I wasn't as much objecting to your overall point as I was to the use of anecdotal evidence for such a sweeping assertion. Because anecdotal evidence is incredibly flimsy for social situations, see:
You're way more likely to find that basically any concept (monogamy, political preference, fondness of the hit TV show Riverdale starring KJ Apa's abs) is in a majority amongst your social circle since your social circle is self selective. (In statistics, self-selection bias arises in any situation in which individuals select themselves into a group, causing a biased sample with nonprobability sampling.
[wiki])
The data I did find supported the idea of open relationships being more prevalent amongst gay men, but since those studies also included things like "lesbians are more likely to be active in feminist women groups and maybe that's bad for their children" and some very dodgy data selection (yay 80s to early-mid90s LGBTQ research!) I wasn't so keen on presenting it.
Isn't Tinder also the biggest one for heteros and is also considered to be a hookup app?
Yet again, not necessarily arguing against your overall point.
The big problem is that there is a lack of good data on which to base any assertion. And since over the last five years there has been what I think is the biggest transformation of how we think about sex and relationships since the sexual revolution I just genuinely don't know how people think about relationships.
I agree that the data is bad, and likely will continue to be since gay stats require people to identify as being gay in the first place. Thats why it's tough to determine just how many gays there are.
Just a top level question: Do you use any dating apps? Tinder/Grindr are radically different structurally. The structure of these apps inform how they're used:
- Tinder Requires Facebook to use (harder to make blank/fake profiles since you need to make an account and populate it with pics
- Requires you to actually mutually match with others to even begin conversation. Grindr just has a grid with whomever is local listed. no mutual consent required to initiate conversation (note: while you can turn distance off on grindr, the app itself warns you that profiles without distance tend to get fewer responses
- Tinder doesn't allow you to send pics in app, while Grindr does (yay unsolicited asshole shots!)
- Tinder does not have fields for height/weight/body type etc, grindr does, and users on grindr often state pretences against incomplete profiles.
- Tinder allows for multiple photos and a larger character limit compared to Grindr.
There are more ways, but if we compare the norms of tinder (the hetero hookup app) vs the norms of Grindr (the de facto gay hookup app {since they never directly advertise it as a hookup app}), we can see that while all apps are superficial (since they largely rely on photos), the structure of grindr is more geared towards hooking up than its closest hetero competitor.
Now what does it say about the gay community that our most prominent app is Grindr? Grindr did not spring forth from a group of devs who were like "lets make an app that encourages transactional sexual relationships so it changes the norms in the gay community!". They made an app that fit existing gay norms all too well, hence its place at the top of the gay dating app totem pole.
My original assertion for to CB's post is that the norms in the gay world enact pressure to be open or, at the very least, more sexually liberal compared to hetero dating. It was not "monogamous gay couples do not exist" or "all gay relationships are open", just that relative to hetero dating, gay dating tends to be more open.
In the absence of good data, we have to look at the structures in our community. I don't know what you see in the gay community that leads you to believe that the gay community is as oriented toward monogamy as the hetero community. I am open to any data counter to that though.