| abstract | - There are no statistics on how many gay people there are in Singapore or what percentage of the population they constitute. The main reason for this is that section 377A of the Penal Code (Singapore) criminalizes "gross indecency" between men which includes even consensual, private, adult homosexual acts. The penalty is up to two years' imprisonment. The 2000 U.S. decennial census estimated (by extrapolation from hard data) that the proportion of gay men in America was 2.5 percent and of lesbians, 1.2 percent (source: Scientific American, March 2005 issue, 'Gay and Lesbian Census' by Rodger Doyle) even though socio-psychological studies from the Kinsey era to the present day show that the same percentages of those claiming greater erotic attraction for the same sex were 7.7 for men and 7.5 for women [1]. The latest study done by the British civil service in December 2005 using actuarial tables and estimates supplied by the Department of Trade and Industry reported the figure for gay people in the UK as being 3.6 million or 6 percent of the population. On 26 December 2005, China Daily reported that Zhang Beichuan, China's foremost expert on homosexuality estimated, according to statistics, that the number of gays in the Peoples' Republic was between 39 and 52 million, or 3 to 4 percent of the population. Figures in Singapore may be broadly similar.
* Read PLU's review of previous international studies: [2]
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