Chiang 2009 Conducta Homosexual en EEUU 1988.2994

Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volumen 12,  Feb. 12, 2009

www.ejhs.org

Conducta Homosexual en los Estados Unidos, 1988-2004:
Apoyo Empírico Cuantitativo para la Teoría de Construcción Social de la Sexualidad

Howard Hsueh-Hao Chiang, MA*

Princeton University

* Direct correspondence to Howard H. Chiang, 129 Dickinson Hall, Program in History of Science, Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, U.S.A.; e-mail: hchiang@princeton.edu. This research paper is a revised version of the author’s thesis submitted in May, 2006 to Columbia University in partial fulfillment of the M.A. degree requirement in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences.

RESUMEN

El estudio aquí presentado analizó datos reunidos en 11 rondas de la Encuesta Social General [ General Social Survey] conducidas entre 1988 y 2004 (N = 10,767 hombres y 13,868 mujeres). Usando tabulaciones cruzadas simple, se estimó la prevalencia del contacto homosexual en Norteamérica por sexo, año y varias variables sociodemográficas. Los resultados subsiguientes tres modelos de estimación (OLS, logit, and probit) revelaron un efecto causal estadísticamente significativo del carácter de urbanización del medio residencial de un individuo a la edad de 16 años en la probabilidad de que el mismo individuo se involucraría en conducta homosexual al llegar a la adultez. Los resultados confirman empíricamente la idea de que la sexualidad está socialmente construida, trayendo así a las investigaciones sociocientíficas cuantitativas más cerca de la perspectivas teóricas relevantes.

Introducción

Los estudios de ciencia social cuantitativa previos de la conducta sexual del mismo sexo en los Estados Unidos principalmente se han enfocado en estimar su prevalencia y analizar sus tendencias a lo largo del tiempo, primordialmente porque tales estudios han sido conducidos bajo el impuso de proveer entendimientos para estrategias de prevención de VIH/SIDA efectivas. Incluso cuando se emplean técnicas de regresión, lo que es más bien raro, estos estudios han explícitamente evitado inferir relaciones causales entre varias variables sociodemográficas y las prácticas homosexuales, aunque sus correlaciones positivas han sido informadas con frecuencia (Anderson & Stall, 2002; Billy, Tanfer, Grady, & Klepenger, 1993; Binson et al., 1995; Black, Gates, Sanders, & Taylor, 2000; Butler, 2005; Davis, 1929; Fay, Turner, Klassen, & Gagnon, 1989; Johnson et al., 2001; Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Rogers & Turner, 1991; Spira, Bajos, & le groupe ACSF, 1993; Turner, Villarroel, Chromy, Eggleston, & Rogers, 2005; Wellings, Field, Johnson, & Wadsworth, 1994). En este aspecto, el presente estudio contribuye al cuerpo mayor de la literatura de ciencias sociales en tres modos únicos en su género.

Primero, este artículo examina la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos a través de un abordaje de análisis causal cuantitativo. Específicamente, investiga la relación causal entre dos variables principales, la urbanización geográfica y la conducta homosexual (poniendo a prueba la significación de la dirección causal de la primera variable a la última usando tres modelos estadísticos diferentes, uno linear y dos no lineales. A diferencia de estudios previos que han prestado relativamente poca atención a las conexiones causales entre homosexualidad y otras variables sociodemográficas, la meta central de este estudio es establecer una relación causal que pueda ser examinada explícitamente usando métodos estadísticos en los que las funciones de urbanización geográfica funcionan como una variable causalmente determina la prevalencia del contacto del mismo sexo en los Estados Unidos.

Además, aunque el estudio aquí presentado fue diseñado para extraer datos de la Encuesta Social General [General Social Survey] (de 1988 a 2004), como lo han hecho la mayoría de los otros investigadores hasta ahora, un rasgo distintivo de este estudio es su incorporación del conjunto de datos de la Encuesta Social General del 2004 [General Social Survey (GSS)], recientemente actualizada. A pesar de la disponibilidad del conjunto de datos del GSS 2004 para los investigadores del 2005, una de las últimas publicaciones de ciencias social de envergadura que tratan del tema de la práctica homosexual en los Estados Unidos, aunque comprehensiva y amplia en su gama de análisis, no usó el conjunto de datos del 2004 (Turner et al., 2005). Esto es porque los datos para medir el grado de urbanización del área de residencia de los respondientes fue dado a publicidad en enero del 2006. Este estudio aprovecha este conjunto de información disponible recientemente e integra este conjunto de datos en las estimaciones de la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en la nación y el análisis del modelo causal formulado como hipótesis.

Finalmente, a través de un abordaje de modelado causal cuantitativo simple al explorar la relación entre la urbanización geográfica y la conducta homosexual, el presente estudio toma una postura provisional en el debate mayor de esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo en cuanto a Homosexualidad y Sexualidad en general. Cuando se ocupan del tópico de la Homosexualidad, los científicos sociales cuantitativos a menudo han pasado por alto ofrecer cualquier afirmación explícita en relación con el debate, excepto por incidencias en las que algunos investigadores solamente mencionan que sus resultados sugieren o  insinúan la más plausible perspectiva teórica del socioconstruccionismo (Laumann et al., 1994). En contraste, los análisis cuantitativos efectuados en el estudio aquí presentado tienen la intención de referirse directamente al debate entre esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo. Si se encuentra que el sendero de causalidad formulado como hipótesis, de la urbanización geográfica a la conducta homosexual, es estadísticamente significativa, este hallazgo demostraría la alta contingencia de las expresiones comportamentales de la Homosexualidad sobre los contextos sociales en los que se producen, y de este modo favorecerían al lado socioconstruccionista del debate. El método de análisis causal cuantitativo da lugar a la idea de que la Sexualidad está socialmente construida para ser empíricamente determinada, tendiendo un puente sobre la brecha entre las perspectivas teóricas y los hallazgos cuantitativos que caracterizan omnipresentemente las indagaciones actuales de la ciencia social sobre la sexualidad humana.

Antes de entrar explícitamente en el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo, sin embargo, el estudio aquí presentado primero estimará la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos incorporando el conjunto de datos GSS 2004, hace poco dado a publicidad, lo que proveerá entendimientos no explorados de sus tendencias en el tiempo y por variables sociodemográficas que muchos otros han investigado. En el orden de investigación, mis análisis cuantitativos buscan responder tres preguntas de investigación específicas:

1. ¿Cuál fue el grado de prevalencia del contacto sexual del mismo sexo en los Estados Unidos entre 1988 y 2004?
2. ¿Las personas que pertenecen a diferentes subpoblaciones en los Estados Unidos expresan diferentes niveles de conducta homosexual?
3. ¿Los datos empíricos dan apoyo a la perspectiva teórica de construcción social de la sexualidad?

Debate Esencialismo versus SocioConstructionismo

La mayoría de las discusiones contemporáneas sobre la ahomosexualidad, de un modo u8 otro, contribuyen a un debate más amplio entre las comprensiones de la Sexualidad Esencialistas y sociocionstruccionistas. Para gente que piensa sobre la sexualidad desde la perspectiva del esencialmismo, la sexualidad representa un impulso biológico, un datum natural. Por lo tanto, las diferencias entre sexos o las diferencias entre heterosexuales y homosexuales son científicamente concretas y distinguibles. Además, los Esencialistas creen que cualquier forma de deseo sexual es transhistórica y transcultural. De acuerdo con esta línea de razonamiento, las tipologías modernas de la sexualidad, sin tener en cuenta cuándo fueron inventadas, pueden ser aplicadas a personas que viven en diferentes épocas, regiones y culturas. Por ejemplo, los proponentes del esencialismo en estudios de sexualidad argumentan que el concepto de “homosexualidad” puede ser asociado con la conducta sexual, el deseo e incluso la identidad de aquellos individuos que vivieron sus vidas antes de que se acuñara el término (Boswell, 1980, 1989, 1995; Katz, 1976; Rich, 1983).

Los socioconstruccionistas a menudo se involucran en la tarea de criticar las presunciones hechas por los Esencialistas y argumentar que la Sexualidad no es un datum biológico sino un constructo cultural. Si bien los esencialistas consideran que las categorías como “gay” y “hétero” son universalmente objetivas, los socioconstruccionistas las comprenden como hechos subjetivos en el sentido de que el proceso de rotulación en sí mismo acarrea una hueste íntegra de connotaciones culturales específicas e interpretaciones sociales que son ni universalmente coherente ni históricamente idénticas. Lo que “gay” significa hoy día en el alba del siglo XXI, para los construccionistas, es drásticamente diferente de lo que “inversión sexual” significaba un siglo atrás. De modo similar, como Halperin (1990) ha señalado, no es convincente argumentar que “como los campesinos feudales y trabajan con sus manos y los operarios de fábrica trabajan con sus manos, el campesinado feudal era la forma que el proletarianismo tomó antes del surgimiento del capitalismo industrial” (p. 46). En tanto que los esencialistas a meniudo creen que las fuerzas biologic as, tal como la genetic, las hormonas o el cerebro determinan el impulse sexual, los socionstruccionistas argumentan que los modos en que los esencialistas intentan identificar las fuerzas determinantes de la sexualidad ya funcionan dentro de un marco epistemológico socialmente construido.

El debate entre esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo ha sido una de las preocupaciones centrales entre los historiadores de la Sexualidad, y la mayor parte de los historiadores de la Sexualidad hoy en día se consideran a sí mismos partes del campo construccionista (algunos incluso se identifican como participantes de una escuela más amplia llamada “nuevo historicismo”). El estudio pionero sobre las amistades románticas entre mujeres del siglo XIX hecho por Smith-Rosenberg (1975), después complementado por el trabajo de Rotundo (1993) sobre el homorromance (sin identidad sexual) entre varones jóvenes victorianos, demonstró que el modo en que se entendía la intimidad del mismo sexo en la Norteamérica del siglo XIX difería espectacularmente del modo en que se la concibe hoy (véase también Taylor & Lasch, 1963). En tanto que Foucault (1978) y Weeks (1977, 1981, 1985, 1989a, 1989b, 2002) daban un fuerte énfasis al modo en que el concepto de “homosexualidad” fue introducido por las élites médicas y los científicos del sexo a fines del siglo XIX, el studio historic del lesbianism hecho por Faderman (1978a, 1978b, 1978c, 1992, 1994) aseveraba de modo sim ilar que la contribución fundamental de los sexólogos al cambiar del siglo XIX al XX fue precisamente la patologización y morbidificación moderna de la intimidad del mismo sexo de las mujeres (véase también Davidson, 1987; Rosario, 1996, 1997, 2002; Terry, 1999). En contra de esta perspectiva, la investigación de Chauncey (1985, 1994) mostró que las identidades sexuales del varón fueron construidas sin tomar en cuenta cómo se clasificaba y definía la sexualidad en el discurso médico. Conjuntamente, los trabajos de estos historiadores, entre muchos otros, ejemplifican el poder y valor del abordaje socioconstruccionista. Al pensar en la sexualidad no meramente como un reflejo de la naturaleza sino como un producto del conocimiento social, el socioconstruccionismo trae a la luz los modos de conceptualizar el  “deseo” que tanto por parte de los actores que viven en un período de tiempo en particular como por de los historiadores que lo estudios son siempre contingentes al contexto cultural context.

Uno de los debates fundamentals entre los socioconstruccionistas que estudian la historia de la Homosexualidad es el período de tiempo preciso en el que el concepto de  “homosexual” como identidad emergió por primera vez. La pieza literaria más temprana que introdujo la idea socioconstruccionista de la Homosexualidad apareció en 1968 y fue escrita por un teórico de la rotulación, McIntosh. En su articulo, ella (1968) mantuvo que el rol homosexual por primera vez emergió del florecimiento de los clubes de travesties homosexuals en Londres a fines del siglo XVII (véase tambien Bray, 1995; Oaks, 1978; Talley, 1996; Thompson, 1989; Trumbach, 1977, 1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1991). En lugar de hacer la misma aseveración que McIntosh, Foucault (1978) y Weeks (1977, 1981, 1985, 1989a, 1989b, 2002) arguyeron que el concepto de identidad homosexual fue realmente solidificado por la ciencia médica en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (“homosexualidad” fue acuñado por primera vez en 1869 en la literatura sexológica europea). En tanto que la pieza de McIntosh recibió una atención minima de parte de los eruditos interesados en los studios de género y sexualidad en la época de su publicación a fines de la década del sesenta, los studios de Foucault y Weeks fueron inmediatamente canonizados tan pronto como pueron publicados entre mediados y fines de la década del setenta, en gran medida debido a las influencas crecientes del feminismo y del movimiento de liberación gay sobre este tema. Al tener fuerzas políticas e indagaciones intelectuales trabajando en conjunto, los escritos socioconstruccionistas desde mediados de la década del sesenta cuestionaron solamente la afirmación de Foucault y Weeks, pero no la de McIntosh.

Por ejemplo, desde mediados del setenta muchos historiados con orientación socioconstruccionista han sugerido en conjunto que conceptualizar una identidad basada en el deseo del mismo sexo en realidad fue posibilitado a fines del siglo XVIII (quizás al comenzar el siglo XIX) con la expansión del sector obrero asalariado ocasionado por la transformación de la sociedad de economía de la casa a capitalismo industrial (Adams, 1985; D’Emilio, 1993; Fernbach, 1976; Greenberg & Bystryn, 1984; Pearce & Roberts, 1973). Como ha argumentado D’Emilio (1993), “el capitalism ha creado las condiciones materials para que el deseo homosexual se exprese a sí mismo como un componente central de la vidas de algunos individuos” (p. 474). Por lo tanto, de acuerdo con este grupo de historiadores, el concpeto de identidad homosexual fue hecho posible por la transición económica y el crecimiento de la población urbana en el siglo XVII, no la subsiguiente medicalización de la sexualidad a fines del siglo XIX. Sea que el concepto de identidad homosexual se haya desarrollado por primera vez en el siglo XVII a partir de los clubes de travesties homosexuals en ciudades de primera línea como Londres, a fines del siglo XVIII a partir de la intense transición social de la estructura económica al capitalistmo industrial, o a fines del siglo XIX por el discurso sexual de la ciencia médica, en el nivel más fundamental todos los socioconstruccionistas están de acuerdo en que la “homosexualidad” como concepto de identidad es una invención relativamente reciente en las sociedades occidentales.

El desacuerdo entre socioconstruccionistas ciertamente no se limite a los períodos de tiempo en los que emergieron por primera vez ciertos tipos de Sexualidad o identidad sexual. La complejidad de la teoría soconstruccionistas puede ser entendida cuando se la desmonta en diferentes niveles, como lo demostró Vance (1989):

Como mínimo, todos los abordajes de construcción social adoptan la idea de que los actos sexuales físicamente idéntico pueden tener significación social variable y significación subjetivo dependencide cómo se los define y se los compprenden en diferentes culturas y períodos históricos…Un paso adelante en la teoría de construcción social postula que incluso la dirección mimsa del deseo sexual, por ejemplo la elección de objeto o hetero/homosexualidad, no es intrínseco o inherente al individuo sino que es construido…La forma más radical de la teoría construccionista está pronta a albergar la idea de que no existe im pulso ssexual esencial, indiferenciado, “impulso sexual” o “lujuria,” que reside en el cuerpo debido al funcionamiento fisiológico y la sensación. El impulso sexual en sí mismo está construido por la cultura y la historia. (pp. 18-19)

Agregaré que hay otro nivel todavía de teorización que existe entre el primer y Segundo paso de la teoría de construcción social bocetada por Vance. Combinando la ilustración de Vance con mi propia extension setiene como resultado los siguientes cuatro niveles (más abarcadores) de la teoría de construcción social, desde la posición menos radical hasta la más radical:

1. La significación social, interpretación cultural y significado subjetivo de las actividades sexuales físicas de las personas varían con el tiempo, la cultura y el lugar.
2. Si bien el interés erótico o deseo de las personas está fijado inherentemente, su nivel de expression y formas comportamentales pueden cambiar con el tiempo, la cultura y el lugar dependiendo de las normas socials prevalecientes.
3. Incluso la dirección del interés sexual o impulse sexual de las personas está socialmente construido y culturalmente moldeado, y por tanto no hay cualidad intrínseca o inherente, discreta biológica o naturalmente, para el deseo sexual de las personas.
4. La concepción de “sexualidad” es en sí misma una formulación cultural. En otras palabras, lo que cuenta como “sexual” o como forma de “deseo” nunca es idéntico a través del tiempo, la cultura y el lugar.

El hecho de que los socioconstruccionistas difieren entre sí en grados de radicalismo teórico indica que pueden estar de acuerdo y en desacuerdo entre sí tanto como con los eruditos que pertenecen al campo esencialista.

