Any claims that gays as an entire class are seriously "oppressed" seem clearly bogus in light of emerging, highly accurate marketing studies done by gays themselves that show gays to be, to the contrary, enormously advantaged relative to the general population -- and astronomically advantaged when compared to truly disadvantaged minorities. A July 18, 1991, Wall Street Journal article, entitled "Overcoming a Deep-Rooted Reluctance, More Firms Advertise to Gay Community", reported the following findings by the Simmons Market Research Bureau and the U.S. Census Bureau; cf. also The Marketer, "The Gay Nineties," September 1990; Quest magazine, a Denver gay tabloid ("Invisibility = Stagnation"), February, 1992; and Overlooked Opinions studies, cite to follow:

• Gays have an average annual household income of $55,430, versus a general population income of $32,144. Mean income of disadvantaged African-American households is only $12,166 (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990).
• Factoring in comparative household sizes, gays average annual individual income is reported as $36,800, compared with $12,287 for average Americans and a mere $3,041 for disadvantaged African Americans. This means gay individual income is more than 300% greater than average Americans' -- and an enormous 1,200% greater than disadvantaged African Americans' (The Marketer, op. cit.).
• More than three times as many gays as average Americans are college graduates (59.6% vs. 18.0%; gays average 15.7 years' education vs. 12.7 for average Americans) -- dwarfing achievements of truly disadvantaged African-Americans and Hispanics. More than three times as many gays as average Americans hold professional or managerial positions (49.0% vs. 15.9%) -- making gays embarrassingly more advantaged than true minorities in the job market.
• 65.8% of gays are overseas travelers -- more than four times the percentage (14.0%) of average Americans -- and more than 13 times as many gays as average Americans (26.5% vs. 1.9%) are frequent flyers.

• "According to Overlooked Opinions more than half of the gay men's households surveyed had income of $50,000 or more, and nearly 30 percent of the lesbian households were in the same income group" (BAR).
• "The national average income of lesbian households is $45,927" (RMN).
• "Companies across the country are beginning to woo the gay market in an attempt to cash in on a relatively untapped section of society that has more disposable income, has an average household income of $55,000 (which is $23,000 more than the national average) and who live on the edge of society and therefore [are] more inclined to try new products" (Quest, gay tabloid).
• "Together, gay men and lesbians earn over $514 billion annually" (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• "Jeffrey Vitale, the president of Overlooked Opinions, described the lesbian/gay market segment as having `tremendous buying power and lots of discretionary income'... One of the firm's findings: nearly 40 percent of the lesbians and gays surveyed had traveled overseas during the past year" (BAR, emphasis added).
• A cruise line executive, specializing in a boom market in all-gay luxury cruise vacations said, "Fifty-two percent of the passengers sign up for a cruise in the next year while on the cruise" (TW, emphasis added).
• 7% of gays live in households with annual income of over $100,000 (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• Gays households are four times as likely as average Americans to be earning in excess of $100,000 annually (SFC).
• "54.1% of gay male households have annual incomes over $50,000" (RMN).
• "[Overlooked Opinions president Jeffrey Vitale] pointed out that 2% of the lesbians on his panel make more than $200,000 annually, which is a higher percentage than gay males surveyed" (MN).
• "More than 90 percent of gay men and 82 percent of lesbians report that they read magazines as a hobby or special interest" (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• "And a reader's poll conducted for the Advocate, a national gay magazine, last year showed that its readers (98% of whom are men) have average household incomes of $62,100" (WST).
• 47.7% of gay males and 43.1% of lesbians own their own homes. 31.7% of gays and 33.1% of lesbians reside in suburban areas (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• "56.2% of cohabiting lesbian/gay couples' household incomes top $50,000 a year" (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• "...Almost 30% of lesbian households earn over $50,000 annually" (MTW).
• 62% of gay males are college graduates (vs. 24% of all U.S. men). 59% of lesbians are college graduates, compared with 17% of all U.S. women. "30.1% of gays and lesbians have advanced degree(s)" (RMN).
• "America's gay and lesbian community is emerging as one of the nation's most educated and affluent, and Madison Avenue is beginning to explore the potential for a market that may be worth hundreds of billions of dollars... `It's a market that screams opportunity,' said Eric Miller, editor of Research Alert, a consumer research newsletter based in New York" (SFC).
• While 32.8% of African Americans live below the poverty line ($8,343 for 2-person households under age 65 [Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990]), 62% of gay households earn more than the average American household, and more than 95% of gay households live above the poverty line (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• Only 19% of gay households earn less than $20,000 annually (Overlooked Opinions survey, op. cit.).
• "`Gay greenbacks are very powerful and the gay and lesbian community is a virtual motherlode of untapped sales,' said Robert Bray, spokesman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington" (RMN).

