"Being gay" is a construct that doesn't equate with human behavior and experience when it comes to coming up with a simple single datum describing the American male population.
Nearly 50% of men report having had same-sex sexual contact in which an ejaculation occurred. Homosexual behavior among men is not just an effect of inner traits that remain consistent over a lifetime. Young men in adolescence with high sexual drives, close in-group relationships and little access to young women often have sex with other males. Even with predominantly heterosexual males the specifics of these experiences can form later sexual experiences. Heterosexual men also can fetishize, project or objectify what gayness or homosexual behavior means to them and obsess about it as taboo, appropriately punishing, an opportunity to control or to engage in non-entangling release.
Likewise, men who would otherwise score high on proclivity scales for homosexuality may not or may never have acted on them, because of social and cultural norms,
Also, there is not merely one profile for men who we would generalize as being "gay." If the criteria are based solely on ongoing or predominant sexual behavior, we lose some of the cultural, psychological and situational expressions of gayness. Not to mention the impact of the predicament and power of transgression, "otherness," specialness or relative freedom that often adheres.
Finally, while the majority of end-scale heterosexual males likely never would consider homosexual activity regardless of opportunity or lack of access to women, how many in-their-being gay men live lives without actual homosexual behavior.
As an aside, the consideration of online pornography usage in setting a 5% estimate makes some sense, but it is crude and has many problems, including the presence of bisexuals, the use of gay porn by women, comparative frequency (not to mention compulsivity) among online porn users, and the fact that many people, even those with active libidos and access to online sources, do not use porn. So the sample comprises "those who visit pornographic sites, of which 5% visit gay sites," or something like that.
Most importantly, in an open, equitable, compassionate and understanding society, more-fluid or experimental behavior may be expected among the sizable part of the population who are not firmly at one end or the other of the sexual scale. This means that greater opportunity exists for the HUMAN part of sexuality to affect men's behavior, through individual relationships with men (or women). Isn't this what our sexuality is most about, rather than who we love or live with being relegated to those images that get us hardest fastest?
