From: Stephen Bush [mailto:stephenbush@technomica.co.uk]

Sent: 20 October 2009 20:50

To: ‘letters@sunday-times.co.uk’

Subject: David Cameron’s Tory candidates

Dear Sir,

In your article “Women and gay Tory MPs set to treble by 2010” on Sunday 18th October you show in the accompanying graphic that  homosexuals make up 6% of the population. Where does this figure come from?

The only recent authoritative study of the matter has been published by Blackwell Scientific Publications 1994 in” Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles”, a survey of nearly 19,000 randomly selected adults. This showed that the proportion of male homosexuals was about 1.3% and the proportion of female homosexuals about 0.6%, which together make about one in a hundred of the population. That is one sixth of the figure cited in your graphic.

This means that if, as your graphic indicates, 4% of Tory MPs at the next election were homosexual, they would be four times over-represented. This may well suit the metropolitan group around David Cameron and in Central Office but they should not deceive themselves into thinking that this number is anyway representative of the mass of the British population.

Yours truly

Professor S.F. Bush

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