Okay, see, I don’t really think that. Any rational person would know that.
That’ll do it!
Moderation, moderation, moderation is the key.
So now it’s irrational to be gay? I will match my rationality against yours any day. And we die young? I’ve made it to 63 so far, and have no intention of dying anytime soon. How old are you . . . kid?
And we’re still waiting for some facts to back up your claims.
Here’s a citation:
It appears that the average age of death for a homosexual man who is currently 20 is somewhere between 66.3 and 67.2 in the region of Canada surveyed for this study. (That is, if you accept the 9% assumption for this study.) One could imagine that someone could misunderstand what’s said in this abstract and think that the average age of death is 46.3. Actually, what’s being said here is the average number of years left for a 20-year-old male homosexual is 46.3. So this study says that male homosexuals live somewhat less long than male hetrosexuals, but not by as much as Cameron claims.
And bear in mind that today’s 20-year-old is growing up in a much more accepting and supportive environment than a 60-year-old did. That has to have a very positive effect on his life expectancy.
Well, I rose to the bait. I checked the CDC’s website and although I admit I did not do the most thorough searching the world, I didn’t see anything that backed up or refuted ol’ spikey’s claim one way or another. However, a Google search gave me this study (warning: PDF) done by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, which seems to indicate that bisexuals have worse health than either gays or straights.
Weird.
I just started my statistics class, so I’m not yet very skilled at critiquing study methods, but this looks like a fairly legit study to me.
Thanks for the reference. I note immediately that it was a phone survey. I won’t answer this sort of survey on the phone because I can’t confirm that the caller is legitimate, nor do I trust that my phone number, which is an identifier, will be kept sufficiently separate from the data I provide. Therefore, one methodology-related question is how many people declined and how many respondents may have omitted some data for reasons of inadequate privacy. This may be covered further into the document, but I don’t have time to go through it right now.
I missed that it was a phone survey. I suppose that would affect the results, but I’m not sure in this case what would be better…face to face would, I think, get even worse responses, and I don’t think people like to return mailed surveys.
Extreme nitpick, in the interests of helping people avoid embarrassment: If the cite reported over in Christian Forums was accurate (and it looked to be) there were two (2) cases of female-to-female transmission of HIV reported in the literature, most likely via the “open sores” route. While this contradicts Susan’s assertion of absolutely no transmission, it supports her point that female/female sex is almost without risk. (And no, I don’t have a cite; the new coding on that site regularly locks up my computer, so I’ve been avoiding going back by and large.)
For the record, Paul Cameron works or has worked for the Family Research Council, a member of the Focus on the Family group of ministries, which also includes FotF, Concerned Women of America and several ‘family values advocacy’ groups. His bogus studies are regularly quoted by other groups including the American Family Association, and the two propaganda sites OneNewsNow and LifeSite.com. One of the bits of ‘research’ I’ve seen cited from him was taking a quite legitimate study of the sexuality and sexual behavior of people hospitalized in San Francisco in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, and using it to purport to show “the unhealthiness of the homosexual lifestyle.”
Okay, initial pages suggest LGB respondents generally have similar or more health care contacts (mammograms, e.g.) than S respondents. Potential confound: Do LGB people have more health problems and therefore more doctor contact, or do they have more doctor contact and therefore earlier/better diagnosis? Note “Gay/lesbian/homosexuals have
somewhat more formal education than straight/heterosexuals,” which potentially is associated with more knowledge about health (this is a supposition on my part).
For what it’s worth, note that “(3.6%) of survey participants declined or refused to provide a response”–higher than the total number of participants identified as gay, lesbian or homosexual (1.9%) and as bisexual (1.0%) combined.
It’s not clear from this presentation of items such as intimate partner violence what the sex of the violent partner was. The condom use question has a similar problem.
Among other methodological limitations, “although the sample size is relatively robust to answer questions about disparities related to sexual orientation, there is insufficient power to analyze rare outcomes or to provide analysis based on race and ethnicity within sexual orientation identity groups.”
