Roughly two weeks ago, the Heath & Fitness Section of Tuesday’s New York Times ran an article about women whose husbands are unfaithful with other men. “Many Couples Must Negotiate Terms of 'Brokeback' Marriages” is not only interesting because of the numbers it provides, but is interesting because of the overwhelming reader response to the article since it went to print.

In the piece, Katy Butler said that, “[A]n estimated 1.7 million to 3.4 million American women who once were or are now married to men who have sex with men.” She attributed this number to “'The Social Organization of Sexuality.” This study was conducted by Edward O. Laumann, a Sociology professor at the University of Chicago who completed the sexuality study in 1990. It also “found that 3.9 percent of American men who had ever been married had had sex with men in the previous five years,” and that “2 to 4 percent of ever-married American women had knowingly or unknowingly been in what are now called mixed-orientation marriages.”

Those statistics are more than a decade old. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, the U.S, population reached 295,734,134 in July 2005. According to the U.S. census, the U.S. population reached 248,709,873 in 1990. According to those stats, unless I’m getting my math wrong (which is possible), in 1990, roughly 1.37% of the U.S. population was made up of gay or bisexual married men. The census figures also state that in 1990, there were 121,239,000 men in the U.S. This means that 2.8% of men in 1990 were gay or bisexual married men. It’s almost impossible to retrieve statistical data on the LGBTQ population. Part of the issue that like these men, many people don’t identify or consider themselves LGBTQ but have romantic and sexual relationships with people of the same sex. But right-wingers have been trying to spin data to say that less than 1% of the population is gay and it’s therefore an abnormality. If 2.8% of married men in 1990 were gay, if you add that to the percent of married women, and the out LGBTQ population of 1990, you’re reaching the 10% number that’s often thrown around since Kinsey put it out there in the 1940’s.

There were seven letters to the Editor printed about this article the following week, each of them presenting a differing viewpoint. One person touched on he fact that when African American married men sleep with men, the press creates a stir about the "down low" factor and almost always mentions AIDS whereas this article, presumably about white men, didn't. Another letter questions the ommission of married women who hide their same-sex affairs. Another response claims that women prefer gay men because they're more fun, HA! Clearly the film created a dialogue that is long overdue. Too bad it’s not more front-and-center.