Percentage of blind since birth persons who are homosexual?

February 16, 2005 10:35 AM

Interested in percentage of blind since birth persons who are homosexual. [mi]

Last night I read a short story by Lorrie Moore wherein one of the main characters was both gay and blind from birth. I'm just wondering if (in the real world) there has been analysis of whether this occurs as often or more or less often than those who have sight. Also, how this information plays into current research dealing with the development of homosexual behavior or the genetic predisposition to homosexuality.

posted by billysumday to Grab Bag (7 answers total)

Don't know about blind, but there were always a lot of students from Gallaudet at Tracks back in the day.

Probably completely meaningless, but I thought it was interesting.
posted by hummus at 10:42 AM on February 16, 2005

I was about to mention that too, hummus. I've seen reports of the number of gay deaf people listed as high as 30%. A (hearing) friend of mine in an LBGT group in college who was studying ASL also mentioned it.
posted by Asparagirl at 11:04 AM on February 16, 2005

Could I ask what story? I don't remember that one and she's one of my favorite authors.
posted by agregoli at 11:10 AM on February 16, 2005

Response by poster: It's a story called, "What You Want to Do Fine" in Birds of America. The protagonists, a blind lawyer and his housepainter, take a trip to Chicago.
posted by billysumday at 11:15 AM on February 16, 2005

Seems like it would be higher to me, but I've never heard of anyone studying this.

Write up a grant proposal..

Some universities have gay/lesbian studies. See if you can get ahold of people in those departments. Also might want to look for promonent LGBT people in psych departments who might be intrested in this sort of study. They might already know the answer, or they might be intrested in finding out.
posted by delmoi at 1:43 PM on February 16, 2005

Methinks you're going to have a hard time coming up with a statistic. No one can agree on the total population of gay people, and the data-gathering is necessarily subject to a whole lot of extrapolation.

Here are some links about being gay and blind. They don't answer your fundamental question, but may satisfy some of your curiosity.

[And Lorrie Moore is my all-time fave....]

Being Blind and Gay

Sexuality and the blind (from American Foundation for the Blind)

Fighting to be seen: Gays with disabilities say they often feel invisible

BFLAG (!)
posted by mudpuppie at 4:06 PM on February 16, 2005

Sorry if you consider this a derail, but I wanted to mention that I clearly remember reading about a hearing study that found that more men and lesbians shared a particular type of hearing deficit (lower sensitivity to pulse noises, like clicks or pops) than straight women.
posted by NortonDC at 9:08 PM on February 16, 2005