Es evidente de los cuatro niveles de teoría de construcción social listados más arriba que el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo no es lo mismo que el debate natura versus nutura. En relación con la Homosexualidad, el debate natura versus nurtura presenta una discusión sobre las causas del deseo o conducta del mismo sexo. Aunque los propon entes del lado de nurtura en el debate significativamente se parecen a los eruditos que adoptan la teoría de construcción social, uno de los ímpetus centrales del socioconstruccionismo es poner en cuestión el modo mismo en el que se enmarca el debate natura versus nurtura. En otras palabras, en tanto que el debate  natura versus nurtura se involucra con la cuestión de si las personas homosexuals nacen con su Homosexualidad o si la aprenden, el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo trata con la cuestión mayor de si tales categorías como  “homosexualidad” o “el homosexual” son o no válidas para ser consideradas como universales, transhistóricas y transculturales. Aunque los argumentos presentados por los esencialistas a menudo son fuertemente paralelos a los argumentos hechos por los defensores de la naturaleza,  en última instancia los esencialistas están haciendo la aseveración general de que uno puede en realidad identificar un tipo de individuo  “sexualizado” en particular que existió a través del tiempo y el espacio. Por otra parte, los defensores de la naturaleza hacen la asveración más específica de que las causes de un tipo “sexualizado” en particular de individuo residen en ciertos factores naturales y biológicos. Para decirlo brevemente, el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo implica una cuestión epistemológica, en tanto que el debate natura versus nurtura se ocupa de una cuestión etiológica. Como los dos debates consideran temas que superponen y que difieren en mnodos muy sutiles, muchas personas, incluyendo académicos profesionales, a menudo han incorrectamente metido el uno dentro del otro.

The essentialism versus social constructionism debate, however, is not only a theoretical matter but also, if not more importantly, an empirical one. When the popular press, the lay public, or even the scientific community searches for a single estimate of the prevalence of homosexuality in the nation, the underlying assumption strictly denotes an essentialist standpoint. As Laumann et al. (1994) have carefully commented upon in their national study, “While a single estimate is one of a number of possible summary measures for a whole population, it may not accurately reflect the situation of a specific subgroup within that population” (p. 307). Hence, strong empirical predictions of the prevalence of homosexuality require a serious consideration of its trends over time as well as its possible different distributions across various social and demographic variables.

As such, by using the GSS data, my study will contribute to the essentialism versus social constructionism debate through three systematic investigations. First, I will estimate the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States from 1988 to 2004, assessing the evidence for whether certain quantitative patterns may have changed over time. After working in a temporal framework, I will then proceed to an analysis of the prevalence of same-sex sexual contact in the country across various sociodemographic variables, examining whether the data warrant the assumption that a single estimate of the prevalence of homosexuality across the nation is useful for understanding its distribution in the real American social context. Finally, and most importantly, among these sociodemographic variables, geographical urbanization is central to my subsequent quantitative estimations of its effect on the expressions of homosexual behavior by using three statistical models. Specifically, in this last section of this study, I will test the statistical significance of the assumed causal effect of the urbanization character of an individual’s residential environment at age 16 on the likelihood (or probability) that the same individual would engage in homosexual behavior as an adult. If the association parameter is found to be statistically significant, this finding would at least support some aspects of the second level of social construction theory that I have defined above: While people’s erotic interest or desire is inherently fixed, its level of expression and behavioral forms may change over time, culture, and place depending on the prevailing social norms. Although it is almost impossible for surveys to capture whether or not people’s sexual interest is culturally shaped (the third level of social construction theory), my research attempts to test the notion that sexual expression or behavior can vary across different social contexts, regardless of the rigidity of people’s erotic interest (here I am primarily concerned with sexual-object preference not sexual-aim or sexual-practice preference). Again, the method of quantitative causal modeling allows the theory that sexuality is socially constructed to be assessed empirically, bridging the gap between theoretical perspectives and quantitative findings that pervasively characterizes current social scientific inquiries on human sexuality.

Data and Methods

Sample

In order to address the research questions listed in the introduction, this article utilizes the data collected in 11 rounds of the General Social Survey (GSS) conducted between 1988 and 2004 (N = 10,767 men and 13,868 women). The GSS itself is a personal in-home interview conducted with participants aged 18 and older throughout the entire nation at one-to-two year intervals since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago. The annual GSS sample is a multistage area probability sample to the segment or block level. At the block level, households are enumerated and a full national probability sample is drawn. As such, the GSS samples are fairly representative national samples over time. Specifically, the 11 rounds of GSS data used in this paper were collected in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004, where each year the GSS sampled a different set of individuals. In 2002, the GSS underwent a significant change in survey mode. From 1972 to 2000, the GSS survey was administered in a paper-and-pencil format; beginning in 2002; however, the survey was conducted by computer-assisted personal interviewing (see Appendix B of the GSS 1972-2004 cumulative codebook). In 2004, the GSS adopted a new sample frame based on the 2000 United States census (for more on changes in the GSS sampling design in 2004, see Appendix A of the cumulative codebook). Response rates and missing data for the survey questions relevant to this article will be discussed in more detail later.

Measures

Homosexual behavior. In order to measure the key theoretical outcome variable—same-sex sexual contact, this article uses the data collected for three questions asked in the GSS about the participant’s past homosexual experience. First, from 1988 to 2004, all 11 rounds of the GSS survey asked a question that allowed me to identify whether or not a participant had engaged in homosexual behavior in the past 12 months at the time of interview. The exact wording of the question was: “How many sex partners have you had in the last 12 months? No partners, 1 partner, 2 partners, 3 partners, 4 partners, 5-10 partners, 11-20 partners, 21-100 partners, more than 100 partners? Have your sex partners in the last 12 months been exclusively male, both male and female, exclusively female?” The total response rate to this question in the cumulative dataset, merging the data collected between 1988 and 2004, was nearly 66%. As I was interested in the measurement of the prevalence of same-sex sexual contact, in recoding the three possible response outcomes to the last part of the survey question into a new dichotomous (yes, no) outcome variable that simply captured whether or not an individual had engaged in same-sex sexual behavior in the past year, I included the “both male and female” response as part of the “yes” category of the new variable. In other words, a participant who reported having male and female sex partners in the past 12 months was now counted simply as someone who had same-sex sexual experience at some point in the last year (at the time of interview).

From 1989 onward, the GSS also included a question that allowed me to identify participants who reported a same-sex sexual partner since age 18. The question wording was: “Now thinking about the time since your 18 th birthday (including the past 12 months), how many female [male] partners have you had sex with?” As shown, two versions of this question were asked. The GSS first asked the respondent about the number of opposite-sex partners that he/she has had since age 18, followed by the number of same-sex partners. The total response rate to both questions in the cumulative dataset, combining the data collected between 1989 and 2004, was approximately 76%. The participant answered both questions with a number, so in recoding the responses to the question about same-sex partners into a dichotomous (yes, no) outcome variable that simply measures whether or not a respondent had engaged in same-sex sexual contact since the age of 18, I collapsed any response ≥ 1 into the “yes” category of the new variable, omitting missing values such as “don’t know,” “N/A,” etc.

Finally, starting in 1991, a question was included in the GSS that allowed me to determine those participants who had sexual contact with another individual of the same sex in the past 5 years. The exact wording of the question was: “Now think about the past five years—the time since [month/year], and including the past 12 months, how many sex partners have you had in that five-year period? No partners, 1 partner, 2 partners, 3 partners, 4 partners, 5-10 partners, 11-20 partners, 21-100 partners, more than 100 partners? Have your sex partners in the last five years been exclusively male, both male and female, exclusively female?” The total response rate to this question in the cumulative dataset, merging the data collected from 1991 to 2004, was 59%. Similar to what I have done for the first question that asked about the participant’s sexual history in the past 12 months, I collapsed the response categories “exclusively male” and “both male and female” into one category for men (“exclusively female” and “both male and female” for women) in order to produce a dichotomous (yes, no) outcome variable that merely measured whether or not the participants engaged in same-sex sexual behavior in the past 5 years.

Sociodemographic variables. In addition to the variables measuring homosexual behavior, my analyses used a range of sociodemographic variables. Specifically, these were birth cohort, education, race, religion, secularism, marital status, current geographical urbanization, and geographical urbanization at age 16. All of these variables were measured explicitly in the GSS survey questionnaire, except for secularism. The GSS survey questionnaire only measured the participant’s frequency of attending religious services, and I recoded this variable by reversing its level of response category in order to generate a new variable that measured secularism. Thus, if a respondent attended religious services frequently, then he/she would score low on the new secularism scale.

Statistical Analysis

All of the statistical analyses executed for this project were conducted on unweighted observations using the statistical software package Stata version 9.1 (2005). The first two parts of this study involved simple cross-tabulations to estimate the prevalence of homosexual experience, with the chi-square statistical test of independence included only in the second part. In the third part, because the outcome variable (whether or not the participant had engaged in homosexual behavior in the past) was measured on a dichotomous level, I used three models to estimate the effect of geographical urbanization at age 16 on past homosexual experience since 18: one linear (ordinary least squares) and two non-linear (logit and probit).

Results

Prevalence of Homosexual Behavior by Year

Table 1 presents the estimated prevalence (in percentages) of American adults who reported homosexual experience in the past 12 months, in the past 5 years, and since age 18. For the estimations of same-sex sexual behavior in the past 12 months, men reported the highest number of such an experience in 1998—4.67%; women reported the highest number of such an experience in 2002—4.03%. On the other hand, men reported the lowest frequency of engaging in same-sex sexual practice in the past year at the time of interview in 1989, at 1.6%; women reported the lowest frequency of engaging in a same-sex sexual relation in the past year at the time of interview in 1988, the first year when this survey question was asked, at 0.18%. Together, these numbers strongly suggest that, over time, both men and women reported a higher prevalence of same-sex sexual experience in the last year at the time of interview, with the most obvious exception of women in 2004, when the number suddenly dropped down to 1.29% from the 4.03% reported two years earlier.

A similar trend for women can be found for the estimations of homosexual incidence in the past 5 years at the time of interview. While only 1.51% of the women sample in 1991 reported a homosexual encounter in the past 5 years, the percentage rose to 4.83 by 2002. However, in 2004, there was a drop in the percentage to 1.88. As for men, the highest number who reported participation in same-sex sexual activity in the past 5 years at the time of interview was in 2000, 5.39%; the lowest number was reported in 1993, at 2.90%. Although the high and low for men together might imply a similar steady increasing trend in reporting same-sex sexual experience in the past 5 years over time like for women, Figure 1 clearly shows that the trend in reporting incidences of male homosexual behavior in the past 5 years was, in fact, much more stable over time than the trend for women.

Finally, for the estimations of past homosexual experience since the age of 18 among United States adults, both men and women reported the highest number of incidence in 2004—10.47% of the men and 7.21% of the women. Interestingly, both numbers were also the highest among the estimations of same-sex sexual activity across all three measures for all 11 rounds of GSS administered since 1988. As for the lowest estimations of past same-sex sexual encounters since the age of 18, fewest men (3.51%) reported such an incidence in 1993, and fewest women (2.80%) reported such an incidence in 1991.

Table 1 and Figure 2 suggest that, similar to the findings for reported female homosexuality in the past year and the past 5 years at the time of interview, there appears to be a steady trend of increased reporting of female homosexual behavior since age 18 in the nation over time, with the exception of a high estimate in 1989 (5.52%), when the question regarding this aspect of the respondent’s sexual history was first introduced into the GSS. And over time, there appears to be a fairly stable proportion of men reporting homosexual encounters since 18, with the most obvious exception of the estimate in 2004, when the number of men who reported past same-sex sexual experience since adulthood represented the peak of the estimations. Situating all of these figures in a larger chronological trajectory, Figures 1 and 2 together indicate that there is a definite increasing trend in the reporting of same-sex sexual activity nation-wide among women, but this pattern applies to men less significantly.

Another interesting pattern, though not entirely consistent, is that there appears to be a drop in the reporting of homosexual experience in one method of measurement whenever a new method of measurement is introduced in the GSS survey. For example, when the question about past homosexual activity since 18 was first asked in 1989, the number of men who reported same-sex sexual experience in the past 12 months was less than half of the number computed for the previous year. Although in the same year, the number of women who reported homosexual encounters in the past year increased in magnitude significantly, the number dropped again in 1991, when the new question about same-sex sexual experience in the past 5 years was first introduced. In fact, in 1991, women reported the second lowest number among all of the estimates in Table 1. Indeed, when this question about participation in same-sex sexual practice in the past 5 years was first introduced in 1991, all of the other estimates dropped except for the increase in men’s reporting of homosexual encounter in the past year.

Another approach to understanding the effect of introducing a new method of measuring past homosexual activity is by looking at the trend of missing data on homosexual experience over time. Table 2 shows that when the question that asked about the respondent’s same-sex sexual encounter since 18 was first introduced in 1989, the percentage of missing data on both men and women’s homosexual encounter in the past 12 months increased slightly. Similarly, missing data for all other measurements except for female homosexual experience since 18 increased in 1991, when the respondent’s same-sex sexual encounter in the past 5 years was measured for the first time. These findings suggest that the logic behind the effect of a newly introduced instrument of measurement is still worth exploring by survey experts.

Two other observations can be made based on the proportion of missing data tabulated and presented in Table 2. First, the numerous large values estimated in Table 2 strongly suggest that there are a significant portion of respondents who intentionally avoided answering questions regarding their past sexual experience with persons of the same sex. In the period between 1988 and 2004, the estimated percentage of individuals in the entire population (of the given gender) who did not answer those questions ranged from 12.70 to 41.96. Figure 3 presents a histogram distribution of the estimated percentages of missing data from Table 2. Since the shape of the distribution is fairly close to normal (bell-shaped), the best estimate of the central tendency of the distribution is perhaps the mean—27.52% (with 7.28% SD). This number indicates that for all 11 rounds of GSS and for all three measurements of homosexual experience, 27.52% of missing data are collected on average. This large number of missing data, alongside the fact that the GSS questions on the respondent’s previous homosexual encounters attempt to collect data about a kind of behavior that is highly sensitive and stigmatized in American society, provides compelling grounds to believe that the numbers presented in Table 1 and Table 3 are no doubt lower-bound estimates.

Second, the figures in Table 2 suggest that the information collected about the respondent’s past sexual behavior with persons of the same sex since the age of 18 is perhaps the best out of the three GSS measurements of homosexual behavior, because this question, for both men and women, had consistently received the lowest amount of missing data in comparison to the other two questions that were asked from 1989 onward, with the exceptions of 1996 and 2000 for men. Alternatively put, the second and third columns of Table 1 and Table 3 perhaps provide the best estimations of the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States from 1989 to 2004, since the second and third columns of Table 2 include the lowest estimates of missing data systematically throughout that period with the two exceptions mentioned. Meanwhile, the question that asked for women’s homosexual experience in the past year had consistently been the question that was avoided the most and with the highest estimated proportion of missing data throughout all 11 rounds of GSS from 1988 to 2004. As such, this (sixth) column of Table 1 and Table 3 probably present the least favorable estimates of the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States for that period.

Prevalence of Homosexual Behavior by Sociodemographic Variables

Merging the GSS datasets collected in the period from 1988 to 2004, Table 3 presents the estimated prevalence (in percentages) of homosexual behavior among different American subpopulations defined by various sociodemographic variables. When U.S. adults were subdivided by birth cohort, people who were born later (e.g., in the 1980s) were more likely to report homosexual contact than people who were born earlier (e.g., in the pre-1920s). This steady increasing trend in the reporting of same-sex sexual behavior as the generational group of respondents gets younger is especially the case for women who reported homosexual experience since 18. Whereas 7.53% of women who were born in the 1980s reported same-sex sexual experience since 18, only 1.36% of women who were born before the 1920s reported such an experience. The increasing trend in the reporting of same-sex sexual contact as the cohort group decreases in age was less significant for men. Surprisingly, while men who were born in the 1980s reported the highest frequency of homosexual experience since 18 (7.73%), their numbers in the same year were significantly less than the ones reported by men belonging to several generations before them when past homosexual experience was measured in the context of in the past year (see the seventh column in Table 3) or in the past 5 years (see the fifth column in Table 3).

In contrast, when U.S. adults were subdivided by different levels of education, a steady trend in increased reporting of past same-sex sexual contact as the respondents belong to a more educated group was more evident for men than for women. Consistently across the three measurements of same-sex behavior, for men who have reported previous engagement in homosexual activity, there was approximately a 2 percentage difference between the percentage of those who hold a graduate degree (7.01, 5.37, and 4.43 respectively) and the percentage of those who received an educational level that was less than high school (5.03, 3.33, and 2.73 respectively). For women, on the other hand, based on the numbers in columns 2, 4, and 6 in Table 3, it is more difficult to detect a specific pattern for the relationship between levels of education and reported homosexual experience.

When U.S. adults are divided by race into three subgroups—white, black, and other, the data in Table 3 clearly illustrate that, among men, those who are black report the highest incidences of same-sex sexual experience, followed by those who belong to races other than white or black. White men reported the lowest incidences of homosexual contact. Among women, those who belong to races other than white or black reported the highest incidences of same-sex sexual experience, followed by those who are black. Like the results for men, in terms of race, homosexual activity among those who are white was the least prevalent among women. These observations for men and women uniformly hold for all three GSS approaches to measuring the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the nation.

Regarding religion, the highest percentages of men and women who reported homosexual experience were by people with no religion or individuals affiliated with a type of religion other than Protestantism, Catholicism, or Judaism. One exception to this observation is that Jewish men reported a higher percentage of same-sex sexual encounter in the past year (4.14%) than men who have religious affiliation other than Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism (3.64%; see last column in Table 3). In using religious affiliation as the central means to subdivide United States adults, the largest difference in the reported percentages across the three measurements of homosexual behavior for a given gender was the difference among Jewish women between the percentage of those who reported same-sex sexual activity in the past 5 years (0.61%) and the percentage of those who reported same-sex sexual activity since 18 (5.10%), a difference of 7.36 proportionate increase (increased by 7.36% from the former figure to the latter).

