Counting again

Further to my previous posts about the various attempts that have been made to count the number of gay (and generically queer) people in different countries, this recent news out of England about its 2021 census seems to have attracted little attention:

• The census question on sexual orientation was a voluntary question asked of those aged 16 years and over.
• In total, 44.9 million people (92.5% of the population aged 16 years and over) answered the question.
• Around 43.4 million people (89.4%) identified as straight or heterosexual.
• Around 1.5 million people (3.2%) identified with an LGB+ orientation (“Gay or Lesbian”, “Bisexual” or “Other sexual orientation”).
• The remaining 3.6 million people (7.5%) did not answer the question.

 A lot of the 3.2% million did put themselves down as bisexual or other, and I think we can safely assume (based on other surveys in Western countries) that this would include more women than men:

• 748,000 (1.5%), described themselves as gay or lesbian

• 624,000 (1.3%) described themselves as bisexual

• 165,000 (0.3%) selected “Other sexual orientation”

Apparently, they will be releasing more information about the gender of the respondents later this month.

Anyhoo, given that 7.5% didn't answer the question, it would seem plausible to add a significant number from that group into one of the "queer" categories, so I would still stick by my guesstimate from 2013 that the "true" figure in the Western countries that have done this research is that around 4 to 5% fall within the broad "queer" category, although it seems to have become clearer over the years that a lot of that is actually bisexuality which might not (or might, who knows?) play a significant role over a lifetime. 

But perhaps the biggest surprise is that in a country where gay celebrities seem so prominent (especially in their media and entertainment industry), the number of "pure" gay or lesbian willing to disclose it is under 2%.  They do seem to be disproportionately visible because of the sort of work they like to do.  (Same can be said about all Western countries, really.)