Janice Turner comments on the Opinium survey in her Thursday Notebook column:
"Devil in detail
Diabolical news from Stonewall: its new survey reveals 10 per cent of British LGBT+ people have undergone a religious exorcism. The research, conducted by the supposedly reputable polling company Opinium, interviewed 2,000 LGBT+ people online about whether they have been subject to conversion practices to change their sexuality or gender identity — and 200 ticked the exorcism box. (This was not some catch-all term for sessions “praying away the gay”, which was covered in a separate question.)
Are we living through an exorcism epidemic? John Armstrong, reader in mathematics at King’s College, London, has calculated that these figures imply that UK clerics conduct 15,000 exorcisms a year — one for every three church weddings.
My lesbian and gay friends wonder if some gym bunny respondents have confused “exorcise” with “exercise”. Also, why have they never been invited to expel Satan, and what would they wear? But the serious question is why the BBC website published Stonewall’s research — intended to push through the contentious conversion therapy bill — at face value, without interrogating the methodology or data. Surely a job for Radio 4’s More or Less."