That the percentage of respondents who reported homosexual experience generally increases as an American subpopulation is defined by a higher degree of secularism (opposite of religiosity, which was measured by the respondents’ frequency of attending religious services) quite comprehensively captures the trends of figures reported in Table 3 across all three GSS methods of measuring the prevalence of homosexual behavior, for both men and women when they are divided into subgroups defined by degrees of secularism. When they are subdivided by marital status—either currently married or not, many more currently unmarried respondents report same-sex sexual behavior than currently married respondents, and this is true again for both sexes.

Table 3 also shows that, across all three measurements of previous homosexual encounter, there was a higher percentage of people who at the time of interview lived within a highly urbanized residential environment, in comparison to those who lived in less metropolitan areas, reporting homosexual behavior. One notable exception to this generalization was that fewer women who live in top 12 central cities in the country than those who live in the next 88 central cities report engagement in same-sex sexual activity since age 18, in the past year, and in the past 5 years at the time of interview (see Table 3).

The relationship between geographical urbanization and different levels of expression of homosexual behavior was somewhat different when the population was subdivided into groups based on the character of their place of residence at age 16. The figures presented in Table 3 for the last sociodemographic variable indicate that a higher percentage of people who lived within a more urbanized social environment at age 16 reported a same-sex sexual encounter, except that past homosexual experience was more prevalent among respondents who lived in (non-farm) country-like places than those who lived in farm-like areas. This pattern was true across all three ways of measuring an individual’s past homosexual behavior and for both men and women.

Thus far, the numbers presented in Table 3 have been interpreted in terms of basic quantitative comparisons, such as between extreme values, ranking order, absolute differences in percentages, relative differences in percentages/proportions, or overall quantitative trends/patterns. In addition to these crude comparisons, for each of the cells in Table 3, I computed a p-value from conducting a chi-square test of independence between the variable reported homosexual behavior (yes or no) and the corresponding sociodemographic variables. Table 4 summarizes the results of all chi-square tests of statistical significance that were carried out for each of the cells in Table 3.

Because of the cross-sectional nature of the GSS datasets, inferring causality from any of the sociodemographic variables to the outcome variable—expression of homosexual behavior—would invariably involve the problem of endogeneity, meaning that the reverse causal process between the variables cannot be entirely separated from the assumed forward causal process. The only exception, to which I have tried to draw attention by highlighting two cell boxes in Table 4, is the relationship between the geographical urbanization at age 16 explanatory variable and the past homosexual behavior since age 18 outcome variable. The assumed causal direction from an individual’s place of residence at age 16 to his/her homosexual encounter since age 18 has to be one that does not involve the problem of endogeneity, because the reverse direction of causality—that whether or not an individual has expressed homosexual behavior since 18 would influence where he resided at age 16—is temporally impossible.

Furthermore, Table 4 shows that, the p-values calculated for the two corresponding cells (one for men and one for women) in Table 3 that represent the specific association between geographical urbanization at 16 and homosexual experience since 18 is < .05, meaning that the null hypothesis that the two variables are independent can be rejected. As indicated in Table 4, among the listed sociodemographic variables, the variable geographical urbanization at age 16 is the only one of its kind insofar as the variable has only one cell in which the captured bivariate dependent relationship is statistically significant for men and only one for women, with both cells representing a causal relationship between an identical pair of variables. Anchoring upon this statistical uniqueness, in addition to the solid theoretical ground on which the chronological order between geographical urbanization at 16 and past homosexual experience since 18 is established, the data analyses executed in the next section assume a causal direction from the former variable to the latter, and provide the effects of the former on the latter by employing different estimation techniques.

The Effect of Place of Residence at Age 16 on Homosexual Experience since Age 18

To be more precise, as mentioned in the introduction, in this section I am interested in studying the causal effect of the urbanization character of an individual’s residential environment at age 16 on the likelihood (or probability) that the same individual would engage in homosexual behavior as an adult. This means that even though the underlying assumption of the statistical estimations executed for this section involves a causal inference, they do not function as empirical support for the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate over the etiological causes of homosexuality (i.e., whether biological predispoistion or upbringing determines one’s homosexual orientation). Rather, the analyses presented in this section are intended to respond to the essentialism versus social constructionism debate: the causal effects measured here only speak to the idea that sexual acts, behaviors, and practices can vary depending on certain characters of the social contexts in which they occur; the assumed causal direction in this study rejects the essentialist notion that the differences in the level of homosexual expression, such as between people living in urban cities versus people living in non-urban cities, is predetermined by some immutable biological factor.

I do not impose a “homosexual” identity on those respondents who have reported participation in homosexual activity since 18—they can very well self-identify as a homosexual, bisexual, queer, man who has sex with men, woman who has sex with women, gay, even straight, heterosexual, or some other identity category and still have had conducted sexual practice with person(s) of the same sex at some point in their adulthood. Alternatively, they do not necessarily view themselves as expressing homosexuality or even agree that what they have done defines or is defined as homosexuality. Simply by measuring the sexual behavior of a national adult sample, I am not presenting data that show the causes of homosexuality, but simply demonstrating how an individual’s expression of sexual behavior (or temporary/permanent sexual object choice) is highly contingent upon the social context in which such an expression occurs, an argument in line with the social constructionist theoretical perspective.

Having emphasized the standpoint from which causality is inferred in my quantitative analyses, I can more comfortably interpret the results presented in Table 5, which compares different estimations of the effect of an individual’s place of residence at age 16 on past homosexual experience since age 18. As the dependent variable is measured on a dichotomous level, the estimations are calculated by using three different models: the OLS regression model (linear), the logit model (non-linear), and the probit model (non-linear). Table 5 indicates that the results computed from employing all three estimation techniques together establish the statistical significance of the causal effect of geographical urbanization at 16 on past homosexual behavior since 18 for both women (p < .001) and men (p < .01).

In the present case with a dichotomous outcome variable, as one would expect, the non-linear models are more desirable models than the linear model in predicting the effects of the explanatory variable, because they reveal how a one unit increase in the independent variable is not always associated with an identical amount of increase in the dependent variable. For instance, based on the estimates obtained from the OLS model, a .0047 proportional increase in the likelihood that an adult woman would engage in same-sex sexual behavior is associated with a one unit increase in the degree of urbanization of her residential environment at 16, irrespective of whether the one unit increase in geographical urbanization is from 0 to 1 (from non-farm, country-like places to farm-like areas) or 3 to 4 (from medium city to large city). Whereas, the logit model predicts a .0039 proportional increase in the likelihood that a female adult would participate in homosexual activity as the geographical urbanization of her place of residence at age 16 increases in one unit from 0 to 1 (from non-farm, country-like places to farm-like areas), but a .0051 proportional increase in the likelihood that she would engage in same-sex sexual contact as an adult when the urbanization character of her residential environment at age 16 increases from 3 to 4 (from medium city to large city). The discrete effects estimated by the probit model for the above two cases are .0040 (instead of .0039) and .0050 (rather than .0051) respectively, which confirm the commonly accepted notion that the logit and probit functional bases are almost identical except for the tails of their respective distributions. Other discrete estimates obtained from the logit model and the probit model presented in Table 5 can be interpreted in a similar fashion as above.

The marginal effects reported in Table 5 represent the effects of the independent variable (geographical urbanization at age 16) on the dependent variable (homosexual experience since age 18) when the independent variable is held at its mean. Therefore, based on the logit model, when the geographical urbanization of a woman’s residential environment at age 16 is 2.52 (the mean value for women, which denotes somewhere between small town and medium city), the likelihood for her to engage in same-sex sexual practice in adulthood is .47% on average; when the urbanization character of a man’s place of residence at 16 is 2.47 (the mean value for men, which again denotes somewhere between small town and medium city), the likelihood for him to engage in homosexual behavior in adulthood is also .47% on average. On the other hand, while the probit model yields the same marginal effect for women (a probability of .0047 at the mean value of geographical urbanization at 16), it yields a slightly higher marginal effect (a probability of .0048) for men.

Discusion

En la introducción describí las contribuciones potenciales que este studio puede dar al cuerpo actual de literature de ciencias socials sobre la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos, subrayando su valor en términos del establecimiento de una conexión entre la teoría y los hallazgos empíricos. Estas contribuciones pueden ser recapituladas aquí en terminus de significación estadística versus significación sustantiva.

Usando 11 rondas de datos GSS, primero estimé la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual de hombres y mujeres en los Estados Unidos de 1988 al 2004, conduciendo una investigación sistemática de tendencias y patrones cuantitativos a los largo del tiempo para cada una de las tres mediciones de la GSS de experiencia homosexual pasada. Al interpretar estas tendencias en el tiempo, me apoyé en cambios con significación sustantiva. Por ejemplo, compare estos cambios porcentuales con magnitude considerable cuando hice la inferencia general de que a lo largo del tiempo tanto hombres como mujeres informan una prevalencia superior de experienciar sexual con el mismo sexo en el último año en el momento de la entrevista. Se encontró para las mujeres una tendencia similar en las estimaciones de incidencia homosexual en los pasados cinco años en el momento de la entrevista, pero, en comparación, la tendencia de los hombres fue mucho más estable a lo largo del tiempo. Al hacer un ploteo de las cifras presentadas en la Tabla 1, las Figuras 1 y 2 demostraron que la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual varía a través del tiempo y el género. Se podría argumentar que el problema con la inferencia de la prevalencia cambiante de la conducta homosexual con el tiempo es que la información incrementada de contacto sexual con el mismo sexo con el correr del tiempo puede simplemente ser una función de la creciente tolerancia de la conducta del mismo sexo en la sociedad norteamericana. Sin embargo, como argumentaron Turner et al. (2005) de modo convincente, “Si los cambios en el sesgo de respuesta debideos a la tolerancia social creciente fueran responsables de que se informara cada vez más el sexo de mujer a mujer con el correr del siglo XX, uno hubiera esperado una tendencia similar entre varones” (p. 460).

Al hacer confluir estas 11 rondas de datos de las GSS, estimé entonces la prevalencia de experienciar homosexual pasada de varones y mujeres entre subpoblaciones norteamericanas definidas por varias variables sociodemográficas, incluyendo la cohorte de nacimiento, la educación, la raza, la religión, el secularismo, estatus maritual, lugar de residencia de ese momento y lugar de residencia a los 16 años. La Tabla 4 reseña la significación estadística de las relaciones dependientes bivariadas entre estas variables y la conducta homosexual, y he discutido los cimientos únicos en su género sobre los cuales la asociación entre la urbanización geográfica del individuo a los 16 años y la experienciar homosexual pasada desde los 18 ofrece espacio para más interpretaciones causales, que subsiguientemente exploré en la tercera parte de mi estudio. En suma, para esta segunda parte de mi estudio me apoyé tanto en la significación estadística (el test de chi-cuadrado) y la significación sustantica (para comparaciones cuantitativas básics)  en la interpretación de cómo los niveles de expresión de la conducta homosexual varían a través de diferentes subpoblaciones en los Estados Unidos.

Las primeras dos secciones de mi studio proven apoyo empírico implícito para la teoría de construcción social de la Sexualidad en la medida en que representan estimaciones cuan titativas de la prevalencia de la actividad homosexual que priorizan el mapeo de sus tendencias en el tiempo así como sus diferentes distribuciones a través de variadas variables sociales y demográficas, rechazando la búsqueda esencialista de una única estimación de la prevalencia de la homosexualidad en la nación. Dicho de un modo alternativo, lo que las primeras dos ssecciones de mi estudio demuestran es precisamente que ninguna estimación única se aplica a la población nacional íntegra. Por ejemplo, la estimación para mujeres y la estimación para varones son en sí mismas ya diferentes, sin tomar en cuenta cómo las dos se incrementan diferentemente con el tiempo y varían para diferentes subpoblaciones definidas por características demográficas específicas.

La tercera parte de mi estudio explícitamente pone a prueba la teoría de construicción social testeando la significación estadística del efecto causal hipotetizado del character de urbanización del ambiente residenc ial de un indiviudo a los 16 años y la probabiidad que ese mismo individuo tiene de involucrarse en conducta homosexual cuando aulto. La Table 5 indica que los resultados computados al emplear last res técnicas de estimación —OLS, logit, and probit— establecen juntas la significación estadística de este efecto causal tanto para mujeres (p < .001) como varones (p < .01). Esta ahallazo da apoyo a algunos elementos del Segundo nivel de la teoría de construcción social que he definido en la introducción: Si bien el interés o deseo erótico de las personas está inherentemente fijada, su nivel de expresión y sus formas comportamentales pueden cambiar con el tiempo, la cultura y el lugar dependiendo de las normas sociales prevalecientes. Si bien es casi imposible que las encuestas capturen si el interés sexual de las personas está moldeado culturalmente (el tercer nivel de la toería de construcción social), mi investigación simplemente demuestra que la expresion o bconducta sexual puede variar a través de diferentes contextos sociales, sin tomar en cuenta la rigidez del interés erótico de las personas.

Limitations of the Social Construction Theory

Though the value of the social construction approach is evident in that it allows room for understanding “sexuality” in dynamic and complex ways, it is by no means without problems. The major criticism of social constructionism concerns its weakness in accounting for a stable, “naturalized” identity around which an effective political movement could be organized. If certain groups of people suffer from social oppression, such as women or sexual minorities like gays and lesbians, many political activists argue that it is necessary to adhere to an essentialist understanding of identity in order to make successful rights-based claims in the legal arena. Without stipulating that women or gays and lesbians are a group of “essentialized” individuals (“they are born with their sexual orientation”), it is difficult to imagine how their rights to be protected under the law and to be treated equally as any other citizens could be articulated. Without rendering identity categories like “gays and lesbians” as stable and natural, the task of defending the political/legal interests of sexual minorities appears to be almost untenable.

Another issue with social construction theory involves the tendency of constructionists to eliminate altogether the role of the psychic. As commented upon by Fuss (1989), social constructionism often “foreclose[s]…the question of how desire comes to be articulated within a particular social formation” (p. 110). Without acknowledging individual agency or intentionality, as what most radical constructionists do, the ways in which people negotiate their self-understanding and their experiences in the social world become unaccounted altogether. The third and the fourth level of social construction theory that I have outlined in the introduction make it abundantly clear that what is critically missing in social constructionism is “any dynamic sense of how society comes to dwell within individuals or how individuality comes to be socially constituted” (Epstein, 1987, p. 23).

Finally, the major problem with the social constructionist perspective is that even the most compelling constructionist arguments ultimately rely on essentialist assumptions. As Fuss (1989) takes great pains to prove this point, simply put, “essentialism is essential to social constructionism” (p. 1). For example, with respect to the history of homosexuality, the social constructionist debate over the precise historical period in which the concept of homosexual identity was made possible necessitates the fundamental assumption that there is such an essential category as “same-sex sexuality” or at least “same-sex desire.” The only method for historians to identify a historical moment in which “homosexuality” emerged requires, from the very outset, the acceptance of the idea that same-sex desire or behavior could be correctly identified as a stable and coherent concept across time without hesitation. To push this problem even further, the social constructionist approach to studying any history of sexuality presupposes that the category of “sexuality” is itself universal, trans-historical, and trans-cultural. Therefore, paradoxically, any social constructionist study inherently reduces its subject of investigation to an essentialist category.

Conclusión

De la estimación de la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos a lo largo del tiempo, vale la pena notar que el porcentaje de hombres que informaron experiencia homosexual pasada desde los 18 años basados en la muestra GSS 2004 representa la estimación de porcentaje más alta de contacto sexual del mismo sexo en el contexto de la Norteamérica moderna después de los ochenta. Por ejemplo, el estudio transeccional de Laumann et al (1994) informó una cifra de aproximadamente 9% (para el contacto homosexual de varón) como su más alta estimación de conducta sexual con el mismo sexo en toda la nación en esa época; tomando datos de 10 rondas de datos GSS, el estudio de  Turner et al.(2005) proveyó un número sopesado de 6.61% (para el contacto homosexual de la mujer) para el año 2000 como su más alta estimación de sexo del mismo género entre adultos norteamericanos en el período entre 1988 y 2002. En comparación con estos números, el no sopesado 10.47% de hombres en 2004 que informaban experiencia homosexual pasada desde la edad de 18 computado en este estudio (véase Tabla 1) ejemplifica una cifra sin precedentes entre las estimaciones contemporáneas cuantitativas de la prevalencia de la actividad sexual del mismo sexo.

