From: WillNich@aol.com
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 14:18:15 -0500 (EST)
        sfbaytimes@igc.apc.org, DSPECTRUM@aol.com, GLAADNATL@aol.com,
        GAILTNT@aol.com, Jeff4Echo@aol.com
Subject: One Percent or Ten Percent:  What's the Difference?

One of the things we often hear from our dear, dear friends on the religious
right is that, far from making up ten percent or even five percent of the
population, gays and lesbians make up perhaps only one percent.

Why would they say things like that?  To try to convince the general public
that because of our small numbers, we don't deserve "special" legislation to
protect us.  (Never mind that American Indians, Jews, and any number of other
minorities each make up small percentages of the population, too).

The following quote should therefore help put things in a little more
perspective.  I doubt that it will change the minds of anyone from the
religious right, but it's a useful factotum to use whenever this ridiculous
argument about percentages is brought up.

David Williams, Director
Williams-Nichols Institute, Inc.
Operators of the Kentucky Gay and Lesbian Library and Archives
The Upper South's Premiere GLBT Resource Center

*********************

From Chandler Burr, "A Separate Creation:  The Search for the Biological
Origins of Sexual Orientation" (New York:  Hyperion, 1996), pp. 45-46,
repeating words from Jeff Hall, a scientist at Brandeis University.

"Hall explains that biologists consider a trait present in even 1 percent of
a population, one out of every hundred people, to be enormously significant,
and the incidence of homosexuality appears far above 1 percent."

END