Photo Credit: The Guardian
From The Guardian:
Nearly three-quarters of a million adults in Britain say they are gay or bisexual, according to figures published for the first time today by the Office of National Statistics.
The findings, based on interviews with more than 450,000 people – the biggest pool of social data after the census – show that an estimated 481,000 people regard themselves as gay and a further 245,000 – mainly women – say they are bisexual.
The estimate puts Britain’s gay community at 1.5% of the total population – much lower than the most commonly used estimate of 5% to 7%, which was cited by ministers introducing civil partnership legislation and implied a non-heterosexual population of 3.5 million.
The ONS said the higher estimate was based on different sampling methods and responses to questions about sexual attraction and behaviour both in the past and present.
They also included a couple of stats on religion:
The results of the first Integrated Household Survey also showed that 71% of people in the UK say they are Christian, 4% are Muslim and 21% have no religious affiliation.
The statistics on religion – the first since the 2001 census – appeared to challenge the pope’s assertion last week that Britain had become a country marked by an “aggressive secularism”.
The data on religious affiliation showed that Slough had the highest concentration of religious devotion in England at 93%. Brighton had the lowest at 58%.
I always take studies like this with a grain of salt. While 450,000 people are a great number lending credibility to the study…. there are (as of 2008) just shy of 61.5 million people in Britain. We also know that there is a a cultural strain of Christianity rooted in “aggressive secularism.” This liberalized version of cultural Christianity gives a nod to Jesus but is not rooted in The Gospel first and foremost.
I find stats interesting and informing but never final or truly reflective of the complexity of a large population. I’m not knocking the study at all… not in the slightest. It’s actually very helpful. I just don’t like simplistic conclusions and generalizations on a very large group of people.
Regardless of all that, plenty of reasons to pray for and support our British friends.
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