Otros investigadores se han enfrentado al tema con grandes proporciones de datos faltantes, como se informa en Tabla 2, volviendo a sopesar las muestras e imputando la probabilidad de informar experiencia homosexual pasada para los casos en los que no había datos informados. Las más recientes publicaciones de Turner, Villarroel, Chromy, Eggleston y Rogers (2004, 2005) han tomado cuidadosamente en consideración este problema y evaluaron el impacto de las respuestas faltantes en las preguntas GSS que indagaban en la experiencia sexual con el mismo sexo desde los 18, en el último año, y en los pasados cinco años. Sacaron como conclusión que “La sustancial similaridad de  [las] estimaciones alternativas [que hemos desarrollado] sugiere que la no respuesta a estas preguntas puede ser clasificada como sustantivamente ignorable [itálica agregada]…Dada la similaridad de estimaciones de prevalencia derivadas con y sin estas imputaciones, confinamos los análisis subsiguientes a los informes de los respondientes sobre sexo con el mismo género sin imputación de respuestas faltantes” (2004, p. 4). De modo similar, a través de mis análisis de datos he estimado la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en los estados Unidos usando los datos GSS sin procesar, excluyendo los datos para aquellos respondientes que no respondieron preguntas sobre su historia de comportamiento sexual con el mismo sexo.

Quizás sea válido volver a subrayar aquí que en relación con el estudio de la homosexualidad, o más específicamente con la conducta homosexual, mi investigación solamente se involucra con el debate esencialismo versus socioconstructivismo pero no en el debate natura versus nurtura. Dicho de un modo alternativo, mis resultados de ningún modo ofrecen una explicación de las causas naturales de la conducta homosexual. Encontrar una positiva conexión causal entre la urbanización geográfica y la conducta homosexual solamente indica cómo los niveles de actos, conductas y expresiones sexuales pueden cambiar dependiendo de ciertos caracteres de los contextos sociales en que se producen; la asociación descarta la idea esencialista de que las diferencias en el nivel de la expresión homosexual, tales como las que hay entre personas que viven en ciudades urbanas versus personas viviendo en ciudades no urbanas, está predeterminada por algunas predisposiciones biológicas en el nivel del individuo. Mi estudio tampoco sugiere que la elección de vivir en lugares urbanos está causada por la homosexualidad ni implica que vivir en áreas urbanas sea una causa etiológica de homosexualidad. En lugar de ello, estoy meramente aseverando que los medios urbanizados son contextos sociales en los que la conducta sexual con el mismo sexo tiene una probabilidad/chance de expresarse, argumento que está en línea con la perspectiva teórica socioconstructivista. De modo acorde, en la medida en que el estudio presente encuentra empíricamente apoyo para la comprensión socioconstruccionista de la conducta sexual del mismo sexo, responde una pregunta epistemológica sobre la sexualidad humana y no una pregunta etiológica.

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Figure 1. Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Men Reporting Homosexual Experience by Year.

Figure 2. Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Women Reporting Homosexual Experience by Year.

Figure 3. Distribution of Estimated Percentage of Missing Data.

Table 1: Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Adults Reporting Past Homosexual Experience by Gender and GSS Survey Year (1988-2004)

	Since 18		Last 5 Years		Last Year
Year	Female % a (N b)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)
1988	– c	–	–	–	.18 (543)	3.36 (476)
1989	5.52 (688)	5.90 (559)	–	–	1.61 (560)	1.60 (499)
1990	2.86 (560)	5.49 (474)	–	–	0.86 (467)	2.32 (430)
1991 d	2.80 (678)	4.98 (482)	1.51 (598)	4.45 (472)	0.57 (523)	2.84 (422)
1993	4.36 (802)	3.51 (598)	2.98 (670)	2.90 (552)	2.68 (597)	2.58 (505)
1994	3.39 (1,355)	5.52 (1,051)	2.93 (1,263)	3.86 (1,034)	2.34 (1,112)	2.72 (957)
1996	4.86 (1,296)	5.18 (1,024)	3.60 (1,164)	5.33 (1,051)	2.93 (1,057)	4.52 (974)
1998	5.65 (1,257)	4.98 (964)	3.58 (1,088)	4.36 (918)	3.33 (992)	4.67 (856)
2000	6.72 (1,131)	7.27 (894)	5.21 (1,038)	5.39 (908)	3.96 (936)	4.56 (834)
2002	5.45 (1,211)	6.11 (965)	4.83 (993)	4.35 (897)	4.03 (892)	4.34 (828)
2004	7.21 (1,207)	10.47 (1,032)	1.88 (1,008)	4.27 (913)	1.29 (932)	3.36 (834)

Note. The values represent raw, unweighted estimates computed from the GSS 1972 to 2004 cumulative dataset. Missing data including the ones for people who did not answer the relevant survey questions were simply excluded from the above analysis.

a Estimated percentage of individuals in the given gender population who have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior, including those who have answered that their past sex partners included both sexes.

b Unweighted total number of respondents in the given gender population who have responded to the survey question pertaining to each cell.

c Dashes in the table indicate that data were not collected because the survey question pertaining to the cell was not asked for the given year.

d According to Turner et al. (2005), the 1991 GSS asked respondents to report the total number of their past sexual partners in the past year and the past 5 years as either a number or using the response categories 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-10, 11-20, 21-100, 100+. Turner et al. reported that there are no significant differences in the likelihood for both men and women reporting a same-sex partner in the past 5 years using either format. However, while the same results (that there is no significant difference whether the response is in one format or the other) applied to men for the questions on sexual experience in the past 1 year, women in 1991 were less likely to report a same-sex partner in the past year when questioned using the free response format rather than the coded format.

Table 2: Estimation of Missing Data on Homosexual Experience by Gender and GSS Survey Year (1988-2004)

	Since 18		Last 5 Years		Last Year
Year	Female % a (N b)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)
1988	– c	–	–	–	35.59 (843)	25.39 (638)
1989	21.55 (877)	15.30 (660)	–	–	36.15 (877)	25.56 (660)
1990	27.08 (768)	21.52 (604)	–	–	39.19 (768)	28.80 (604)
1991	23.04 (881)	24.21 (636)	32.12 (881)	25.79 (636)	40.64 (881)	33.65 (636)
1993	12.92 (921)	12.70 (685)	27.25 (921)	19.42 (685)	35.18 (921)	26.28 (685)
1994	20.39 (1,702)	18.53 (1,290)	25.79 (1,702)	19.84 (1,290)	34.67 (1,702)	25.81 (1,290)
1996	19.95 (1,619)	20.31 (1,285)	28.10 (1,619)	18.21 (1,285)	34.71 (1,619)	24.20 (1,285)
1998	21.44 (1,600)	21.75 (1,232)	32.00 (1,600)	25.49 (1,232)	38.00 (1,600)	30.52 (1,232)
2000	28.78 (1,588)	27.26 (1,229)	34.63 (1,588)	26.19 (1,229)	41.06 (1,588)	32.14 (1,229)
2002	21.21 (1,537)	21.41 (1,228)	35.39 (1,537)	26.95 (1,228)	41.96 (1,537)	32.57 (1,228)
2004	21.21 (1,532)	19.38 (1,280)	34.20 (1,532)	28.67 (1,280)	39.16 (1,532)	34.84 (1,280)

Note. The values represent raw, unweighted estimates of missing data computed from the GSS 1972 to 2004 cumulative dataset.

a Estimated percentage of individuals in the entire population of the given gender who have not answered the question pertaining to each cell.

b Unweighted total number of respondents in the entire population of the given gender.

c Dashes in the table indicate that data were not collected because the survey question pertaining to the cell was not asked for the given year.

Table 3: Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Adults Reporting Past Homosexual Experience by Gender and Selected Sociodemographic Variables (by Merging GSS 1988 to 2004 Datasets)

	Since 18 (1989-2004)		Last 5 Years (1991-2004)		Last Year (1988-2004)
Variables	Female % a (N b)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)
Birth Cohort Pre-1920 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s	1.36 (590) 1.96 (869) 2.60 (962) 3.63 (1,544) 6.14 (2,295) 6.65 (2,286) 7.19 (1,376) 7.53 (239) p < .0001	4.79 (334) 5.26 (570) 6.35 (772) 6.30 (1,317) 6.10 (1,853) 6.45 (1,845) 5.98 (1,137) 7.73 (207)	3.81 (105) 1.65 (364) 1.28 (626) 1.82 (1,207) 3.40 (1,973) 3.82 (2,043) 5.50 (1,290) 5.61 (196) p < .0001	2.01 (149) 2.95 (373) 3.28 (640) 4.49 (1,092) 4.60 (1,609) 4.95 (1,635) 5.30 (1,057) 2.87 (174)	0.00 (115) 0.77 (390) 1.08 (651) 1.32 (1,363) 2.45 (2,243) 3.06 (2,354) 3.81 (1,287) 2.06 (194) p < .0001	2.12 (189) 2.03 (444) 2.10 (715) 2.72 (1,324) 3.66 (1,860) 4.67 (1,883) 4.50 (1,023) 2.96 (169) p < .005
Education Less than high school High school graduate Junior college graduate Bachelor degree Graduate degree	5.83 (1,474) 4.50 (5,606) 4.84 (744) 5.04 (1,666) 8.48 (672) p < .0001	5.03 (1,133) 6.34 (4,151) 5.29 (548) 6.47 (1,423) 7.01 (770)	4.65 (904) 2.96 (4,398) 4.39 (615) 2.82 (1,347) 5.37 (540) p < .005	3.33 (870) 4.32 (3,520) 4.27 (468) 5.30 (1,208) 5.30 (660)	2.73 (1,062) 2.05 (4,876) 3.15 (666) 2.38 (1,431) 3.89 (565) p < .05	2.73 (1,025) 3.35 (3,966) 3.65 (521) 4.33 (1,339) 4.43 (745)
Race White Black Other	4.97 (8,287) 5.30 (1,378) 6.15 (520)	5.94 (6,834) 7.97 (790) 6.21 (419)	3.39 (6,224) 3.57 (1,150) 3.60 (445)	4.20 (5,621) 5.99 (734) 5.25 (381)	2.38 (6,896) 2.43 (1,233) 2.90 (482)	3.36 (6,378) 4.91 (815) 4.05 (420)
Religion Protestant Catholic Jewish None Other	3.97 (6,148) 4.67 (2,419) 5.10 (196) 11.15 (951) 9.30 (441) p < .0001	5.52 (4,297) 5.34 (1,948) 5.42 (166) 8.69 (1,208) 9.00 (400) p < .0001	2.71 (4,505) 3.09 (1,910) 0.61 (163) 7.25 (841) 6.38 (376) p < .0001	3.85 (3,528) 4.23 (1,606) 4.00 (150) 6.37 (1,067) 5.52 (362) p < .01	1.99 (5,016) 1.90 (2,161) 1.18 (170) 5.54 (867) 4.28 (374) p < .0001	3.10 (4,060) 3.25 (1,846) 4.14 (169) 5.49 (1,130) 3.64 (385) p < .005
Secularism (Measured by Frequency of Attending Religious Service) More than once per week Every week Nearly every week 2-3 times per month Once per month Several times per year Once per year Less than once per year Never	2.96 (879) 2.96 (2,093) 2.72 (625) 4.35 (989) 5.21 (730) 5.52 (1,267) 6.75 (1,214) 6.09 (755) 8.73 (1,478) p < .0001	5.75 (452) 6.30 (1,223) 3.97 (378) 5.38 (595) 5.60 (571) 6.37 (1,084) 5.17 (1,258) 5.36 (746) 7.81 (1,627)	1.84 (597) 2.01 (1,441) 1.94 (465) 2.15 (791) 3.32 (602) 3.38 (1,036) 4.47 (1,006) 3.06 (588) 6.93 (1,169) p <.0001	3.39 (384) 4.62 (975) 2.95 (305) 3.31 (513) 4.41 (476) 4.55 (924) 3.96 (1,060) 3.73 (643) 5.97 (1,357)	1.10 (634) 1.30 (1,613) 1.17 (512) 1.35 (887) 2.38 (671) 2.40 (1,167) 2.96 (1,114) 2.46 (651) 5.31 (1,244) p < .0001	2.30 (434) 3.84 (1,119) 2.90 (345) 3.32 (603) 3.35 (568) 3.37 (1,039) 2.72 (1,213) 2.81 (713) 5.30 (1,472) p < .05
Marital Status Married Not Married	3.32 (4,824) 6.66 (5,359) p < .0001	3.43 (4,344) 9.36 (3,697) p < .0001	1.71 (4,267) 5.49 (3,552) p < .0001	1.71 (3,736) 7.87 (2,998) p < .0001	1.01 (5,125) 4.48 (3,486) p < .0001	1.26 (4,528) 6.94 (3,083) p < .0001
Geographical Urbanization Top 12 central cities (CCs) Next 88 central cities Suburbs top 12 CCs Suburbs next 88 CCs Other urban areas Other rural areas	5.33 (807) 7.47 (1,513) 5.86 (1,161) 5.55 (1,441) 4.12 (4,123) 3.77 (1,140) p < .0001	13.39 (545) 7.58 (1,161) 7.17 (962) 5.83 (1,217) 4.68 (3,336) 4.62 (822) p < .0001	3.54 (621) 5.32 (1,185) 3.46 (926) 4.11 (1,096) 2.77 (3,173) 2.20 (818) p < .0001	11.32 (486) 6.80 (1,014) 4.33 (808) 4.61 (998) 2.80 (2,781) 2.62 (649) p < .0001	2.45 (654) 4.04 (1,239) 2.24 (1,026) 3.10 (1,291) 1.94 (3,446) 1.26 (955) p < .0001	9.28 (517) 5.82 (1,083) 3.64 (935) 3.26 (1,196) 2.41 (3,110) 1.55 (772) p < .0001
Geographical Urbanization (at 16) Country (non-farm) Farm Small town Medium city Large city Metropolitan area	4.45 (1,124) 3.12 (1,252) 5.06 (3,341) 5.17 (1,684) 6.22 (1,237) 6.14 (1,530) p < .01	5.03 (975) 4.49 (1,114) 6.44 (2,516) 6.19 (1,180) 6.99 (1,073) 7.22 (1,178) p < .05	3.79 (897) 2.16 (787) 3.21 (2,527) 3.13 (1,373) 3.73 (991) 4.47 (1,230)	3.88 (825) 3.55 (874) 3.94 (2,106) 4.85 (989) 4.99 (941) 5.92 (996)	2.55 (979) 1.58 (888) 2.27 (2,820) 2.28 (1,490) 2.45 (1,104) 3.34 (1,319)	3.21 (936) 2.37 (1,014) 3.33 (2,372) 3.62 (1,133) 4.40 (1,022) 4.60 (1,130)

Note. The values represent raw, unweighted estimates computed from the GSS 1988 to 2004 cumulative dataset. Missing data including the ones for people who did not answer the relevant survey questions were simply excluded from the above analysis. P-values are Pearson chi-square test of independence in the 2 x R table of reported homosexual behavior since 18, in the last 5 years, or in the past year (yes, no) by the R categories of the sociodemographic variable.

a Estimated percentage of individuals in the given gender population who have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior (for the given category of the sociodemographic variable), including those who have answered that their past sex partners included both sexes.

b Unweighted total number of respondents in the given gender population (for the given category of the sociodemographic variable) who have responded to the survey question pertaining to each cell.

Table 4: Summary of Significant Chi-Square Test Results from Table 3

	Female			Male
Variables	Since 18	Last 5 Years	Last Year	Since 18	Last 5 Years	Last Year
Birth Cohort	*	*	*	–	–	*
Education	*	*	*	–	–	–
Race	–	–	–	–	–	–
Religión	*	*	*	*	*	*
Secularism	*	*	*	–	–	*
Marital Status	*	*	*	*	*	*
Geographical Urbanization	*	*	*	*	*	*
Geographical Urbanization (at 16)	*	–	–	*	–	–

Note. Asterisk (*) indicates that the p-value computed from the Pearson chi-square test of independence for the corresponding cell in Table 3 is less than 0.05. Dash indicates that the p-value for the corresponding cell in Table 3 is not statistically significant (> 0.05).

Table 5: Comparison of Estimations of the Effect of Place of Residence at Age 16 on Past Homosexual Experience since Age 18

	Female					Male
	Linear Model	Non-Linear Models				Linear Model	Non-Linear Models
	OLS	Logit		Probit		OLS	Logit		Probit
Geographical Urbanization (at 16) a		Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect	Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect		Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect	Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect
0-1	.0047** [3.25]	.0039	.0047** [3.27]	.0040	.0047** [3.25]	.0048* [2.77]	.0041	.0047* [2.78]	.042	.0048* [2.77]
1-2		.0043		.0043			.0044		.045
2-3		.0046		.0047			.0047		.048
3-4		.0051		.0050			.0051		.050
4-5		.0055		.0054			.0054		.054

Note. Values represent the predicted estimates of the effect of an individual’s place of residence at age 16 on past homosexual experience since age 18 (dichotomous outcome: yes or no) for the given estimation model. N = 9955 for women; N = 8010 for men. The mean value for women’s geographical urbanization at age 16 is 2.5210; the mean value for men’s geographical urbanization at age 16 is 2.4717.

a Geographical urbanization (at age 16) was measured on an ordinal level, with response categories 0 = country/non-farm, 1 = farm, 2 = small town, 3 = medium city, 4 = large city, and 5 = metropolitan area.

