Who? What?

You have to pay very close attention.  What was sure as sure a few months or years ago is, somehow, now--you can't tell, even, when the change occurred--maybe not at all just the way things are.  One thing though, Kinsey seems to have got it basically right.  For all the mistiness, the intuitiveness, the skewed/flawed data-base, the subjectivity of his research, Kinsey's original guesstimate still stands:  About fifteen percent of men and five per cent of women are homosexual.  And if you add that together and divide by two, that's ten per cent of the population:  A significant figure because ten per cent is about how many are left-handed, color-blind, alcoholic: normal/standard deviance. There are still problems, inherent distortions, heterogeneous and dichotomous comparisons (for just one thing, "female homosexuality" is totally unlike "male homosexuality," by any standard of comparison)--but, after all, Kinsey got it about right.  And latest scientific research is always proving it.  But what also hasn't changed is the glacial, saurian tenacity of heterosexualist (ninety per cent of the population, after all) unwillingness to believe it.

And so, first thing, Kinsey's figures got drastically whittled (let us not even bother to say by whom, or for what ostensible, or for what surreptitious, actual reasons); one "more objective" study after another reduced the percentage of "exclusively homosexual" men, from about 15% to about 3.7% (or "between 1% and 4%"). And there it seemed to remain, and to be likely to remain,  forever--very much despite one's own subjective or intuitive certitude that "There are way more of us than that!"  And then (though I didn't run across it until just a few days ago, googling "straight men, gay sex"):

The september 19th, 2006, issue of Annals of Internal Medicine published a report of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, entitled "Discordance between Sexual Behavior and Self-Reported Identity, a Population-Based Survey of [4,193 foreign-born and native] New York Men."  The results:

    1.   10% of self-identified "straight" men have sex only with other men.

    2.   10% of "straight" men have had sex with at least one man in the last year.

    3.   10% of married men also have sex with men.

    4.   70% of "straight" men who have sex with other men are married.

    5.   Only 54% of "straight" men who have sex with women are married.

Other results of the survey which the NYCDHMH either could not or would not interpret:

     1.   More "straight" men who had sex with men were foreign-born (than native),

               and they were more likely not to live in Manhattan.

     2.   "Straight" men who had sex with men had fewer partners than "gay" men.

     3.   "Straight" men who had sex with men had fewer sexually transmitted diseases

               than "gay" men.

     4.   "Straight" men were more likely not to use condoms than "gay" men.

Not to be belaboring any points here (perish the thought!), but the sum--of 10% of all "straight" men who only have sex with other men, Plus 10% of all "straight" men who have had sex with at least one man in the last year, plus 10% of all married men, plus the 70% of "straight" men that have sex with other men that are married (unless my high school algebra fails me)--is Considerably More Than 10%.  And add it to the "1%-to-4%" of outright self-identified "gays"--and there we have: our old ball-park original Kinsey guesstimate of about 15%.  Whatta you know.

But we're not done yet. Not only are there more gay males than anybody, even gay males, wanted to believe, there are fewer bisexual males than everybody, including self-defined bisexual males, had hoped.   According to a very well conducted study of J. Michael Bailey's,  which measured penile engorgement in response to homosexual and heterosexual images, three quarters of the men who claimed to be bisexual are homosexual; one quarter, heterosexual.  Instances of men being aroused by both homo-erotic and hetero-erotic images are so rare as to be statistically insignificant.  

What this means, boys and girls, is that the ten per cent of men who call themselves straight and have sex exclusively with other men, as well as the ten per cent of all men who are married that have sex with other men--while they are having sex with men, or thinking about it, they are only interested in having sex with men; the idea of a three-way with their wives does not appeal.  I think we might call them serial homosexuals, making all due allowance for their definition of themselves as "straight."

For what it's worth, of course, and as much interest as there is in it, women, both straight and Lesbian, seem to be quite naturally bisexual.  And there's another reason not to try to compare the sexes.