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Who
Cares?
Section
Q is a weekly column prepared by students at the
Harvard Business School
Date: October 18, 1999
A great number of you who are reading this article,
or have been reading the other articles in this
series, are probably wondering what all of the
fuss is about. You are straight, and you are wondering
what possible relevance the issues presented and
explored in this column have for you and your
life. I believe that there are several reasons
why everybody, at HBS and elsewhere, has an interest
in gay, lesbian, and bisexual issues.
Someone important to you is gay.
The odds are overwhelming. The most comprehensive
study of sexual behavior in the United States
to date was the research conducted by Robert Michael,
John Gagnon, and Edward Laumann in 1992, and summarized
in their widely read book: Sex in America. In
this research they found that approximately 2.8%
of American men and 1.4% of American women identify
themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. The authors
make it very clear that this is to be taken as
a lower bound estimate of the actual population,
because, in their words: "the history of
persecution has a lasting effect both on what
people are willing to say about their sexual behavior
and what they actually do." Also, less than
one third of the individuals who recently engaged
in same-sex sexual behavior or expressed a significant
sexual attraction to members of the same sex identified
themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. So, if
you define sexual orientation in terms of behavior
and desire, the proportion in the population approaches
the 9% to 10% level reported by Kinsey and the
Janus report. These results are also consistent
with similar research that has been conducted
in Europe.
To see the personal significance of this data,
we only have to look at our sectionmates. For
example, even using 2.8% male/1.4% female as an
extremely conservative estimate of non-heterosexual
orientations in the developed world, the estimated
probability that any given group of 80 people
would be entirely straight is less than 15%. If
we were to ignore the issue of "self description",
and focus on actual behavior, the probability
falls to less than 1%.
~ And, in fact, this research suggests that the
representation of gays and lesbians among the
well-educated, urban population, from which most
HBS students are drawn, is significantly higher
than that in society at large. Consider all of
the people that you know: family, friends, colleagues,
fellow HBS students. If there are a hundred people
in your life that are significant to you, at least
one (and probably far more than one) are gay,
and dramatically impacted by these issues. Can
you really say that you are not?
You will face these issues throughout your career
Leaving aside the direct interpersonal implications
for a moment, let?s discuss an issue near and
dear to all of our hearts here at HBS: our futures
as professionals. Regardless of the career path
we choose upon leaving HBS, it is likely that
the issues facing gays and lesbians will be significant
in a number of ways.
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Gay
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Millions
Turn Out for Gay Pride Parade
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