* p < .01
** p < .00

Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality, Volumen 12,  Feb. 12, 2009

www.ejhs.org

Conducta Homosexual en los Estados Unidos, 1988-2004:
Apoyo Empírico Cuantitativo para la Teoría de Construcción Social de la Sexualidad

Howard Hsueh-Hao Chiang, MA*

Princeton University

* Direct correspondence to Howard H. Chiang, 129 Dickinson Hall, Program in History of Science, Department of History, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544, U.S.A.; e-mail: hchiang@princeton.edu. This research paper is a revised version of the author’s thesis submitted in May, 2006 to Columbia University in partial fulfillment of the M.A. degree requirement in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences.

RESUMEN

El estudio aquí presentado analizó datos reunidos en 11 rondas de la Encuesta Social General [ General Social Survey] conducidas entre 1988 y 2004 (N = 10,767 hombres y 13,868 mujeres). Usando tabulaciones cruzadas simple, se estimó la prevalencia del contacto homosexual en Norteamérica por sexo, año y varias variables sociodemográficas. Los resultados subsiguientes tres modelos de estimación (OLS, logit, and probit) revelaron un efecto causal estadísticamente significativo del carácter de urbanización del medio residencial de un individuo a la edad de 16 años en la probabilidad de que el mismo individuo se involucraría en conducta homosexual al llegar a la adultez. Los resultados confirman empíricamente la idea de que la sexualidad está socialmente construida, trayendo así a las investigaciones sociocientíficas cuantitativas más cerca de la perspectivas teóricas relevantes.

Introducción

Los estudios de ciencia social cuantitativa previos de la conducta sexual del mismo sexo en los Estados Unidos principalmente se han enfocado en estimar su prevalencia y analizar sus tendencias a lo largo del tiempo, primordialmente porque tales estudios han sido conducidos bajo el impuso de proveer entendimientos para estrategias de prevención de VIH/SIDA efectivas. Incluso cuando se emplean técnicas de regresión, lo que es más bien raro, estos estudios han explícitamente evitado inferir relaciones causales entre varias variables sociodemográficas y las prácticas homosexuales, aunque sus correlaciones positivas han sido informadas con frecuencia (Anderson & Stall, 2002; Billy, Tanfer, Grady, & Klepenger, 1993; Binson et al., 1995; Black, Gates, Sanders, & Taylor, 2000; Butler, 2005; Davis, 1929; Fay, Turner, Klassen, & Gagnon, 1989; Johnson et al., 2001; Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Kinsey, Pomeroy, Martin, & Gebhard, 1953; Laumann, Gagnon, Michael, & Michaels, 1994; Rogers & Turner, 1991; Spira, Bajos, & le groupe ACSF, 1993; Turner, Villarroel, Chromy, Eggleston, & Rogers, 2005; Wellings, Field, Johnson, & Wadsworth, 1994). En este aspecto, el presente estudio contribuye al cuerpo mayor de la literatura de ciencias sociales en tres modos únicos en su género.

Primero, este artículo examina la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos a través de un abordaje de análisis causal cuantitativo. Específicamente, investiga la relación causal entre dos variables principales, la urbanización geográfica y la conducta homosexual (poniendo a prueba la significación de la dirección causal de la primera variable a la última usando tres modelos estadísticos diferentes, uno linear y dos no lineales. A diferencia de estudios previos que han prestado relativamente poca atención a las conexiones causales entre homosexualidad y otras variables sociodemográficas, la meta central de este estudio es establecer una relación causal que pueda ser examinada explícitamente usando métodos estadísticos en los que las funciones de urbanización geográfica funcionan como una variable causalmente determina la prevalencia del contacto del mismo sexo en los Estados Unidos.

Además, aunque el estudio aquí presentado fue diseñado para extraer datos de la Encuesta Social General [General Social Survey] (de 1988 a 2004), como lo han hecho la mayoría de los otros investigadores hasta ahora, un rasgo distintivo de este estudio es su incorporación del conjunto de datos de la Encuesta Social General del 2004 [General Social Survey (GSS)], recientemente actualizada. A pesar de la disponibilidad del conjunto de datos del GSS 2004 para los investigadores del 2005, una de las últimas publicaciones de ciencias social de envergadura que tratan del tema de la práctica homosexual en los Estados Unidos, aunque comprehensiva y amplia en su gama de análisis, no usó el conjunto de datos del 2004 (Turner et al., 2005). Esto es porque los datos para medir el grado de urbanización del área de residencia de los respondientes fue dado a publicidad en enero del 2006. Este estudio aprovecha este conjunto de información disponible recientemente e integra este conjunto de datos en las estimaciones de la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en la nación y el análisis del modelo causal formulado como hipótesis.

Finalmente, a través de un abordaje de modelado causal cuantitativo simple al explorar la relación entre la urbanización geográfica y la conducta homosexual, el presente estudio toma una postura provisional en el debate mayor de esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo en cuanto a Homosexualidad y Sexualidad en general. Cuando se ocupan del tópico de la Homosexualidad, los científicos sociales cuantitativos a menudo han pasado por alto ofrecer cualquier afirmación explícita en relación con el debate, excepto por incidencias en las que algunos investigadores solamente mencionan que sus resultados sugieren o  insinúan la más plausible perspectiva teórica del socioconstruccionismo (Laumann et al., 1994). En contraste, los análisis cuantitativos efectuados en el estudio aquí presentado tienen la intención de referirse directamente al debate entre esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo. Si se encuentra que el sendero de causalidad formulado como hipótesis, de la urbanización geográfica a la conducta homosexual, es estadísticamente significativa, este hallazgo demostraría la alta contingencia de las expresiones comportamentales de la Homosexualidad sobre los contextos sociales en los que se producen, y de este modo favorecerían al lado socioconstruccionista del debate. El método de análisis causal cuantitativo da lugar a la idea de que la Sexualidad está socialmente construida para ser empíricamente determinada, tendiendo un puente sobre la brecha entre las perspectivas teóricas y los hallazgos cuantitativos que caracterizan omnipresentemente las indagaciones actuales de la ciencia social sobre la sexualidad humana.

Antes de entrar explícitamente en el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo, sin embargo, el estudio aquí presentado primero estimará la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos incorporando el conjunto de datos GSS 2004, hace poco dado a publicidad, lo que proveerá entendimientos no explorados de sus tendencias en el tiempo y por variables sociodemográficas que muchos otros han investigado. En el orden de investigación, mis análisis cuantitativos buscan responder tres preguntas de investigación específicas:

1. ¿Cuál fue el grado de prevalencia del contacto sexual del mismo sexo en los Estados Unidos entre 1988 y 2004?
2. ¿Las personas que pertenecen a diferentes subpoblaciones en los Estados Unidos expresan diferentes niveles de conducta homosexual?
3. ¿Los datos empíricos dan apoyo a la perspectiva teórica de construcción social de la sexualidad?

Debate Esencialismo versus SocioConstructionismo

La mayoría de las discusiones contemporáneas sobre la ahomosexualidad, de un modo u8 otro, contribuyen a un debate más amplio entre las comprensiones de la Sexualidad Esencialistas y sociocionstruccionistas. Para gente que piensa sobre la sexualidad desde la perspectiva del esencialmismo, la sexualidad representa un impulso biológico, un datum natural. Por lo tanto, las diferencias entre sexos o las diferencias entre heterosexuales y homosexuales son científicamente concretas y distinguibles. Además, los Esencialistas creen que cualquier forma de deseo sexual es transhistórica y transcultural. De acuerdo con esta línea de razonamiento, las tipologías modernas de la sexualidad, sin tener en cuenta cuándo fueron inventadas, pueden ser aplicadas a personas que viven en diferentes épocas, regiones y culturas. Por ejemplo, los proponentes del esencialismo en estudios de sexualidad argumentan que el concepto de “homosexualidad” puede ser asociado con la conducta sexual, el deseo e incluso la identidad de aquellos individuos que vivieron sus vidas antes de que se acuñara el término (Boswell, 1980, 1989, 1995; Katz, 1976; Rich, 1983).

Los socioconstruccionistas a menudo se involucran en la tarea de criticar las presunciones hechas por los Esencialistas y argumentar que la Sexualidad no es un datum biológico sino un constructo cultural. Si bien los esencialistas consideran que las categorías como “gay” y “hétero” son universalmente objetivas, los socioconstruccionistas las comprenden como hechos subjetivos en el sentido de que el proceso de rotulación en sí mismo acarrea una hueste íntegra de connotaciones culturales específicas e interpretaciones sociales que son ni universalmente coherente ni históricamente idénticas. Lo que “gay” significa hoy día en el alba del siglo XXI, para los construccionistas, es drásticamente diferente de lo que “inversión sexual” significaba un siglo atrás. De modo similar, como Halperin (1990) ha señalado, no es convincente argumentar que “como los campesinos feudales y trabajan con sus manos y los operarios de fábrica trabajan con sus manos, el campesinado feudal era la forma que el proletarianismo tomó antes del surgimiento del capitalismo industrial” (p. 46). En tanto que los esencialistas a meniudo creen que las fuerzas biologic as, tal como la genetic, las hormonas o el cerebro determinan el impulse sexual, los socionstruccionistas argumentan que los modos en que los esencialistas intentan identificar las fuerzas determinantes de la sexualidad ya funcionan dentro de un marco epistemológico socialmente construido.

El debate entre esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo ha sido una de las preocupaciones centrales entre los historiadores de la Sexualidad, y la mayor parte de los historiadores de la Sexualidad hoy en día se consideran a sí mismos partes del campo construccionista (algunos incluso se identifican como participantes de una escuela más amplia llamada “nuevo historicismo”). El estudio pionero sobre las amistades románticas entre mujeres del siglo XIX hecho por Smith-Rosenberg (1975), después complementado por el trabajo de Rotundo (1993) sobre el homorromance (sin identidad sexual) entre varones jóvenes victorianos, demonstró que el modo en que se entendía la intimidad del mismo sexo en la Norteamérica del siglo XIX difería espectacularmente del modo en que se la concibe hoy (véase también Taylor & Lasch, 1963). En tanto que Foucault (1978) y Weeks (1977, 1981, 1985, 1989a, 1989b, 2002) daban un fuerte énfasis al modo en que el concepto de “homosexualidad” fue introducido por las élites médicas y los científicos del sexo a fines del siglo XIX, el studio historic del lesbianism hecho por Faderman (1978a, 1978b, 1978c, 1992, 1994) aseveraba de modo sim ilar que la contribución fundamental de los sexólogos al cambiar del siglo XIX al XX fue precisamente la patologización y morbidificación moderna de la intimidad del mismo sexo de las mujeres (véase también Davidson, 1987; Rosario, 1996, 1997, 2002; Terry, 1999). En contra de esta perspectiva, la investigación de Chauncey (1985, 1994) mostró que las identidades sexuales del varón fueron construidas sin tomar en cuenta cómo se clasificaba y definía la sexualidad en el discurso médico. Conjuntamente, los trabajos de estos historiadores, entre muchos otros, ejemplifican el poder y valor del abordaje socioconstruccionista. Al pensar en la sexualidad no meramente como un reflejo de la naturaleza sino como un producto del conocimiento social, el socioconstruccionismo trae a la luz los modos de conceptualizar el  “deseo” que tanto por parte de los actores que viven en un período de tiempo en particular como por de los historiadores que lo estudios son siempre contingentes al contexto cultural context.

Uno de los debates fundamentals entre los socioconstruccionistas que estudian la historia de la Homosexualidad es el período de tiempo preciso en el que el concepto de  “homosexual” como identidad emergió por primera vez. La pieza literaria más temprana que introdujo la idea socioconstruccionista de la Homosexualidad apareció en 1968 y fue escrita por un teórico de la rotulación, McIntosh. En su articulo, ella (1968) mantuvo que el rol homosexual por primera vez emergió del florecimiento de los clubes de travesties homosexuals en Londres a fines del siglo XVII (véase tambien Bray, 1995; Oaks, 1978; Talley, 1996; Thompson, 1989; Trumbach, 1977, 1989a, 1989b, 1990, 1991). En lugar de hacer la misma aseveración que McIntosh, Foucault (1978) y Weeks (1977, 1981, 1985, 1989a, 1989b, 2002) arguyeron que el concepto de identidad homosexual fue realmente solidificado por la ciencia médica en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX (“homosexualidad” fue acuñado por primera vez en 1869 en la literatura sexológica europea). En tanto que la pieza de McIntosh recibió una atención minima de parte de los eruditos interesados en los studios de género y sexualidad en la época de su publicación a fines de la década del sesenta, los studios de Foucault y Weeks fueron inmediatamente canonizados tan pronto como pueron publicados entre mediados y fines de la década del setenta, en gran medida debido a las influencas crecientes del feminismo y del movimiento de liberación gay sobre este tema. Al tener fuerzas políticas e indagaciones intelectuales trabajando en conjunto, los escritos socioconstruccionistas desde mediados de la década del sesenta cuestionaron solamente la afirmación de Foucault y Weeks, pero no la de McIntosh.

Por ejemplo, desde mediados del setenta muchos historiados con orientación socioconstruccionista han sugerido en conjunto que conceptualizar una identidad basada en el deseo del mismo sexo en realidad fue posibilitado a fines del siglo XVIII (quizás al comenzar el siglo XIX) con la expansión del sector obrero asalariado ocasionado por la transformación de la sociedad de economía de la casa a capitalismo industrial (Adams, 1985; D’Emilio, 1993; Fernbach, 1976; Greenberg & Bystryn, 1984; Pearce & Roberts, 1973). Como ha argumentado D’Emilio (1993), “el capitalism ha creado las condiciones materials para que el deseo homosexual se exprese a sí mismo como un componente central de la vidas de algunos individuos” (p. 474). Por lo tanto, de acuerdo con este grupo de historiadores, el concpeto de identidad homosexual fue hecho posible por la transición económica y el crecimiento de la población urbana en el siglo XVII, no la subsiguiente medicalización de la sexualidad a fines del siglo XIX. Sea que el concepto de identidad homosexual se haya desarrollado por primera vez en el siglo XVII a partir de los clubes de travesties homosexuals en ciudades de primera línea como Londres, a fines del siglo XVIII a partir de la intense transición social de la estructura económica al capitalistmo industrial, o a fines del siglo XIX por el discurso sexual de la ciencia médica, en el nivel más fundamental todos los socioconstruccionistas están de acuerdo en que la “homosexualidad” como concepto de identidad es una invención relativamente reciente en las sociedades occidentales.

El desacuerdo entre socioconstruccionistas ciertamente no se limite a los períodos de tiempo en los que emergieron por primera vez ciertos tipos de Sexualidad o identidad sexual. La complejidad de la teoría soconstruccionistas puede ser entendida cuando se la desmonta en diferentes niveles, como lo demostró Vance (1989):

Como mínimo, todos los abordajes de construcción social adoptan la idea de que los actos sexuales físicamente idéntico pueden tener significación social variable y significación subjetivo dependencide cómo se los define y se los compprenden en diferentes culturas y períodos históricos…Un paso adelante en la teoría de construcción social postula que incluso la dirección mimsa del deseo sexual, por ejemplo la elección de objeto o hetero/homosexualidad, no es intrínseco o inherente al individuo sino que es construido…La forma más radical de la teoría construccionista está pronta a albergar la idea de que no existe im pulso ssexual esencial, indiferenciado, “impulso sexual” o “lujuria,” que reside en el cuerpo debido al funcionamiento fisiológico y la sensación. El impulso sexual en sí mismo está construido por la cultura y la historia. (pp. 18-19)

Agregaré que hay otro nivel todavía de teorización que existe entre el primer y Segundo paso de la teoría de construcción social bocetada por Vance. Combinando la ilustración de Vance con mi propia extension setiene como resultado los siguientes cuatro niveles (más abarcadores) de la teoría de construcción social, desde la posición menos radical hasta la más radical:

1. La significación social, interpretación cultural y significado subjetivo de las actividades sexuales físicas de las personas varían con el tiempo, la cultura y el lugar.
2. Si bien el interés erótico o deseo de las personas está fijado inherentemente, su nivel de expression y formas comportamentales pueden cambiar con el tiempo, la cultura y el lugar dependiendo de las normas socials prevalecientes.
3. Incluso la dirección del interés sexual o impulse sexual de las personas está socialmente construido y culturalmente moldeado, y por tanto no hay cualidad intrínseca o inherente, discreta biológica o naturalmente, para el deseo sexual de las personas.
4. La concepción de “sexualidad” es en sí misma una formulación cultural. En otras palabras, lo que cuenta como “sexual” o como forma de “deseo” nunca es idéntico a través del tiempo, la cultura y el lugar.

El hecho de que los socioconstruccionistas difieren entre sí en grados de radicalismo teórico indica que pueden estar de acuerdo y en desacuerdo entre sí tanto como con los eruditos que pertenecen al campo esencialista.

