What are the lifespans of homosexuals and heterosexuals? Has anyone calculated lifespans by such criteria?
No substantive answer to the OP.
I’m posting this to note that Paul Cameron’s Family Research Institute has put out utterly fraudulent numbers for expected homosexual lifespans based on a statistical base taken from San Frsancisco in the early days of the AIDS epidemic. These numbers have been quoted widely by anti-gay websites. This is not a polemic on the subject but a caution, in the interests of fighting ignorance, to check out the sources of numbers that get quoted relative to the question.
As Polycarp mentions, this is a sensitive topic.
AIDS has indeed impacted life expectancies among North American gay and bisexual males (cite). Gay males smoke more than does the general population (cite), abuse drugs and alcohol at rates two to three times higher than the general populace (cite), and have higher rates of other risk factors as well. So the short answer seems to be that gay men in North America at least have a significantly shorter life span than average.
For gay women, the picture is not nearly as clear-cut. Lesbians are not at risk for AIDS, but some evidence suggests that domestic abuse is higher in same-sex relationships than in heterosexual ones. There also seems to be evidence that alcoholism is more prevalent in lesbians than heterosexual women (cite), although this is disputed.
Regards,
Shodan
I doubt AIDS has anywhere as much of an impact on gay male life spans as it did 20 years ago. The study in the first link Shodan provided is based on data from 1987 to 1992 and thus seventeen years old.
The risk of AIDS for lesbians is NOT zero. Although the risk of transmission is much lower there have been documented cases of HIV being passed between same-sex female partners.
Are you asking in strict biological terms, or overall? There’s still a lot we don’t know about sexual orientation, but one of the things we DO know is that there are many individuals who are “in the closet.” That is, they may desire or even perform homosexual acts, but they identify to friends, family, and undoubtedly physicians and clinicians as heterosexual. (That’s leaving aside bisexuality.) Therefore, the best you could do would be to compare out gays and lesbians to the general population. In other words, the general population cannot be assumed to be 100% heterosexual.
As others have mentioned, gays and lesbians have greater propensity of the abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and violence. I’d be curious to see how this compares to other stressed populations (minority ethnic groups, the poor).
If you have a credible citation of femaqle-female HIV transmission in the absence of other risk factors (IVDU, exposure to blood, sharing coke straws, previous male partners), I’d gladly add it to my teaching materials. While it’s theoretically possible, I haven’t seen confirmation that it has happened.