >
  
  Census data reveals LGBT+ populations for first time... by way of a personal letter to each of your grandparents