Es evidente de los cuatro niveles de teoría de construcción social listados más arriba que el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo no es lo mismo que el debate natura versus nutura. En relación con la Homosexualidad, el debate natura versus nurtura presenta una discusión sobre las causas del deseo o conducta del mismo sexo. Aunque los propon entes del lado de nurtura en el debate significativamente se parecen a los eruditos que adoptan la teoría de construcción social, uno de los ímpetus centrales del socioconstruccionismo es poner en cuestión el modo mismo en el que se enmarca el debate natura versus nurtura. En otras palabras, en tanto que el debate  natura versus nurtura se involucra con la cuestión de si las personas homosexuals nacen con su Homosexualidad o si la aprenden, el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo trata con la cuestión mayor de si tales categorías como  “homosexualidad” o “el homosexual” son o no válidas para ser consideradas como universales, transhistóricas y transculturales. Aunque los argumentos presentados por los esencialistas a menudo son fuertemente paralelos a los argumentos hechos por los defensores de la naturaleza,  en última instancia los esencialistas están haciendo la aseveración general de que uno puede en realidad identificar un tipo de individuo  “sexualizado” en particular que existió a través del tiempo y el espacio. Por otra parte, los defensores de la naturaleza hacen la asveración más específica de que las causes de un tipo “sexualizado” en particular de individuo residen en ciertos factores naturales y biológicos. Para decirlo brevemente, el debate esencialismo versus socioconstruccionismo implica una cuestión epistemológica, en tanto que el debate natura versus nurtura se ocupa de una cuestión etiológica. Como los dos debates consideran temas que superponen y que difieren en mnodos muy sutiles, muchas personas, incluyendo académicos profesionales, a menudo han incorrectamente metido el uno dentro del otro.

The essentialism versus social constructionism debate, however, is not only a theoretical matter but also, if not more importantly, an empirical one. When the popular press, the lay public, or even the scientific community searches for a single estimate of the prevalence of homosexuality in the nation, the underlying assumption strictly denotes an essentialist standpoint. As Laumann et al. (1994) have carefully commented upon in their national study, “While a single estimate is one of a number of possible summary measures for a whole population, it may not accurately reflect the situation of a specific subgroup within that population” (p. 307). Hence, strong empirical predictions of the prevalence of homosexuality require a serious consideration of its trends over time as well as its possible different distributions across various social and demographic variables.

As such, by using the GSS data, my study will contribute to the essentialism versus social constructionism debate through three systematic investigations. First, I will estimate the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States from 1988 to 2004, assessing the evidence for whether certain quantitative patterns may have changed over time. After working in a temporal framework, I will then proceed to an analysis of the prevalence of same-sex sexual contact in the country across various sociodemographic variables, examining whether the data warrant the assumption that a single estimate of the prevalence of homosexuality across the nation is useful for understanding its distribution in the real American social context. Finally, and most importantly, among these sociodemographic variables, geographical urbanization is central to my subsequent quantitative estimations of its effect on the expressions of homosexual behavior by using three statistical models. Specifically, in this last section of this study, I will test the statistical significance of the assumed causal effect of the urbanization character of an individual’s residential environment at age 16 on the likelihood (or probability) that the same individual would engage in homosexual behavior as an adult. If the association parameter is found to be statistically significant, this finding would at least support some aspects of the second level of social construction theory that I have defined above: While people’s erotic interest or desire is inherently fixed, its level of expression and behavioral forms may change over time, culture, and place depending on the prevailing social norms. Although it is almost impossible for surveys to capture whether or not people’s sexual interest is culturally shaped (the third level of social construction theory), my research attempts to test the notion that sexual expression or behavior can vary across different social contexts, regardless of the rigidity of people’s erotic interest (here I am primarily concerned with sexual-object preference not sexual-aim or sexual-practice preference). Again, the method of quantitative causal modeling allows the theory that sexuality is socially constructed to be assessed empirically, bridging the gap between theoretical perspectives and quantitative findings that pervasively characterizes current social scientific inquiries on human sexuality.

Data and Methods

Sample

In order to address the research questions listed in the introduction, this article utilizes the data collected in 11 rounds of the General Social Survey (GSS) conducted between 1988 and 2004 (N = 10,767 men and 13,868 women). The GSS itself is a personal in-home interview conducted with participants aged 18 and older throughout the entire nation at one-to-two year intervals since 1972 by the National Opinion Research Center in Chicago. The annual GSS sample is a multistage area probability sample to the segment or block level. At the block level, households are enumerated and a full national probability sample is drawn. As such, the GSS samples are fairly representative national samples over time. Specifically, the 11 rounds of GSS data used in this paper were collected in 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2004, where each year the GSS sampled a different set of individuals. In 2002, the GSS underwent a significant change in survey mode. From 1972 to 2000, the GSS survey was administered in a paper-and-pencil format; beginning in 2002; however, the survey was conducted by computer-assisted personal interviewing (see Appendix B of the GSS 1972-2004 cumulative codebook). In 2004, the GSS adopted a new sample frame based on the 2000 United States census (for more on changes in the GSS sampling design in 2004, see Appendix A of the cumulative codebook). Response rates and missing data for the survey questions relevant to this article will be discussed in more detail later.

Measures

Homosexual behavior. In order to measure the key theoretical outcome variable—same-sex sexual contact, this article uses the data collected for three questions asked in the GSS about the participant’s past homosexual experience. First, from 1988 to 2004, all 11 rounds of the GSS survey asked a question that allowed me to identify whether or not a participant had engaged in homosexual behavior in the past 12 months at the time of interview. The exact wording of the question was: “How many sex partners have you had in the last 12 months? No partners, 1 partner, 2 partners, 3 partners, 4 partners, 5-10 partners, 11-20 partners, 21-100 partners, more than 100 partners? Have your sex partners in the last 12 months been exclusively male, both male and female, exclusively female?” The total response rate to this question in the cumulative dataset, merging the data collected between 1988 and 2004, was nearly 66%. As I was interested in the measurement of the prevalence of same-sex sexual contact, in recoding the three possible response outcomes to the last part of the survey question into a new dichotomous (yes, no) outcome variable that simply captured whether or not an individual had engaged in same-sex sexual behavior in the past year, I included the “both male and female” response as part of the “yes” category of the new variable. In other words, a participant who reported having male and female sex partners in the past 12 months was now counted simply as someone who had same-sex sexual experience at some point in the last year (at the time of interview).

From 1989 onward, the GSS also included a question that allowed me to identify participants who reported a same-sex sexual partner since age 18. The question wording was: “Now thinking about the time since your 18 th birthday (including the past 12 months), how many female [male] partners have you had sex with?” As shown, two versions of this question were asked. The GSS first asked the respondent about the number of opposite-sex partners that he/she has had since age 18, followed by the number of same-sex partners. The total response rate to both questions in the cumulative dataset, combining the data collected between 1989 and 2004, was approximately 76%. The participant answered both questions with a number, so in recoding the responses to the question about same-sex partners into a dichotomous (yes, no) outcome variable that simply measures whether or not a respondent had engaged in same-sex sexual contact since the age of 18, I collapsed any response ≥ 1 into the “yes” category of the new variable, omitting missing values such as “don’t know,” “N/A,” etc.

Finally, starting in 1991, a question was included in the GSS that allowed me to determine those participants who had sexual contact with another individual of the same sex in the past 5 years. The exact wording of the question was: “Now think about the past five years—the time since [month/year], and including the past 12 months, how many sex partners have you had in that five-year period? No partners, 1 partner, 2 partners, 3 partners, 4 partners, 5-10 partners, 11-20 partners, 21-100 partners, more than 100 partners? Have your sex partners in the last five years been exclusively male, both male and female, exclusively female?” The total response rate to this question in the cumulative dataset, merging the data collected from 1991 to 2004, was 59%. Similar to what I have done for the first question that asked about the participant’s sexual history in the past 12 months, I collapsed the response categories “exclusively male” and “both male and female” into one category for men (“exclusively female” and “both male and female” for women) in order to produce a dichotomous (yes, no) outcome variable that merely measured whether or not the participants engaged in same-sex sexual behavior in the past 5 years.

Sociodemographic variables. In addition to the variables measuring homosexual behavior, my analyses used a range of sociodemographic variables. Specifically, these were birth cohort, education, race, religion, secularism, marital status, current geographical urbanization, and geographical urbanization at age 16. All of these variables were measured explicitly in the GSS survey questionnaire, except for secularism. The GSS survey questionnaire only measured the participant’s frequency of attending religious services, and I recoded this variable by reversing its level of response category in order to generate a new variable that measured secularism. Thus, if a respondent attended religious services frequently, then he/she would score low on the new secularism scale.

Statistical Analysis

All of the statistical analyses executed for this project were conducted on unweighted observations using the statistical software package Stata version 9.1 (2005). The first two parts of this study involved simple cross-tabulations to estimate the prevalence of homosexual experience, with the chi-square statistical test of independence included only in the second part. In the third part, because the outcome variable (whether or not the participant had engaged in homosexual behavior in the past) was measured on a dichotomous level, I used three models to estimate the effect of geographical urbanization at age 16 on past homosexual experience since 18: one linear (ordinary least squares) and two non-linear (logit and probit).

Results

Prevalence of Homosexual Behavior by Year

Table 1 presents the estimated prevalence (in percentages) of American adults who reported homosexual experience in the past 12 months, in the past 5 years, and since age 18. For the estimations of same-sex sexual behavior in the past 12 months, men reported the highest number of such an experience in 1998—4.67%; women reported the highest number of such an experience in 2002—4.03%. On the other hand, men reported the lowest frequency of engaging in same-sex sexual practice in the past year at the time of interview in 1989, at 1.6%; women reported the lowest frequency of engaging in a same-sex sexual relation in the past year at the time of interview in 1988, the first year when this survey question was asked, at 0.18%. Together, these numbers strongly suggest that, over time, both men and women reported a higher prevalence of same-sex sexual experience in the last year at the time of interview, with the most obvious exception of women in 2004, when the number suddenly dropped down to 1.29% from the 4.03% reported two years earlier.

A similar trend for women can be found for the estimations of homosexual incidence in the past 5 years at the time of interview. While only 1.51% of the women sample in 1991 reported a homosexual encounter in the past 5 years, the percentage rose to 4.83 by 2002. However, in 2004, there was a drop in the percentage to 1.88. As for men, the highest number who reported participation in same-sex sexual activity in the past 5 years at the time of interview was in 2000, 5.39%; the lowest number was reported in 1993, at 2.90%. Although the high and low for men together might imply a similar steady increasing trend in reporting same-sex sexual experience in the past 5 years over time like for women, Figure 1 clearly shows that the trend in reporting incidences of male homosexual behavior in the past 5 years was, in fact, much more stable over time than the trend for women.

Finally, for the estimations of past homosexual experience since the age of 18 among United States adults, both men and women reported the highest number of incidence in 2004—10.47% of the men and 7.21% of the women. Interestingly, both numbers were also the highest among the estimations of same-sex sexual activity across all three measures for all 11 rounds of GSS administered since 1988. As for the lowest estimations of past same-sex sexual encounters since the age of 18, fewest men (3.51%) reported such an incidence in 1993, and fewest women (2.80%) reported such an incidence in 1991.

Table 1 and Figure 2 suggest that, similar to the findings for reported female homosexuality in the past year and the past 5 years at the time of interview, there appears to be a steady trend of increased reporting of female homosexual behavior since age 18 in the nation over time, with the exception of a high estimate in 1989 (5.52%), when the question regarding this aspect of the respondent’s sexual history was first introduced into the GSS. And over time, there appears to be a fairly stable proportion of men reporting homosexual encounters since 18, with the most obvious exception of the estimate in 2004, when the number of men who reported past same-sex sexual experience since adulthood represented the peak of the estimations. Situating all of these figures in a larger chronological trajectory, Figures 1 and 2 together indicate that there is a definite increasing trend in the reporting of same-sex sexual activity nation-wide among women, but this pattern applies to men less significantly.

Another interesting pattern, though not entirely consistent, is that there appears to be a drop in the reporting of homosexual experience in one method of measurement whenever a new method of measurement is introduced in the GSS survey. For example, when the question about past homosexual activity since 18 was first asked in 1989, the number of men who reported same-sex sexual experience in the past 12 months was less than half of the number computed for the previous year. Although in the same year, the number of women who reported homosexual encounters in the past year increased in magnitude significantly, the number dropped again in 1991, when the new question about same-sex sexual experience in the past 5 years was first introduced. In fact, in 1991, women reported the second lowest number among all of the estimates in Table 1. Indeed, when this question about participation in same-sex sexual practice in the past 5 years was first introduced in 1991, all of the other estimates dropped except for the increase in men’s reporting of homosexual encounter in the past year.

Another approach to understanding the effect of introducing a new method of measuring past homosexual activity is by looking at the trend of missing data on homosexual experience over time. Table 2 shows that when the question that asked about the respondent’s same-sex sexual encounter since 18 was first introduced in 1989, the percentage of missing data on both men and women’s homosexual encounter in the past 12 months increased slightly. Similarly, missing data for all other measurements except for female homosexual experience since 18 increased in 1991, when the respondent’s same-sex sexual encounter in the past 5 years was measured for the first time. These findings suggest that the logic behind the effect of a newly introduced instrument of measurement is still worth exploring by survey experts.

Two other observations can be made based on the proportion of missing data tabulated and presented in Table 2. First, the numerous large values estimated in Table 2 strongly suggest that there are a significant portion of respondents who intentionally avoided answering questions regarding their past sexual experience with persons of the same sex. In the period between 1988 and 2004, the estimated percentage of individuals in the entire population (of the given gender) who did not answer those questions ranged from 12.70 to 41.96. Figure 3 presents a histogram distribution of the estimated percentages of missing data from Table 2. Since the shape of the distribution is fairly close to normal (bell-shaped), the best estimate of the central tendency of the distribution is perhaps the mean—27.52% (with 7.28% SD). This number indicates that for all 11 rounds of GSS and for all three measurements of homosexual experience, 27.52% of missing data are collected on average. This large number of missing data, alongside the fact that the GSS questions on the respondent’s previous homosexual encounters attempt to collect data about a kind of behavior that is highly sensitive and stigmatized in American society, provides compelling grounds to believe that the numbers presented in Table 1 and Table 3 are no doubt lower-bound estimates.

Second, the figures in Table 2 suggest that the information collected about the respondent’s past sexual behavior with persons of the same sex since the age of 18 is perhaps the best out of the three GSS measurements of homosexual behavior, because this question, for both men and women, had consistently received the lowest amount of missing data in comparison to the other two questions that were asked from 1989 onward, with the exceptions of 1996 and 2000 for men. Alternatively put, the second and third columns of Table 1 and Table 3 perhaps provide the best estimations of the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States from 1989 to 2004, since the second and third columns of Table 2 include the lowest estimates of missing data systematically throughout that period with the two exceptions mentioned. Meanwhile, the question that asked for women’s homosexual experience in the past year had consistently been the question that was avoided the most and with the highest estimated proportion of missing data throughout all 11 rounds of GSS from 1988 to 2004. As such, this (sixth) column of Table 1 and Table 3 probably present the least favorable estimates of the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the United States for that period.

Prevalence of Homosexual Behavior by Sociodemographic Variables

Merging the GSS datasets collected in the period from 1988 to 2004, Table 3 presents the estimated prevalence (in percentages) of homosexual behavior among different American subpopulations defined by various sociodemographic variables. When U.S. adults were subdivided by birth cohort, people who were born later (e.g., in the 1980s) were more likely to report homosexual contact than people who were born earlier (e.g., in the pre-1920s). This steady increasing trend in the reporting of same-sex sexual behavior as the generational group of respondents gets younger is especially the case for women who reported homosexual experience since 18. Whereas 7.53% of women who were born in the 1980s reported same-sex sexual experience since 18, only 1.36% of women who were born before the 1920s reported such an experience. The increasing trend in the reporting of same-sex sexual contact as the cohort group decreases in age was less significant for men. Surprisingly, while men who were born in the 1980s reported the highest frequency of homosexual experience since 18 (7.73%), their numbers in the same year were significantly less than the ones reported by men belonging to several generations before them when past homosexual experience was measured in the context of in the past year (see the seventh column in Table 3) or in the past 5 years (see the fifth column in Table 3).

In contrast, when U.S. adults were subdivided by different levels of education, a steady trend in increased reporting of past same-sex sexual contact as the respondents belong to a more educated group was more evident for men than for women. Consistently across the three measurements of same-sex behavior, for men who have reported previous engagement in homosexual activity, there was approximately a 2 percentage difference between the percentage of those who hold a graduate degree (7.01, 5.37, and 4.43 respectively) and the percentage of those who received an educational level that was less than high school (5.03, 3.33, and 2.73 respectively). For women, on the other hand, based on the numbers in columns 2, 4, and 6 in Table 3, it is more difficult to detect a specific pattern for the relationship between levels of education and reported homosexual experience.

When U.S. adults are divided by race into three subgroups—white, black, and other, the data in Table 3 clearly illustrate that, among men, those who are black report the highest incidences of same-sex sexual experience, followed by those who belong to races other than white or black. White men reported the lowest incidences of homosexual contact. Among women, those who belong to races other than white or black reported the highest incidences of same-sex sexual experience, followed by those who are black. Like the results for men, in terms of race, homosexual activity among those who are white was the least prevalent among women. These observations for men and women uniformly hold for all three GSS approaches to measuring the prevalence of homosexual behavior in the nation.

