Money Money Money: Lies Lies Lies

The gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is in better financial health than the rest of the country on average, a recent study found.
Not only do gay people earn more than the average American does, gay people are more likely to be employed, they have more money in savings and they are better at managing debt, according to a Nov. 14 survey of more than 1,000 gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people by Prudential.
The average LGBT household earns $61,500 annually, which surpasses the average national household income by more than $10,000. Unemployment is also lower within the LGBT community. Only 7 percent of respondents reported to be out of a job, while the national average stands at 7.9 percent. When it comes to putting away money for the future, gay households save on average $6,000 more than the national average. Gay households also have $4,000 less in debt...

HuffPost Gay Voices.

There is only one true fact in the above - that the figures quoted come from a "study" by the Prudential.
The Pru are an insurance company and this is, effectively, an ad.
Do Huffington Post Gay Voices really think their readers are so thick they can't see through this?
Why would any company want to "commission a survey" and put it out as a press release if it wasn't serving their own interests?
And similarly, how can any journalist take any "research" seriously if it's part of a PR campaign?
The kiss-off/pay-off line comes at the end.
Despite LGBT people seemingly outstripping our straight counterparts everywhere else, apparently oddly we fall down at the last hurdle; "That said, only 14 percent of respondents indicated they feel well-prepared financially compared with 29 percent of the general population."
Well, there you go!

Here's another rewrite of a Pru press release on this on this CNNMoney.
It's titled Gay People Earn More, Owe Less.
Really?
If that's news to you too, that's because it's simply not true.
All reliable research on this subject - ie not PR puffery put out by a business and/or marketing group - shows the exact opposite; gay men earn less. *
Sadly, while Hoff Post Gay presents the above PR baloney uncritically, CNN Money has the decency to point out how "a recent Gallup poll of more than 120,000 adults conducted this summer actually found that LGBT individuals tend to have lower incomes and to be less educated than the general population."
Of course, CNN Money is not aimed at the gay community, but at the business community, so they reach a different conclusion from HuffPost Gay Voices.

Most will agree, however, that the LGBT community is a largely untapped -- and potentially lucrative -- customer base when it comes to financial planning because of the complexity of their finances and unique needs.
While many financial firms are beginning to take steps to cater to this group, Prudential found that the majority, or 63%, of respondents feel underserved by financial firms, saying that the financial industry's attention to their needs is below average.
"There absolutely is an opportunity here," said (the Prudential's) Meyer-Shipp.

*  See the exhaustive review of the literature,  Gay Money: The Truth About Lesbian & Gay Economics.

Update: Both Pink News and Gay Star News have regurgitated Prudential's junk "research" uncritically and without question. I despair!