“The study raises questions about why members of some groups are largely invisible to so many Americans.  For instance, compare the gay and lesbian community with the evangelical community.  There’s no definitive count on exactly how big each one is, but most estimates put homosexuals as somewhere under ten percent of the U.S. population, while 17% of Americans call themselves evangelical.  Yet three out of four Americans know a gay or lesbian person at least casually, while not quite half know an evangelical.  Is this because homosexuals are more open than evangelicals about who they are?  Because Americans are more open to knowing a homosexual than an evangelical?  Because evangelicals themselves are less likely to reach into the broader community to form relationships?  These questions are certainly open to debate, and not just about these two specific groups.  You could just as easily ask these questions about Mormons versus evangelicals, where Americans are just as likely to know a Mormon as an evangelical, even though by any measure the evangelical population in the U.S. is dramatically larger than the Mormon population.”