Regarding religion, the highest percentages of men and women who reported homosexual experience were by people with no religion or individuals affiliated with a type of religion other than Protestantism, Catholicism, or Judaism. One exception to this observation is that Jewish men reported a higher percentage of same-sex sexual encounter in the past year (4.14%) than men who have religious affiliation other than Protestantism, Catholicism, and Judaism (3.64%; see last column in Table 3). In using religious affiliation as the central means to subdivide United States adults, the largest difference in the reported percentages across the three measurements of homosexual behavior for a given gender was the difference among Jewish women between the percentage of those who reported same-sex sexual activity in the past 5 years (0.61%) and the percentage of those who reported same-sex sexual activity since 18 (5.10%), a difference of 7.36 proportionate increase (increased by 7.36% from the former figure to the latter).

That the percentage of respondents who reported homosexual experience generally increases as an American subpopulation is defined by a higher degree of secularism (opposite of religiosity, which was measured by the respondents’ frequency of attending religious services) quite comprehensively captures the trends of figures reported in Table 3 across all three GSS methods of measuring the prevalence of homosexual behavior, for both men and women when they are divided into subgroups defined by degrees of secularism. When they are subdivided by marital status—either currently married or not, many more currently unmarried respondents report same-sex sexual behavior than currently married respondents, and this is true again for both sexes.

Table 3 also shows that, across all three measurements of previous homosexual encounter, there was a higher percentage of people who at the time of interview lived within a highly urbanized residential environment, in comparison to those who lived in less metropolitan areas, reporting homosexual behavior. One notable exception to this generalization was that fewer women who live in top 12 central cities in the country than those who live in the next 88 central cities report engagement in same-sex sexual activity since age 18, in the past year, and in the past 5 years at the time of interview (see Table 3).

The relationship between geographical urbanization and different levels of expression of homosexual behavior was somewhat different when the population was subdivided into groups based on the character of their place of residence at age 16. The figures presented in Table 3 for the last sociodemographic variable indicate that a higher percentage of people who lived within a more urbanized social environment at age 16 reported a same-sex sexual encounter, except that past homosexual experience was more prevalent among respondents who lived in (non-farm) country-like places than those who lived in farm-like areas. This pattern was true across all three ways of measuring an individual’s past homosexual behavior and for both men and women.

Thus far, the numbers presented in Table 3 have been interpreted in terms of basic quantitative comparisons, such as between extreme values, ranking order, absolute differences in percentages, relative differences in percentages/proportions, or overall quantitative trends/patterns. In addition to these crude comparisons, for each of the cells in Table 3, I computed a p-value from conducting a chi-square test of independence between the variable reported homosexual behavior (yes or no) and the corresponding sociodemographic variables. Table 4 summarizes the results of all chi-square tests of statistical significance that were carried out for each of the cells in Table 3.

Because of the cross-sectional nature of the GSS datasets, inferring causality from any of the sociodemographic variables to the outcome variable—expression of homosexual behavior—would invariably involve the problem of endogeneity, meaning that the reverse causal process between the variables cannot be entirely separated from the assumed forward causal process. The only exception, to which I have tried to draw attention by highlighting two cell boxes in Table 4, is the relationship between the geographical urbanization at age 16 explanatory variable and the past homosexual behavior since age 18 outcome variable. The assumed causal direction from an individual’s place of residence at age 16 to his/her homosexual encounter since age 18 has to be one that does not involve the problem of endogeneity, because the reverse direction of causality—that whether or not an individual has expressed homosexual behavior since 18 would influence where he resided at age 16—is temporally impossible.

Furthermore, Table 4 shows that, the p-values calculated for the two corresponding cells (one for men and one for women) in Table 3 that represent the specific association between geographical urbanization at 16 and homosexual experience since 18 is < .05, meaning that the null hypothesis that the two variables are independent can be rejected. As indicated in Table 4, among the listed sociodemographic variables, the variable geographical urbanization at age 16 is the only one of its kind insofar as the variable has only one cell in which the captured bivariate dependent relationship is statistically significant for men and only one for women, with both cells representing a causal relationship between an identical pair of variables. Anchoring upon this statistical uniqueness, in addition to the solid theoretical ground on which the chronological order between geographical urbanization at 16 and past homosexual experience since 18 is established, the data analyses executed in the next section assume a causal direction from the former variable to the latter, and provide the effects of the former on the latter by employing different estimation techniques.

The Effect of Place of Residence at Age 16 on Homosexual Experience since Age 18

To be more precise, as mentioned in the introduction, in this section I am interested in studying the causal effect of the urbanization character of an individual’s residential environment at age 16 on the likelihood (or probability) that the same individual would engage in homosexual behavior as an adult. This means that even though the underlying assumption of the statistical estimations executed for this section involves a causal inference, they do not function as empirical support for the “nurture” side of the nature versus nurture debate over the etiological causes of homosexuality (i.e., whether biological predispoistion or upbringing determines one’s homosexual orientation). Rather, the analyses presented in this section are intended to respond to the essentialism versus social constructionism debate: the causal effects measured here only speak to the idea that sexual acts, behaviors, and practices can vary depending on certain characters of the social contexts in which they occur; the assumed causal direction in this study rejects the essentialist notion that the differences in the level of homosexual expression, such as between people living in urban cities versus people living in non-urban cities, is predetermined by some immutable biological factor.

I do not impose a “homosexual” identity on those respondents who have reported participation in homosexual activity since 18—they can very well self-identify as a homosexual, bisexual, queer, man who has sex with men, woman who has sex with women, gay, even straight, heterosexual, or some other identity category and still have had conducted sexual practice with person(s) of the same sex at some point in their adulthood. Alternatively, they do not necessarily view themselves as expressing homosexuality or even agree that what they have done defines or is defined as homosexuality. Simply by measuring the sexual behavior of a national adult sample, I am not presenting data that show the causes of homosexuality, but simply demonstrating how an individual’s expression of sexual behavior (or temporary/permanent sexual object choice) is highly contingent upon the social context in which such an expression occurs, an argument in line with the social constructionist theoretical perspective.

Having emphasized the standpoint from which causality is inferred in my quantitative analyses, I can more comfortably interpret the results presented in Table 5, which compares different estimations of the effect of an individual’s place of residence at age 16 on past homosexual experience since age 18. As the dependent variable is measured on a dichotomous level, the estimations are calculated by using three different models: the OLS regression model (linear), the logit model (non-linear), and the probit model (non-linear). Table 5 indicates that the results computed from employing all three estimation techniques together establish the statistical significance of the causal effect of geographical urbanization at 16 on past homosexual behavior since 18 for both women (p < .001) and men (p < .01).

In the present case with a dichotomous outcome variable, as one would expect, the non-linear models are more desirable models than the linear model in predicting the effects of the explanatory variable, because they reveal how a one unit increase in the independent variable is not always associated with an identical amount of increase in the dependent variable. For instance, based on the estimates obtained from the OLS model, a .0047 proportional increase in the likelihood that an adult woman would engage in same-sex sexual behavior is associated with a one unit increase in the degree of urbanization of her residential environment at 16, irrespective of whether the one unit increase in geographical urbanization is from 0 to 1 (from non-farm, country-like places to farm-like areas) or 3 to 4 (from medium city to large city). Whereas, the logit model predicts a .0039 proportional increase in the likelihood that a female adult would participate in homosexual activity as the geographical urbanization of her place of residence at age 16 increases in one unit from 0 to 1 (from non-farm, country-like places to farm-like areas), but a .0051 proportional increase in the likelihood that she would engage in same-sex sexual contact as an adult when the urbanization character of her residential environment at age 16 increases from 3 to 4 (from medium city to large city). The discrete effects estimated by the probit model for the above two cases are .0040 (instead of .0039) and .0050 (rather than .0051) respectively, which confirm the commonly accepted notion that the logit and probit functional bases are almost identical except for the tails of their respective distributions. Other discrete estimates obtained from the logit model and the probit model presented in Table 5 can be interpreted in a similar fashion as above.

The marginal effects reported in Table 5 represent the effects of the independent variable (geographical urbanization at age 16) on the dependent variable (homosexual experience since age 18) when the independent variable is held at its mean. Therefore, based on the logit model, when the geographical urbanization of a woman’s residential environment at age 16 is 2.52 (the mean value for women, which denotes somewhere between small town and medium city), the likelihood for her to engage in same-sex sexual practice in adulthood is .47% on average; when the urbanization character of a man’s place of residence at 16 is 2.47 (the mean value for men, which again denotes somewhere between small town and medium city), the likelihood for him to engage in homosexual behavior in adulthood is also .47% on average. On the other hand, while the probit model yields the same marginal effect for women (a probability of .0047 at the mean value of geographical urbanization at 16), it yields a slightly higher marginal effect (a probability of .0048) for men.

Discusion

En la introducción describí las contribuciones potenciales que este studio puede dar al cuerpo actual de literature de ciencias socials sobre la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos, subrayando su valor en términos del establecimiento de una conexión entre la teoría y los hallazgos empíricos. Estas contribuciones pueden ser recapituladas aquí en terminus de significación estadística versus significación sustantiva.

Usando 11 rondas de datos GSS, primero estimé la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual de hombres y mujeres en los Estados Unidos de 1988 al 2004, conduciendo una investigación sistemática de tendencias y patrones cuantitativos a los largo del tiempo para cada una de las tres mediciones de la GSS de experiencia homosexual pasada. Al interpretar estas tendencias en el tiempo, me apoyé en cambios con significación sustantiva. Por ejemplo, compare estos cambios porcentuales con magnitude considerable cuando hice la inferencia general de que a lo largo del tiempo tanto hombres como mujeres informan una prevalencia superior de experienciar sexual con el mismo sexo en el último año en el momento de la entrevista. Se encontró para las mujeres una tendencia similar en las estimaciones de incidencia homosexual en los pasados cinco años en el momento de la entrevista, pero, en comparación, la tendencia de los hombres fue mucho más estable a lo largo del tiempo. Al hacer un ploteo de las cifras presentadas en la Tabla 1, las Figuras 1 y 2 demostraron que la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual varía a través del tiempo y el género. Se podría argumentar que el problema con la inferencia de la prevalencia cambiante de la conducta homosexual con el tiempo es que la información incrementada de contacto sexual con el mismo sexo con el correr del tiempo puede simplemente ser una función de la creciente tolerancia de la conducta del mismo sexo en la sociedad norteamericana. Sin embargo, como argumentaron Turner et al. (2005) de modo convincente, “Si los cambios en el sesgo de respuesta debideos a la tolerancia social creciente fueran responsables de que se informara cada vez más el sexo de mujer a mujer con el correr del siglo XX, uno hubiera esperado una tendencia similar entre varones” (p. 460).

Al hacer confluir estas 11 rondas de datos de las GSS, estimé entonces la prevalencia de experienciar homosexual pasada de varones y mujeres entre subpoblaciones norteamericanas definidas por varias variables sociodemográficas, incluyendo la cohorte de nacimiento, la educación, la raza, la religión, el secularismo, estatus maritual, lugar de residencia de ese momento y lugar de residencia a los 16 años. La Tabla 4 reseña la significación estadística de las relaciones dependientes bivariadas entre estas variables y la conducta homosexual, y he discutido los cimientos únicos en su género sobre los cuales la asociación entre la urbanización geográfica del individuo a los 16 años y la experienciar homosexual pasada desde los 18 ofrece espacio para más interpretaciones causales, que subsiguientemente exploré en la tercera parte de mi estudio. En suma, para esta segunda parte de mi estudio me apoyé tanto en la significación estadística (el test de chi-cuadrado) y la significación sustantica (para comparaciones cuantitativas básics)  en la interpretación de cómo los niveles de expresión de la conducta homosexual varían a través de diferentes subpoblaciones en los Estados Unidos.

Las primeras dos secciones de mi studio proven apoyo empírico implícito para la teoría de construcción social de la Sexualidad en la medida en que representan estimaciones cuan titativas de la prevalencia de la actividad homosexual que priorizan el mapeo de sus tendencias en el tiempo así como sus diferentes distribuciones a través de variadas variables sociales y demográficas, rechazando la búsqueda esencialista de una única estimación de la prevalencia de la homosexualidad en la nación. Dicho de un modo alternativo, lo que las primeras dos ssecciones de mi estudio demuestran es precisamente que ninguna estimación única se aplica a la población nacional íntegra. Por ejemplo, la estimación para mujeres y la estimación para varones son en sí mismas ya diferentes, sin tomar en cuenta cómo las dos se incrementan diferentemente con el tiempo y varían para diferentes subpoblaciones definidas por características demográficas específicas.

La tercera parte de mi estudio explícitamente pone a prueba la teoría de construicción social testeando la significación estadística del efecto causal hipotetizado del character de urbanización del ambiente residenc ial de un indiviudo a los 16 años y la probabiidad que ese mismo individuo tiene de involucrarse en conducta homosexual cuando aulto. La Table 5 indica que los resultados computados al emplear last res técnicas de estimación —OLS, logit, and probit— establecen juntas la significación estadística de este efecto causal tanto para mujeres (p < .001) como varones (p < .01). Esta ahallazo da apoyo a algunos elementos del Segundo nivel de la teoría de construcción social que he definido en la introducción: Si bien el interés o deseo erótico de las personas está inherentemente fijada, su nivel de expresión y sus formas comportamentales pueden cambiar con el tiempo, la cultura y el lugar dependiendo de las normas sociales prevalecientes. Si bien es casi imposible que las encuestas capturen si el interés sexual de las personas está moldeado culturalmente (el tercer nivel de la toería de construcción social), mi investigación simplemente demuestra que la expresion o bconducta sexual puede variar a través de diferentes contextos sociales, sin tomar en cuenta la rigidez del interés erótico de las personas.

Limitations of the Social Construction Theory

Though the value of the social construction approach is evident in that it allows room for understanding “sexuality” in dynamic and complex ways, it is by no means without problems. The major criticism of social constructionism concerns its weakness in accounting for a stable, “naturalized” identity around which an effective political movement could be organized. If certain groups of people suffer from social oppression, such as women or sexual minorities like gays and lesbians, many political activists argue that it is necessary to adhere to an essentialist understanding of identity in order to make successful rights-based claims in the legal arena. Without stipulating that women or gays and lesbians are a group of “essentialized” individuals (“they are born with their sexual orientation”), it is difficult to imagine how their rights to be protected under the law and to be treated equally as any other citizens could be articulated. Without rendering identity categories like “gays and lesbians” as stable and natural, the task of defending the political/legal interests of sexual minorities appears to be almost untenable.

Another issue with social construction theory involves the tendency of constructionists to eliminate altogether the role of the psychic. As commented upon by Fuss (1989), social constructionism often “foreclose[s]…the question of how desire comes to be articulated within a particular social formation” (p. 110). Without acknowledging individual agency or intentionality, as what most radical constructionists do, the ways in which people negotiate their self-understanding and their experiences in the social world become unaccounted altogether. The third and the fourth level of social construction theory that I have outlined in the introduction make it abundantly clear that what is critically missing in social constructionism is “any dynamic sense of how society comes to dwell within individuals or how individuality comes to be socially constituted” (Epstein, 1987, p. 23).

Finally, the major problem with the social constructionist perspective is that even the most compelling constructionist arguments ultimately rely on essentialist assumptions. As Fuss (1989) takes great pains to prove this point, simply put, “essentialism is essential to social constructionism” (p. 1). For example, with respect to the history of homosexuality, the social constructionist debate over the precise historical period in which the concept of homosexual identity was made possible necessitates the fundamental assumption that there is such an essential category as “same-sex sexuality” or at least “same-sex desire.” The only method for historians to identify a historical moment in which “homosexuality” emerged requires, from the very outset, the acceptance of the idea that same-sex desire or behavior could be correctly identified as a stable and coherent concept across time without hesitation. To push this problem even further, the social constructionist approach to studying any history of sexuality presupposes that the category of “sexuality” is itself universal, trans-historical, and trans-cultural. Therefore, paradoxically, any social constructionist study inherently reduces its subject of investigation to an essentialist category.

Conclusión

De la estimación de la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en los Estados Unidos a lo largo del tiempo, vale la pena notar que el porcentaje de hombres que informaron experiencia homosexual pasada desde los 18 años basados en la muestra GSS 2004 representa la estimación de porcentaje más alta de contacto sexual del mismo sexo en el contexto de la Norteamérica moderna después de los ochenta. Por ejemplo, el estudio transeccional de Laumann et al (1994) informó una cifra de aproximadamente 9% (para el contacto homosexual de varón) como su más alta estimación de conducta sexual con el mismo sexo en toda la nación en esa época; tomando datos de 10 rondas de datos GSS, el estudio de  Turner et al.(2005) proveyó un número sopesado de 6.61% (para el contacto homosexual de la mujer) para el año 2000 como su más alta estimación de sexo del mismo género entre adultos norteamericanos en el período entre 1988 y 2002. En comparación con estos números, el no sopesado 10.47% de hombres en 2004 que informaban experiencia homosexual pasada desde la edad de 18 computado en este estudio (véase Tabla 1) ejemplifica una cifra sin precedentes entre las estimaciones contemporáneas cuantitativas de la prevalencia de la actividad sexual del mismo sexo.

