One-third of people in US, half in UK say they’re not completely gay or straight

Matters of sexual orientation are not necessarily black-and-white issues, according to the results of a new study in which 31 percent of Americans under the age of 30 and 49 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds in the UK said that they do not identify themselves as 100 percent heterosexual.
Using the Kinsey scale, the YouGov-led survey asked people to place themselves on a scale of 0 for exclusively heterosexual to 6 for exclusively homosexual. Seventy-eight percent of people in the US and 72 percent of those in the UK said that they are completely heterosexual, while just 4 percent of the American and British public labeled themselves as completely homosexual.
Sixteen percent of American adults and 19 percent of British adults said that they fall somewhere in between, classed as bisexual in varying degrees on the Kinsey scale. Among those in the US, 10 percent said that they are more heterosexual than homosexual, while 3 percent said that they were predominantly homosexual and another 3 percent said that they were in the middle.
In the UK, 15 percent identified themselves as being more straight, while 2 percent were directly in the middle and 2 percent were closer to the homosexual end. Twenty-nine percent of people in the US under the age of 30 and 43 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds from the UK placed themselves in the so-called “binary” area, expressing some degree of bisexual tendencies.
Findings indicative of a more “open-minded” view of sexuality
The research also found that, on the whole, older men and women are “less likely they are to say that they have fluid sexual attractions,” YouGov said. Among US responders, nearly one-quarter of people between the ages of 30 and 44 said that they are somewhere on the scale of bisexuality, compared to less than 8 percent of those 45.
Even some Americans who placed themselves firmly in the heterosexual category admitted to having at least one same-sex experience, the polling agency said. Twelve percent said that they had a homosexual affair, with straight females (15 percent) being nearly two times as likely as straight males (8 percent) to have a sexual liaison with a member of the same sex.
In the UK study, 60 percent of heterosexual and 73 percent of homosexuals said they support the concept that sexual orientation exists along a continuum and is not simply a binary choice, while 28 percent of heterosexuals said they believed that “there is no middle ground” when it comes to issues of sexuality, and that a person is either gay or straight.
The figures “are not measures of active bisexuality… but putting yourself at level 1 allows for the possibility of homosexual feelings and experiences,” YouGov explained. “More than anything, it indicates an increasingly open minded approach to sexuality.”
—–
Feature Image: Thinkstock