I Bet The New York Times Article Made Rocket Tube Crash Yesterday

Sunday's NY Times posed an impossible question: How Man American Men Are Gay? First of all, what does that even mean? I've been straight, bisexual, gay and celibate. So how do you count me? (Until reading the Times story I had never been on any gay internet sites either. Porno never did much for me. And I never even knew Match.com is for gay people too.)

Using, among other indicators, Facebook, "pornographic searches and dating sites," Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who recently received a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard, estimates that "[a]t least 5 percent of American men are predominantly attracted to men, and millions of gay men still live, to some degree, in the closet… The evidence also suggests that a large number of gay men are married to women."

[R]oughly 5 percent of pornographic searches are looking for depictions of gay men in all states. This again suggests that there are just about as many gay men in less tolerant states as there are anywhere else.

Since less tolerant states have similar percentages of gay men but far fewer openly gay men, there is a clear relationship between tolerance and openness. My preliminary research indicates that for every 20 percentage points of support for gay marriage about one-and-a-half times as many men from that state will identify openly as gay on Facebook.

In a perfectly tolerant world, my model estimates that about 5 percent of men in the United States would say they were interested in men. Note that this matches nicely with the evidence from pornographic search data.

These results suggest that the closet remains a major factor in American life. For comparison, about 3.6 percent of American men tell anonymous surveys they are attracted to men and a tenth of gay men say that they do not tell most of the important people in their lives. In states where the stigma against homosexuality remains strong, many more gay men are in the closet than are out.

How deep in the closet are these men? Obviously, it is possible for a gay man not to acknowledge his sexuality to Facebook or surveys but to still have healthy, open same-sex relationships.

But data from Match.com, one of the country’s largest dating sites, which has high rates of membership for both straight and gay men, reveals a similarly large number of missing gay men in less tolerant states. This suggests that these men are not only not telling Facebook they are gay but are also not looking for relationships online.

Additional evidence that suggests that many gay men in intolerant states are deeply in the closet comes from a surprising source: the Google searches of married women. It turns out that wives suspect their husbands of being gay rather frequently. In the United States, of all Google searches that begin “Is my husband...,” the most common word to follow is “gay.” “Gay” is 10 percent more common in such searches than the second-place word, “cheating.” It is 8 times more common than “an alcoholic” and 10 times more common than “depressed.”

Searches questioning a husband’s sexuality are far more common in the least tolerant states. The states with the highest percentage of women asking this question are South Carolina and Louisiana. In fact, in 21 of the 25 states where this question is most frequently asked, support for gay marriage is lower than the national average.

And that, of course, makes tremendous sense. Lindsey Graham isn't the only closeted homophobe from South Carolina. In fact, the other senator from the Dum Spiro Spero state, Tim Scott is probably gay as well, if even deeper in the closet. As FITSNews, a South Carolina GOP website put it, "Both of South Carolina’s U.S. Senators-- the 47-year-old Scott and the 57-year-old Lindsey Graham-- are bachelors who have never been married, and both have faced rumors regarding their sexual orientation."

Scott has never addressed those rumors, but Graham has.

“I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men-- I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge-- but I ain’t available,” he told the New York Times Magazine in 2010. “I ain’t gay. Sorry.”

Obviously we don’t care if politicians are gay, straight, bisexual, transgender or whatever floats their boat. All we care about is how they vote. Of course if they go after other politicians for their personal failings (as Graham did with Bill Clinton in the late 1990s) or if they sanctimoniously proclaim Christian values (as Scott has), then their sexuality becomes fair game as far as we’re concerned.

And the other state, Louisiana… well, that was the state that was the base of operations for notorious boy-chaser and closet case Jim McCrery. Being gay in an intolerant state certainly pushes men into the closet. And probably more so if you're a public figure like a Member of Congress. Still the statistics don't lie and if Stephens-Davidowitz's numbers are right and 5% of American men are gay, there are a lot more closet cases in the House than just Patrick McHenry (R-NC), Aaron Schock (R-IL), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). Stephens-Davidowitz points a finger at Kentucky, Louisiana and Alabama as the states with the most furtive gays looking for quick anonymous sex on Craig's List (and I thought that was just for buying used tires and stuff!)

Sometimes even I get tired of looking at aggregate data, so I asked a psychiatrist in Mississippi who specializes in helping closeted gay men if any of his patients might want to talk to me. One man contacted me. He told me he was a retired professor, in his 60s, married to the same woman for more than 40 years.

About 10 years ago, overwhelmed with stress, he saw the therapist and finally acknowledged his sexuality. He has always known he was attracted to men, he says, but thought that that was normal and something that men hid. Shortly after beginning therapy, he had his first, and only, gay sexual encounter, with a student of his in his late 20s, an experience he describes as “wonderful.”

He and his wife do not have sex. He says that he would feel guilty ever ending his marriage or openly dating a man. He regrets virtually every one of his major life decisions.

The retired professor and his wife will go another night without romantic love, without sex. Despite enormous progress, the persistence of intolerance will cause millions of other Americans to do the same.