So is it safe to assume this Robert G. Marshall is as gay as the day is long?
I don’t suffer fools gladly. So no.
In an Arctic summer.
But do you suffer fools gaily?
Actually, in terms of dependency ratio, “an age-population ratio of those typically not in the labor force (the dependent part) and those typically in the labor force (the productive part),” the U.S. isn’t bad off compared to Russia and China and Iran, countries whose gay-rights record sometimes takes the form of denying such a thing exists. (I don’t know how Russia is now, but in the Soviet days they stayed in the closet or it might be the straitjacket and electroshock.)
Which isn’t particularly relevant, considering that the poster in question linked to a report about deaths world-wide.
It appears that if this is true (the venereal diseases and having fewer children may be) then if he is opposed to homosexuality then he should be in favour of more homosexual freedom, as this is the surefire way to rid society of homosexuals, given that they are putting significantly fewer children into the world and thus ridding themselves from the genepool. In a few generations there should be considerable fewer homosexuals around.
But the subject was AIDs in the U.S.
Anyway, in terms of government costs: I always thought it was strange that certain cancers (and pregnancy!) made you qualified for Medicaid regardless of disability status…but not AIDs.
However, according to this, Medicaid spending accounts for 1/2 of government spending re: AIDS in the U.S.
I don’t think that gays are a drain on the economy, but I’m wondering where this guy’s thought process is coming from. And even if AIDS spending was 10x that, it says we need to do something about safer sex - not gay people.
If anyone actually cares about numbers…not that it makes this dbag less of a jerk:
About 21.4 billion in federal dollars will be spent on domestic HIV/AIDS programs*. About 1.2 million people have AIDS in the U.S., and a smidge over half are from MSM transmissions. Possibly 1 in 5 gay men are HIV-positive.
The percentage of gays in the U.S. is about 1.7%. (That 10 per cent GLBT thing comes from a bad Kinsey sample, I believe.)
To compare: Obama’s funding requests for the Dept. of Ed. was $48.8 billion (not including Pell grant $) for about 70 million people.
The drain on Social Security argument (or stressor) technically works if you consider:
Disability as a result of AIDS, which means access to disability payments, Medicare, and not working (or contributing those SS taxes)
Early deaths
Still, that’s only 1.2 million (or perhaps slightly higher, accounting for infected persons that are not aware of it) people in the U.S. with AIDs, and it’s about 17k deaths/yr.
*This doesn’t include any other costs associated with AIDS co-morbidity.
I think gay marriage and gay adoption are separate issues, but if all roadblocks were removed from gays/lesbians adopting or otherwise raising children, how would that affect the numbers?
Question #2: How do gays’ own contributions to the tax base compare to the national average?
But the vast majority of public education spending in the US is from state and local governments. The cost of a year of public school education for one student is several times the $700 your figures would indicate. I think it might be more like $7000, IIRC. I’m pretty sure that spending on AIDS programs is nowhere near that ratio between the feds and state/local governments.
I limited it to federal funding only for both groups, as the discussion was about (I think?) fed spending. The total amount spent on AIDS is far more than what the government spends.
We spend way too fucking much on AIDS.
Cost per HIV/AIDS patient in terms of federal spending is 21B for 1.2 million people, right?
21,000,000,000 / 1,200,000 = $17,500 per patient cost, compared to your figure of $700 per pupil spending…?
1.2 million Americans have AIDS, and “a smidge over half” of those are MSMs. Rounding to half for the sake of argument, and discounting gay men who got it through non-sexual means, we get roughly 600,000 gay men in America with AIDS. Multiplying by 5 (per the 1 in 5 statistic) gives us a figure of 3 million for total gay male population in the US. Looking at US demographics and assuming that a negligible number of AIDS patients are boys under 15 who got it from having gay sex, we can compare the figure of 3 million gays to 119,566,275 total male population over 15, and the former is 2.5% of the latter, considerably more than your 1.7%. This is obviously a rough calculation but it’s quite conservative, as increasing the 600k figure to be more precisely accurate, or bumping up the age cutoff to be more realistic would result in that percentage being higher.
Therefore, I don’t think your numbers agree with each other.
Dude, I didn’t produce the numbers. The difference between 1.7 per cent and 2.5 per cent re: those numbers is relatively small, and just because you had one or four m2m sexual encounters doesn’t mean you classify yourself as “gay”.
edit: Could also be the conflation of AIDs and HIV.
I didn’t say you did…? It just struck me that you cited several tangentially-related statistics in one post but they didn’t seem to gel with each other. My only point is that perhaps a closer inspection of these figures is in order.
I wouldn’t call that small – the group just increased by almost half.
Your link on the 1 in 5 thing states “One in five sexually active gay and bisexual men…” If you’re a man having sex with other men, I’m pretty sure you’re either gay or bisexual.
Also, that means that the 3 million / 2.5% figure is only sexually active gay/bi men. I wonder how many sexually inactive gay/bi men there are. Quite a few, no doubt.
Heck if I know. I linked studies (I think all were CDC or gov’t health studies, no?) and relayed the info they said. “Small” is when I figured for rounding, co-morbidity, sampling errors, dates of studies ,etc. The point was really about federal government spending - if you look at the data I provided, spending related to AIDS is more per person than education – twice as much.
The ‘**Possibly **1 in 5’ was from a survey that I would take with a grain of salt as reporting data and expenditures would be a more accurate measure.
Quite honestly, I don’t care who is marrying whom. I do think that certain testing should be mandatory before a woman gives birth, though.
Here is some better-explained data.
I don’t think my 1.7 per cent was supposed to include bisexual men or men that have had sex with another man.
btw, I dated a guy who had ‘sexual relations’ with his roommate in college and he was not gay. Nor did he find himself attracted to men. It was purely sexual experimentation.
I’ve dated women and (gasp! had sex!) but I don’t consider myself bisexual or gay as I date only men and don’t lose sleep over it. Girls are fucking nuts. 
/fix