New Study Shows More Americans Experimenting with Gay Sex

A recent study in the prestigious Journal of Sex Research reveals a surprising upsurge in homosexual activity.

According to the study, the percentage of U.S. women who say they recently had gay sex has increased 15 times from 1988 to 1998, with rates among American men doubling over the same ten-year period.

Positive media images of gay life, like hit TV shows "Ellen" and "Will and Grace," may be helping to spur the increase, according to a March 14th press release from Reuters Health.

Researcher Amy C. Butler of the University of Iowa examined 1988-1998 data from the General Social Survey, a poll of adult Americans conducted every two years by the National Opinion Research Center. According to the survey, the number of men who said they had recently had gay sex rose from 2% in 1988 to 4% in 1998, while rates among women climbed from 0.2% in 1988 to nearly 3% ten years later.

Butler suggests that positive images of gay people in the media "may have made it easier for people to recognize their same-gender sexual interest and to act on it." She noted that some of the increase is likely due to heterosexuals who are experimenting with homosexuality.

Butler suggests another reason for the upsurge in lesbian sexuality: "Equalizing the earning potential of men and women may enable women to consider family structures and sexual partnerships that do not include men." More than 90% of women said their sexual relationships were exclusively heterosexual in 1988, Butler notes, compared with 86% of women ten years later.

Yet more than half of Americans believe that gay sex is "always wrong," according to another study quoted in the Journal of Sex Research.

SOURCES: Reuters Health (Mar. 14)
Journal of Sex Research 2001;37:333-343.