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Think Tank Retracts Claim Kentucky Is the Gayest State

The Williams Institute initially said that 10.5 percent of Kentuckians identify as LGBT. The real number is less than half that amount.

A UC Los Angeles Williams Institute study published a surprising result earlier this week, finding that Kentucky, of all states, somehow had the highest concentration of LGBT adults.

More than 10 percent of Kentuckians were said to identify as LGBT, a higher percentage than any other state by far.

Only that figure turned out to be an error. After two days, the think tank retracted the claim and lowered its estimate from 359,500 LGBT Kentuckians to less than half that number, citing initially faulty CDC data that had not been updated before the group began its work.

“The CDC initially reported the 10.5 percent estimate for Kentucky but corrected it in July 2023. We should have been on top of that correction and incorporated it in our report,” Founding Executive Director of the Williams Institute Brad Sears said in a statement. “We are grateful to you, our followers, and journalists, who have questioned and celebrated the Kentucky estimate over the past two days.”

The highest concentration of LGBT adults is, in fact, in Oregon, at 7.8 percent.

“Our pledge for the past 23 years has been to conduct rigorous research on LGBT people,” Sears said. “We are working on a new analysis of the adult LGBT population on the national, regional, and state levels and will release that soon.”

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Mark AlfredBreaking News Intern

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