Now that gays have won the right to marry, the tune is changing. Instead of the view that homosexuality is a fixed, permanent, non-alterable state, the word now, including among gays, is that sexual preference is “fluid” and exists along a continuum.
Kinsey’s scale, ranking people somewhere along the continuum of exclusively heterosexual (zero) to exclusively homosexual (6), has come back, with everybody in between to some degree or another being bisexual. (Watch for a new trend of people sharing their numbers in this sense.)
A study in the UK, using this continuum, found that 49% of British 18-24 year- olds consider themselves bisexual! With three times as many as other age groups saying they are gay. The study has other age groups at 19% on the bi-continuum. (But when asked if they are clear-cut gay or bi-, only 1.5% of men were the former and 0.3% were the latter.)
How could young people have such high rates if sexuality is genetically or biologically determined? Could a hypersexualized culture have something to do with it?
From Sexual orientation in the UK: Half of young people say they are not 100% heterosexual:
According to a new YouGov survey, 49% of 18-24 year-olds in Britain define themselves as something other than completely heterosexual. The Kinsey scale invented in the 1940s placed people on a range of sexual preferences from exclusively heterosexual at 0 to exclusively homosexual at 6.
In the YouGov study, individuals were asked to put themselves on that sexuality scale. In total, 72% of the British public scored themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% were at the completely homosexual end, with 19% stating they were somewhere in between – classed as bisexual by Kinsey.
One of the most striking findings of the new study is that with each generation, people see their sexuality as less fixed and more fluid. The results for 18-24 year-olds are particularly telling, with 43% placing themselves in the non-binary area between 1 and 5 and 52% place themselves at one end or the other. Of these, only 46% say they are completely heterosexual and 6% as completely homosexual.
Public opinion seems to accept the concept that sexual orientation exists along a continuum, rather than being a either/or choice between being straight and gay. According to YouGov, 60% of heterosexuals support this idea, as do 73% of homosexuals. . . .
In the YouGov study, individuals were asked to put themselves on that sexuality scale. In total, 72% of the British public scored themselves at the completely heterosexual end of the scale, while 4% were at the completely homosexual end, with 19% stating they were somewhere in between – classed as bisexual by Kinsey. . . .
When it comes to breaking down in terms of gay men and women 1.5% of men in the UK say they’re gay and only 0.7% of women say the same. But in terms of bisexuality, 0.3% of men select this, compared to 0.5% of women.
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