"Editor and Publisher magazine reports that there are now more than 125 newspapers catering to homosexual readers presently being published in the United States, with a combined circulation of more than one million" (The New American, October 8, 1991) -- newspapers, our sampling shows, packed with advertising.

`Everybody's going after gay business,' said Sean Strub, the owner of the [Strub Media Group] direct-mail company in Rockland County, N.Y. `This is happening in such a targeted way that no one else would recognize it.' It is also happening in ways that everyone recognizes. For example, a 60-foot-high billboard for a cruise company, now on view in West Hollywood, Calif., shows two men in bathing suits, with one man's arm around the other. `RSVP Gay Cruises,' it reads. `Call Your Travel Agent.' Smaller versions of the ad are on display in Greenwich Village in Manhattan and in San Francisco subway stations. And then there is the glossy new catalogue that landed in 250,000 mailboxes last fall. Shocking Gray, `the catalogue for the other 25 million people,' resembles countless others... but only same-sex couples are shown." [Early results of this mailing show extremely high percent and dollar response. Shocking Gray's second catalogue is being mailed to 400,000 people ("Gay consumers come out spending," American Demographics, April, 1992.]("With Varying Degrees of Openness, More Companies Lure Gay Dollars," The New York Times, March 2, 1992)

Researcher Peter LaBarbera reports:

"These are heady days for Wayne Watson, the editor of Our World, a magazine for `international gay & lesbian travel.' The magazine is riding the wave of a gay travel boom that Watson says is drawing the keen interest of travel executives seeking to tap into gay wealth.

"`There has... been a landslide of new travel agencies in recent months, catering to our [c]ommunity,' Watson beamed in his regular `Editor's Note' column for Our World's June 1993 issue. `Most are gay/lesbian- owned, but some are straight companies that are beginning to realize the importance of their gay clientele.'

"Watson says one such `straight' company called Our World, `stating that they always knew they had upscale gay and lesbian patrons but had never really addressed their needs.' So the company took a survey of its regular customers and found that `only 26 percent were gay, but these clients accounted for 68 percent of their income,' Watson writes.

"Our World's December issue -- the annual `Cruise and Tour' issue -- is dedicated to ocean cruise packages catering to homosexual travellers. An article in the issue reports that `yacht chartering has become a viable vacation option for thousands of gay men and lesbians.'

"Another article on gay and lesbian cruise lines listed dozens of cruise vacations available specifically to homosexual clientele. In the same issue, Watson said about the extra pages in the magazine: `The massive expansion in the number [of] gay travel firms and the flood of new advertisers made this happy situation possible, and necessary, for the Cruise and Tour issue."("Gay Cruise Industry Booming," Lambda Report, Dec.-Jan. 1993- '94, p. 14, emphasis added.)

An Advertising Age, July 27, 1992, space ad reads: "TAP INTO THE $377 BILLION UNTAPPED GAY MALE MARKET. Introducing DIRECT MALE, the cost-effective direct response advertising vehicle for as little as 2.6 cents per contact. For your media kit call (202) 483-1300 WinMark Concepts, Washington, D.C."

The Advocate, a national gay "slick" magazine with a readership of over 120,000, reported advertising revenues doubled from $1.9 million in 1990 to $3.8 million in 1992, and its advertising budget goal for 1993 is $4.6 million (as reported in Marketing News, July 20, 1992, "Mainstream marketers decide time is right to target gays," pp. 8, 15). Based on most recent estimates of between 1.1% and 1.5% presence of homosexuals in the general population, The Advocate, which claims a total readership of 200,000 persons per issue, reaches between 33.5% and 50.3% of America's gay male population.

In September, 1990, the Simmons Market Research Bureau released results of a nationwide "profile" study of Advocate readers. Simmons made the following comparisons between Advocate readers and "average" adults nationally:

		Simmons Nat'l
	Advocate Reader	Average Adults

Possess valid passport	48.7%	13.0%
Use any credit card	90.8%	61.4%
  American Express Gold	19.0%	3.4%
  American Express Green	24.5%	6.3%
  American Express Optima	12.6%	1.7%
Average value of home is	$181,100	$137,000

Own a car	80.6%	79.1%
Own a domestic car	47.	64.7%
Own an imported car	41.0%	18.6%
Own a car bought new	59.4%	41.0%
Own a car bought used	30.5%	44.3%

Arts and cultural events attended in the last 12 months
Live theater	67.1%	13.1%
Dance performance	25.4%	4.4%
Concert -- rock, pop, other	36.9%	12.0%
Movies (last 90 days)	77.4%	34.9%

