The Numbers Say It All

**I would like to start this post by saying that this is not a "gay bashing" post. I don't consider myself homophobic or anything. I've had friends who are gay and have had the nicest neighbors that are trans-gendered, but that doesn't mean that I think what they are doing is right. BUT, I do believe that they deserve all the same rights that other Americans have. I strongly believe that we need to add "sexual orientation" to that long list of people and things that we can not discriminate against.**

So I saw this article today on Google news and I found it very interesting. It's basically citing this study that says that only 3.5% of the American population identifies themselves as being homosexual. The reason this is a big deal is because that the homosexual community has been saying that 10% of the population was homosexual, when it's actually been only 3.5%. That's a pretty big difference. I find this to be very interesting for a couple reasons.

I, like many others, have seen the show Glee on Fox. I have a love/hate relationship with this show. I like the music and the dancing, but I've found the story and the characters to be a little much. I know TV

exaggerates real life, but they seemed to be stretching it too far. And the one thing I thought was odd was the "token" gay character. And if you know the show it feels like all the students in the show are "token" characters in some way. They have the "token" black girl, the "token" disabled kid and so on.

And to be fair, you have to have African-American and Disabled-Americans in these shows. I found this article that says, "In 2009, 19.5 million people, or 9.9 percent of the civilian non-institutionalized population age 16 to 64, had a disability." And this Wikipedia article about the 2010 census states that 12.6% of the US population is black.

But, the big but, only 3.5% of the US population is homosexual. So why do we feel that we have to have them in every show? Why do we have to make it seem that every other person you meet on the street is gay, lesbian, etc.?

And really, I find it interesting that the homosexual community is always trying to pump their numbers and make it look like they're a stronger force to be reckoned with than they really are.

Those are my thoughts, what are yours? What do you think of the sudden surge in homosexual characters in TV and movies? And what do statistics like this make you think?