How Many: Allegedly

This is so cute it deserves its own post.

NB Over 5% were don't know/refuse/non-response.

Statistics: Daft Data

In 2014, 1.6% of adults in the UK identified their sexual identity as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
 
The likelihood of an adult identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual decreased with age. Around 2.6% of adults aged 16 to 24 years identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. This decreased to 0.6% of adults aged 65 and over.
 
Around 0.5% of adults identified themselves as bisexual, with women (0.7%) being twice as likely as men to do so (0.3%).
 
London had the highest percentage of adults identifying themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, at 2.6%.

From the latest Integrated Household Survey, Office For National Statistics.

 
You can also see breakdowns by age, gender, region, country, occupation, and err, cigarette smoking, for what it's worth (not much).

Fagburn Awards 24: Dubious Statistic Plucked From The Ether Award

The Office of National Statistics "Estimate of the population who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual" is 1.5%.
Which might explain why Fagburn's still single etc etc...

ONS Gay Survey: An Avalanche of Bollocks

There's such an avalanche of bollocks in today's papers about the National Office of Statistics survey on sexual identity that Fagburn feared he might drown.
I think I need a liedown first to try and recover, but needless to say I shall be returning to this throughout the day...

There's an interesting breakdown of the survey's findings and some funky graphics and stuff on The Guardian's website.

How Many Gay Men Are There? Not That Many

Today the Office of National Statistics publishes Measuring Sexual Identity: An Evaluation Report.
You can read it as a pdf here.
It's their first attempt to try and answer the eternal question; what percentage of the population are lesbian or gay?
There is - but of course - much in the report on how aware they are that its findings may be flawed, how they conducted the interviews, yada yada yada...
Anyway, you want to know the figures, don't you?
Here they are...

Heterosexual/Straight 46,922 - 94.8%
Gay/Lesbian 481 - 1.0%
Bisexual 245 - 0.5%
Other 242 - 0.5%
Don't Know/Refusal 1,393 - 2.8%
No Response 233 - 0.5%

The figure the ONS are now touting as an "Estimate of the population who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual" is 1.5%.
This is much lower than the popular guesstimate - which usually puts the figure at between 5 and 10%.
Sadly this just seems like wishful thinking with little bearing on the facts.
The ONS survey may be closer to the truth - but its low figure will cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who prefer living in a land of make-believe.
Most reliable surveys however have put the figure at between 1% and under 5% (For examples see Tables 6 and 7 on the report).
Interestingly twice as many men identified as gay as women identified as lesbian.
And twice as many women identified as bisexual as men did.
There are also breakdowns of the figures by age, socio-economic classification, religious/non-religious, employed/unemployed and educational qualifications.
It's fascinating stuff but - of course - flawed.
Fagburn has worked out a simple but reliable mathematical formula to work out the gay male population.
This puts the percentage at between 2 and 4%.
Ask me how!

Civil Partnerships: Cliché Fans Joy As 'Honeymoon Over' Headline Returns

Today the Office of National Statistics released the latest figures for Civil Partnerships.
There were two angles on this.
First the bad news; 'Honeymoon over for many same-sex couples as 'divorces' double' (Daily Telegraph).
And now the just as bad news; 'Civil partnerships in 12 per cent decline' (Independent).
Mind you it was great news for the Christian Institute, who billed it as a double whammy; 'Civil partnerships plummet as dissolutions double.'
Hurrah.
Fagburn would like to point out we have been here before.
'Honeymoon over for gay marriage as fewer tie the knot' Evening Standard, August 2009.
'Honeymoon over for 'gay marriages' as number of civil partnerships is halved in a year' Daily Mail, June 2008.
'Honeymoon is over for gay weddings' The Observer, February 2008.
'Honeymoon over for gay marriages as number of civil partnerships plummets by 50 per cent' Daily Mail, February 2008.
It's clearly been a long honeymoon.
Let's look at those civil partnership figures in full:

2006 - 16,106
2007 - 8,728
2008 - 7,169
2009 - 6,281

Fagburn has just calculated (on his fingers) that if the decline continues at this rate, NO-ONE will be registering a civil partnership by 2017.
And with dissolutions doubling from 180 in 2008, to 351 last year, that means... actually I can't work out a completely unscientific frightening factoid out of that one on my fingers.
Not that any of this matters as they'll legalise same-sex marriage long before then.
Won't they?