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The results of the biggest survey of male sexual behaviour in the US
since the Kinsey report of 1948 has triggered heated debate over what percentage
of the population is gay. But frustrated demographers insist that the study’s
most important findings concern men’s attitudes towards condoms and how
they perceive their risk of contracting HIV.

The study, published in the current issue of Family Planning Perspectives,
was intended to guide those drawing up public health strategies to combat
AIDS. It was carried out by a group of researchers at the Battelle Memorial
Institute in Seattle, who drew their findings from interviews with a cross
section of 3321 men from around the country aged between 20 and 39.

One result that surprised many experts was that 41 per cent of the men
had been tested for HIV. Sociologist Richard Udry of the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill called this an ‘astounding figure’. Daniel Klepinger,
one of the authors of the study, points out that only half of these men
had asked for a test. The others were presumably tested when they donated
blood or for insurance purposes. But he also noted that the interviews were
conducted around the time that basketball star Magic Johnson announced that
he was HIV-positive. The researchers are analysing the data from before
and after Johnson’s announcement, to see if this might have prompted more
men to be tested.

Figures for sexual activity are similar to those from French and British
studies released last year. Men reported an average of 7.3 sexual partners
so far, and vaginal sex once a week on average. Three-quarters of the men
had engaged in oral sex, and 20 per cent had had anal sex.

About 51 per cent of the men reported that they use condoms. Black and
Hispanic men were more likely to use them. Three-quarters of the men agreed
with the statement that using condoms ‘shows that you are a concerned and
caring person’. But about 18 per cent felt that using a condom ‘makes your
partner think you have AIDS’. Some 27 per cent of all men, and white men
in particular, are still embarrassed about buying condoms.

The men vastly overestimated the risk of HIV transmission: between 70
and 80 per cent thought the risk of getting the virus from a single sexual
encounter with an infected partner was more than 50 per cent, which is hundreds
of times higher than researchers estimate. On the other hand, the men underestimated
the prevalence of AIDS in their own communities and their risk of encountering
a partner who has it.

The study found that 2.3 per cent of the men had sex with another man
in the previous 10 years, and 1.1 per cent were exclusively homosexual.
This figure is close to that found in France and Britain (This Week, 5 December
1992). Thus, the new survey is ‘in line with what most other contemporary
surveys are finding’, said Udry.

Nevertheless, the 1 per cent figure caused uproar among gay activists
who maintain that 10 per cent of the population is gay, based on the Kinsey
report. Udry called Kinsey’s survey techniques ‘primitive and nonrepresentative’.

‘There never was any really reliable scientific basis for the 10 per
cent, it doesn’t even really reflect what Kinsey found,’ says Tom Smith,
a demographer at the University of Chicago.

But David Eng, a spokesman for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York,
said that the study provides only a ‘snapshot of a certain segment of the
population’ because it was limited to young men. He also points out that
‘sexuality is much more than what someone does in bed’ and that the survey
would have missed celibate gay men and those who also had sex with women.
He questioned the survey method of face-to-face interviews conducted by
female researchers. ‘I think the margin of error is actually much larger
than they are reporting,’ said Eng. ‘These are not the kind of questions
that people easily answer truthfully.’ ‘The gay community is reluctant to
agree to the lower figures because they feel that this will reduce their
political clout,’ counters Smith.