Otros investigadores se han enfrentado al tema con grandes proporciones de datos faltantes, como se informa en Tabla 2, volviendo a sopesar las muestras e imputando la probabilidad de informar experiencia homosexual pasada para los casos en los que no había datos informados. Las más recientes publicaciones de Turner, Villarroel, Chromy, Eggleston y Rogers (2004, 2005) han tomado cuidadosamente en consideración este problema y evaluaron el impacto de las respuestas faltantes en las preguntas GSS que indagaban en la experiencia sexual con el mismo sexo desde los 18, en el último año, y en los pasados cinco años. Sacaron como conclusión que “La sustancial similaridad de  [las] estimaciones alternativas [que hemos desarrollado] sugiere que la no respuesta a estas preguntas puede ser clasificada como sustantivamente ignorable [itálica agregada]…Dada la similaridad de estimaciones de prevalencia derivadas con y sin estas imputaciones, confinamos los análisis subsiguientes a los informes de los respondientes sobre sexo con el mismo género sin imputación de respuestas faltantes” (2004, p. 4). De modo similar, a través de mis análisis de datos he estimado la prevalencia de la conducta homosexual en los estados Unidos usando los datos GSS sin procesar, excluyendo los datos para aquellos respondientes que no respondieron preguntas sobre su historia de comportamiento sexual con el mismo sexo.

Quizás sea válido volver a subrayar aquí que en relación con el estudio de la homosexualidad, o más específicamente con la conducta homosexual, mi investigación solamente se involucra con el debate esencialismo versus socioconstructivismo pero no en el debate natura versus nurtura. Dicho de un modo alternativo, mis resultados de ningún modo ofrecen una explicación de las causas naturales de la conducta homosexual. Encontrar una positiva conexión causal entre la urbanización geográfica y la conducta homosexual solamente indica cómo los niveles de actos, conductas y expresiones sexuales pueden cambiar dependiendo de ciertos caracteres de los contextos sociales en que se producen; la asociación descarta la idea esencialista de que las diferencias en el nivel de la expresión homosexual, tales como las que hay entre personas que viven en ciudades urbanas versus personas viviendo en ciudades no urbanas, está predeterminada por algunas predisposiciones biológicas en el nivel del individuo. Mi estudio tampoco sugiere que la elección de vivir en lugares urbanos está causada por la homosexualidad ni implica que vivir en áreas urbanas sea una causa etiológica de homosexualidad. En lugar de ello, estoy meramente aseverando que los medios urbanizados son contextos sociales en los que la conducta sexual con el mismo sexo tiene una probabilidad/chance de expresarse, argumento que está en línea con la perspectiva teórica socioconstructivista. De modo acorde, en la medida en que el estudio presente encuentra empíricamente apoyo para la comprensión socioconstruccionista de la conducta sexual del mismo sexo, responde una pregunta epistemológica sobre la sexualidad humana y no una pregunta etiológica.

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Figure 1. Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Men Reporting Homosexual Experience by Year.

Figure 2. Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Women Reporting Homosexual Experience by Year.

Figure 3. Distribution of Estimated Percentage of Missing Data.

Table 1: Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Adults Reporting Past Homosexual Experience by Gender and GSS Survey Year (1988-2004)

	Since 18		Last 5 Years		Last Year
Year	Female % a (N b)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)
1988	– c	–	–	–	.18 (543)	3.36 (476)
1989	5.52 (688)	5.90 (559)	–	–	1.61 (560)	1.60 (499)
1990	2.86 (560)	5.49 (474)	–	–	0.86 (467)	2.32 (430)
1991 d	2.80 (678)	4.98 (482)	1.51 (598)	4.45 (472)	0.57 (523)	2.84 (422)
1993	4.36 (802)	3.51 (598)	2.98 (670)	2.90 (552)	2.68 (597)	2.58 (505)
1994	3.39 (1,355)	5.52 (1,051)	2.93 (1,263)	3.86 (1,034)	2.34 (1,112)	2.72 (957)
1996	4.86 (1,296)	5.18 (1,024)	3.60 (1,164)	5.33 (1,051)	2.93 (1,057)	4.52 (974)
1998	5.65 (1,257)	4.98 (964)	3.58 (1,088)	4.36 (918)	3.33 (992)	4.67 (856)
2000	6.72 (1,131)	7.27 (894)	5.21 (1,038)	5.39 (908)	3.96 (936)	4.56 (834)
2002	5.45 (1,211)	6.11 (965)	4.83 (993)	4.35 (897)	4.03 (892)	4.34 (828)
2004	7.21 (1,207)	10.47 (1,032)	1.88 (1,008)	4.27 (913)	1.29 (932)	3.36 (834)

Note. The values represent raw, unweighted estimates computed from the GSS 1972 to 2004 cumulative dataset. Missing data including the ones for people who did not answer the relevant survey questions were simply excluded from the above analysis.

a Estimated percentage of individuals in the given gender population who have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior, including those who have answered that their past sex partners included both sexes.

b Unweighted total number of respondents in the given gender population who have responded to the survey question pertaining to each cell.

c Dashes in the table indicate that data were not collected because the survey question pertaining to the cell was not asked for the given year.

d According to Turner et al. (2005), the 1991 GSS asked respondents to report the total number of their past sexual partners in the past year and the past 5 years as either a number or using the response categories 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5-10, 11-20, 21-100, 100+. Turner et al. reported that there are no significant differences in the likelihood for both men and women reporting a same-sex partner in the past 5 years using either format. However, while the same results (that there is no significant difference whether the response is in one format or the other) applied to men for the questions on sexual experience in the past 1 year, women in 1991 were less likely to report a same-sex partner in the past year when questioned using the free response format rather than the coded format.

Table 2: Estimation of Missing Data on Homosexual Experience by Gender and GSS Survey Year (1988-2004)

	Since 18		Last 5 Years		Last Year
Year	Female % a (N b)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)
1988	– c	–	–	–	35.59 (843)	25.39 (638)
1989	21.55 (877)	15.30 (660)	–	–	36.15 (877)	25.56 (660)
1990	27.08 (768)	21.52 (604)	–	–	39.19 (768)	28.80 (604)
1991	23.04 (881)	24.21 (636)	32.12 (881)	25.79 (636)	40.64 (881)	33.65 (636)
1993	12.92 (921)	12.70 (685)	27.25 (921)	19.42 (685)	35.18 (921)	26.28 (685)
1994	20.39 (1,702)	18.53 (1,290)	25.79 (1,702)	19.84 (1,290)	34.67 (1,702)	25.81 (1,290)
1996	19.95 (1,619)	20.31 (1,285)	28.10 (1,619)	18.21 (1,285)	34.71 (1,619)	24.20 (1,285)
1998	21.44 (1,600)	21.75 (1,232)	32.00 (1,600)	25.49 (1,232)	38.00 (1,600)	30.52 (1,232)
2000	28.78 (1,588)	27.26 (1,229)	34.63 (1,588)	26.19 (1,229)	41.06 (1,588)	32.14 (1,229)
2002	21.21 (1,537)	21.41 (1,228)	35.39 (1,537)	26.95 (1,228)	41.96 (1,537)	32.57 (1,228)
2004	21.21 (1,532)	19.38 (1,280)	34.20 (1,532)	28.67 (1,280)	39.16 (1,532)	34.84 (1,280)

Note. The values represent raw, unweighted estimates of missing data computed from the GSS 1972 to 2004 cumulative dataset.

a Estimated percentage of individuals in the entire population of the given gender who have not answered the question pertaining to each cell.

b Unweighted total number of respondents in the entire population of the given gender.

c Dashes in the table indicate that data were not collected because the survey question pertaining to the cell was not asked for the given year.

Table 3: Estimated Prevalence of U.S. Adults Reporting Past Homosexual Experience by Gender and Selected Sociodemographic Variables (by Merging GSS 1988 to 2004 Datasets)

	Since 18 (1989-2004)		Last 5 Years (1991-2004)		Last Year (1988-2004)
Variables	Female % a (N b)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)	Female % (N)	Male % (N)
Birth Cohort Pre-1920 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s	1.36 (590) 1.96 (869) 2.60 (962) 3.63 (1,544) 6.14 (2,295) 6.65 (2,286) 7.19 (1,376) 7.53 (239) p < .0001	4.79 (334) 5.26 (570) 6.35 (772) 6.30 (1,317) 6.10 (1,853) 6.45 (1,845) 5.98 (1,137) 7.73 (207)	3.81 (105) 1.65 (364) 1.28 (626) 1.82 (1,207) 3.40 (1,973) 3.82 (2,043) 5.50 (1,290) 5.61 (196) p < .0001	2.01 (149) 2.95 (373) 3.28 (640) 4.49 (1,092) 4.60 (1,609) 4.95 (1,635) 5.30 (1,057) 2.87 (174)	0.00 (115) 0.77 (390) 1.08 (651) 1.32 (1,363) 2.45 (2,243) 3.06 (2,354) 3.81 (1,287) 2.06 (194) p < .0001	2.12 (189) 2.03 (444) 2.10 (715) 2.72 (1,324) 3.66 (1,860) 4.67 (1,883) 4.50 (1,023) 2.96 (169) p < .005
Education Less than high school High school graduate Junior college graduate Bachelor degree Graduate degree	5.83 (1,474) 4.50 (5,606) 4.84 (744) 5.04 (1,666) 8.48 (672) p < .0001	5.03 (1,133) 6.34 (4,151) 5.29 (548) 6.47 (1,423) 7.01 (770)	4.65 (904) 2.96 (4,398) 4.39 (615) 2.82 (1,347) 5.37 (540) p < .005	3.33 (870) 4.32 (3,520) 4.27 (468) 5.30 (1,208) 5.30 (660)	2.73 (1,062) 2.05 (4,876) 3.15 (666) 2.38 (1,431) 3.89 (565) p < .05	2.73 (1,025) 3.35 (3,966) 3.65 (521) 4.33 (1,339) 4.43 (745)
Race White Black Other	4.97 (8,287) 5.30 (1,378) 6.15 (520)	5.94 (6,834) 7.97 (790) 6.21 (419)	3.39 (6,224) 3.57 (1,150) 3.60 (445)	4.20 (5,621) 5.99 (734) 5.25 (381)	2.38 (6,896) 2.43 (1,233) 2.90 (482)	3.36 (6,378) 4.91 (815) 4.05 (420)
Religion Protestant Catholic Jewish None Other	3.97 (6,148) 4.67 (2,419) 5.10 (196) 11.15 (951) 9.30 (441) p < .0001	5.52 (4,297) 5.34 (1,948) 5.42 (166) 8.69 (1,208) 9.00 (400) p < .0001	2.71 (4,505) 3.09 (1,910) 0.61 (163) 7.25 (841) 6.38 (376) p < .0001	3.85 (3,528) 4.23 (1,606) 4.00 (150) 6.37 (1,067) 5.52 (362) p < .01	1.99 (5,016) 1.90 (2,161) 1.18 (170) 5.54 (867) 4.28 (374) p < .0001	3.10 (4,060) 3.25 (1,846) 4.14 (169) 5.49 (1,130) 3.64 (385) p < .005
Secularism (Measured by Frequency of Attending Religious Service) More than once per week Every week Nearly every week 2-3 times per month Once per month Several times per year Once per year Less than once per year Never	2.96 (879) 2.96 (2,093) 2.72 (625) 4.35 (989) 5.21 (730) 5.52 (1,267) 6.75 (1,214) 6.09 (755) 8.73 (1,478) p < .0001	5.75 (452) 6.30 (1,223) 3.97 (378) 5.38 (595) 5.60 (571) 6.37 (1,084) 5.17 (1,258) 5.36 (746) 7.81 (1,627)	1.84 (597) 2.01 (1,441) 1.94 (465) 2.15 (791) 3.32 (602) 3.38 (1,036) 4.47 (1,006) 3.06 (588) 6.93 (1,169) p <.0001	3.39 (384) 4.62 (975) 2.95 (305) 3.31 (513) 4.41 (476) 4.55 (924) 3.96 (1,060) 3.73 (643) 5.97 (1,357)	1.10 (634) 1.30 (1,613) 1.17 (512) 1.35 (887) 2.38 (671) 2.40 (1,167) 2.96 (1,114) 2.46 (651) 5.31 (1,244) p < .0001	2.30 (434) 3.84 (1,119) 2.90 (345) 3.32 (603) 3.35 (568) 3.37 (1,039) 2.72 (1,213) 2.81 (713) 5.30 (1,472) p < .05
Marital Status Married Not Married	3.32 (4,824) 6.66 (5,359) p < .0001	3.43 (4,344) 9.36 (3,697) p < .0001	1.71 (4,267) 5.49 (3,552) p < .0001	1.71 (3,736) 7.87 (2,998) p < .0001	1.01 (5,125) 4.48 (3,486) p < .0001	1.26 (4,528) 6.94 (3,083) p < .0001
Geographical Urbanization Top 12 central cities (CCs) Next 88 central cities Suburbs top 12 CCs Suburbs next 88 CCs Other urban areas Other rural areas	5.33 (807) 7.47 (1,513) 5.86 (1,161) 5.55 (1,441) 4.12 (4,123) 3.77 (1,140) p < .0001	13.39 (545) 7.58 (1,161) 7.17 (962) 5.83 (1,217) 4.68 (3,336) 4.62 (822) p < .0001	3.54 (621) 5.32 (1,185) 3.46 (926) 4.11 (1,096) 2.77 (3,173) 2.20 (818) p < .0001	11.32 (486) 6.80 (1,014) 4.33 (808) 4.61 (998) 2.80 (2,781) 2.62 (649) p < .0001	2.45 (654) 4.04 (1,239) 2.24 (1,026) 3.10 (1,291) 1.94 (3,446) 1.26 (955) p < .0001	9.28 (517) 5.82 (1,083) 3.64 (935) 3.26 (1,196) 2.41 (3,110) 1.55 (772) p < .0001
Geographical Urbanization (at 16) Country (non-farm) Farm Small town Medium city Large city Metropolitan area	4.45 (1,124) 3.12 (1,252) 5.06 (3,341) 5.17 (1,684) 6.22 (1,237) 6.14 (1,530) p < .01	5.03 (975) 4.49 (1,114) 6.44 (2,516) 6.19 (1,180) 6.99 (1,073) 7.22 (1,178) p < .05	3.79 (897) 2.16 (787) 3.21 (2,527) 3.13 (1,373) 3.73 (991) 4.47 (1,230)	3.88 (825) 3.55 (874) 3.94 (2,106) 4.85 (989) 4.99 (941) 5.92 (996)	2.55 (979) 1.58 (888) 2.27 (2,820) 2.28 (1,490) 2.45 (1,104) 3.34 (1,319)	3.21 (936) 2.37 (1,014) 3.33 (2,372) 3.62 (1,133) 4.40 (1,022) 4.60 (1,130)

Note. The values represent raw, unweighted estimates computed from the GSS 1988 to 2004 cumulative dataset. Missing data including the ones for people who did not answer the relevant survey questions were simply excluded from the above analysis. P-values are Pearson chi-square test of independence in the 2 x R table of reported homosexual behavior since 18, in the last 5 years, or in the past year (yes, no) by the R categories of the sociodemographic variable.

a Estimated percentage of individuals in the given gender population who have engaged in same-sex sexual behavior (for the given category of the sociodemographic variable), including those who have answered that their past sex partners included both sexes.

b Unweighted total number of respondents in the given gender population (for the given category of the sociodemographic variable) who have responded to the survey question pertaining to each cell.

Table 4: Summary of Significant Chi-Square Test Results from Table 3

	Female			Male
Variables	Since 18	Last 5 Years	Last Year	Since 18	Last 5 Years	Last Year
Birth Cohort	*	*	*	–	–	*
Education	*	*	*	–	–	–
Race	–	–	–	–	–	–
Religión	*	*	*	*	*	*
Secularism	*	*	*	–	–	*
Marital Status	*	*	*	*	*	*
Geographical Urbanization	*	*	*	*	*	*
Geographical Urbanization (at 16)	*	–	–	*	–	–

Note. Asterisk (*) indicates that the p-value computed from the Pearson chi-square test of independence for the corresponding cell in Table 3 is less than 0.05. Dash indicates that the p-value for the corresponding cell in Table 3 is not statistically significant (> 0.05).

Table 5: Comparison of Estimations of the Effect of Place of Residence at Age 16 on Past Homosexual Experience since Age 18

	Female					Male
	Linear Model	Non-Linear Models				Linear Model	Non-Linear Models
	OLS	Logit		Probit		OLS	Logit		Probit
Geographical Urbanization (at 16) a		Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect	Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect		Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect	Discrete Effect	Marginal Effect
0-1	.0047** [3.25]	.0039	.0047** [3.27]	.0040	.0047** [3.25]	.0048* [2.77]	.0041	.0047* [2.78]	.042	.0048* [2.77]
1-2		.0043		.0043			.0044		.045
2-3		.0046		.0047			.0047		.048
3-4		.0051		.0050			.0051		.050
4-5		.0055		.0054			.0054		.054

Note. Values represent the predicted estimates of the effect of an individual’s place of residence at age 16 on past homosexual experience since age 18 (dichotomous outcome: yes or no) for the given estimation model. N = 9955 for women; N = 8010 for men. The mean value for women’s geographical urbanization at age 16 is 2.5210; the mean value for men’s geographical urbanization at age 16 is 2.4717.

a Geographical urbanization (at age 16) was measured on an ordinal level, with response categories 0 = country/non-farm, 1 = farm, 2 = small town, 3 = medium city, 4 = large city, and 5 = metropolitan area.

* p < .01
** p < .00

v