Bottled spring or mineral water consumption
Drink carbonated, sparkling water	64.5%	17.2%
Drink noncarbonated bottled water	44.0%	15.6%

Travel in past 12 months
Took vacation and business trips	93.3%	7.5%
Took domestic air flight for	59.3%	2.0%
vacation trips
Took domestic air flight for	72.0%	2.0%
business reasons
Spent nights at a nongay	81.2%	4.5%
hotel or resort
Took foreign trips in last	59.0%	3.0%
3 years
Enrolled as frequent-flyers	43.2%	6.9%

Any claims by gay militants that gays are, as an entire class, "oppressed" or "disadvantaged" are clearly preposterous. Writing in the March 22, 1994 issue of the gay publication The Advocate, gay business columnist Ed Mickens admits: "Today, it's rare that anyone gets fired just for being gay." As syndicated columnist Don Feder points out: "Mickens should know. He's the author of `The 100 Best Companies For Gay Men And Lesbians,' wherein are listed corporate giants with `gay-friendly policies,' including training programs that teach `sensitivity' on homosexual issues... A conscientious Christian or Jew is far more likely to feel uncomfortable in the politically correct workplace of the '90s than the average homosexual" ("Gay-rights lobby stakes hopes on House gambit," Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, June 28, 1994, p. B5).

Yet lesbian attorney Robin Miller and other gay activists have called gay advantage opponents' objections to special gay entitlements on the grounds of gay affluence akin to "the prejudice of Nazis against rich Jews." Not so. For one thing, Jewish identity is an ethnic characteristic or religious belief, not a class status based on behavior alone -- certainly not one based on mere alleged desire. Second, Nazis' depictions of what Hitler described as "Jewish subhumanity" were manifestly untrue; information given about homosexual social and income status and political "clout" is sociologically verifiable and a matter of public record. Third, Jews as a class have never attempted to use the persecution Jews have experienced as leverage to achieve added benefits at the expense of truly disadvantaged people. On the contrary, Jews have nobly turned the fact of their maltreatment into an impetus to compassionate championship of protections and rights for the truly disadvantaged. Gay activists show little beyond token interest in advancing anyone's status but their own.

To say, as some gay militants do, that the personal anguish of gays alone justifies the awarding of protected status is no more rational than to say that all miserable people, regardless of income or ethnic status should be a protected class unto themselves. (Interestingly, according to Jewish rabbinic tradition, even non-Jews are obligated to abide by seven basic guidelines, known as the Noahide Laws, based on the Torah's Book of Genesis. The sixth of the Noahide Laws is "To refrain from robbing one's fellow man.")

In truth, to equate gays with any true ethnic group is a travesty of logic, a fallacious comparison. "Gayness" can only be equated and compared with other sexual behaviors or fantasies, legal and illegal, like heterosexuality, sadomasochism, underwear fetishism, bestiality, necrophilia, rape, pedophilia and even, as in the case of a Jeffrey Dahmer (who was sexually excited by eating human flesh), serial murder and cannibalism. Again, why alleged homosexual fantasies should merit special treatment, rather than some of the "divergent" proclivities above is a question gay extremists would be hard put to answer logically.

Noted African American leaders are not deceived by the counterfeit of civil rights gay extremists have raised in their own interest. Denver civil rights legend Rev. Leon Kelly has said, "I never saw gays riding in the backs of buses or denied service at restaurants." Others comment:

"The equation of homosexuality with the noble history of civil rights in this country serves only to dilute, distort and denigrate true civil rights."

"`Gay rights' cannot be likened in any fashion to the Black struggle for Civil Rights. `Gay rights' is not, nor will it ever be, a Civil Rights issue, but rather a question of morality and individual values."

"Skin color is a benign, non-behavioral characteristic. Sexual orientation is perhaps the most profound of human behavioral characteristics. Comparison of the two, racial and sexual discrimination, is a convenient but invalid argument."

An African American church pastor in Kansas City, MO, put it no less accurately, if a bit more colorfully: "The Freedom Bus that went to Selma was never meant to go on to Sodom." As former Colorado Civil Rights Commission Chairman John Franklin and others have observed, if having "divergent" sex becomes all it takes to be considered "ethnic," with full minority status and privileges, the concept of ethnicity will soon lose all traces of meaning or value. The rights of legitimate ethnic groups weren't won so easily, or on such flimsy and ignoble grounds.

To grant gays, clearly one of America's most affluent self-identified subcultures, protected class status, would be to codify into public policy one of the most grievous, fraudulent social injustices in this nation's history.

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