And “The reader is advised that the crude percentages, also called
prevalence proportions, do not account for differences in the socio-demographic
composition of each sexual orientation group. Gay/lesbian/homosexuals have
somewhat more formal education than straight/heterosexuals. People with more
education usually have better health. Bisexuals are younger, on average, than
straight/heterosexuals. Younger people tend to have fewer physical health problems,
but may be heavier users of alcohol, have more sexual partners and so forth than older
people. Comparisons that do not take these differences into consideration are biased
(under or over-estimate actual differences between sexual orientation groups).”
Note that in many cases we’re talking about a 1% difference in responses between S and LGH. The big disparities are generally between people identifying themselves as bisexual. This probably suggests that this is a more heterogeneous category and that a more in-depth analysis of variance within the category would be illuminating.
Not going to plow through the numbers, though. My wife wants to take me to dinner. I apologize in advance if that destroys civilization.
The fact is you have to compare like to like. As a gay man I can tell you homosexuals lead much more unhealthy lifestyles. I only can think of a couple of gay men who don’t do drugs for example. Go to any gay bar you can see meth everywhere. I can’t see it in straight bars. That doesn’t mean it isn’t in straight bars but if you want drugs go to a gay bar.
Homosexuals participate in more high risk behaviours then heterosexuals. They are more likely to have one night stands than straights. This leads to an increase of crimes against them.
But all this aside, the study is flawed because it’s comparing two unlike lifestyles.
You need to find similar gay and straight people and similar life activities and then see if the life expectancies vary.
I don’t know about the particulars of that study but the fact is gay people will particiate in much higher risk behaviors then straights.
I’ll look late–thanks. Per my link, it’s CDC that says “none.” I mention this because we were instructed to look at the CDC website.
Spike404, I’d suggest you take your hijack to Great Debates, but they require citations there, too. I will instead note that the OP’s question is:
If you can help out with this information, please do so. Otherwise, please refrain from hijacking this thread.
Gfactor
General Questions Moderator
If the 3-6% non-hetero population you cited accounts for 33% of AIDS infections, I don’t think that makes the point you wanted it to make. I looked up more relevant statistics on the CDC to see what kind of wiggle room exists with non-sexual transmission methods, but their stats were not flattering either:
It’s been made clear that the same doesn’t apply to women, and the stats in the OP are worthless, but it’s not all roses either. Have any apples-to-apples studies been done of people of different orientations but similar sexual practices?
CDC is giving US stats. UNAIDS gives world stats. In the world, about 2/3 of HIV cases are identified as resulting from male-female sexual contact. The rates of transmission in different groups vary by region, country, and demographics (e.g., relative poverty). They also vary by reporting methods (e.g., some countries still make up their numbers; in some countries it’s not safe to state that you have HIV).
I’m not folllowing your thought here. If you are saying that everyone who gets HIV from other-than male-female sexual transmission is getting it from male-male sexual transmission, you are missing the mother-to-child, medical, drug-related, and other means of transmission than sexual. I’m not suggesting that male-male sexual contact does not account for a larger proportion of HIV infections in the US and Western Europe. However, sex is not the only means of transmission. In the US, young women of color have been an increasing proportion of HIV infections, while the MSM rate has remained fairly steady at about 40,000 new infections/annum.
All of the drug users I know are straight. None of the gay people I know use drugs. Ipso facto, straight people are more likely to be drug users than gay people.
Hmm, no, that’s not how it works. I won’t deny that there are populations of homosexuals (particularly males) that lead unhealthy lifestyles, but the people that you know aren’t an appropriate sample group. I know a bunch of liberal nerds, I can’t poll them about net neutrality and expect to get the same results as a statewide political poll. If you go to clubs, you probably know gay guys that go to clubs.
Further, we’re talking about gay men and lesbians together, not just gay men.
In any case, the problem with statements like “homosexuals lead a less healthy lifestyle” is that it assumes that the healthiness of the lifestyle has to do specifically with the sexual orientation. I don’t think there’s any evidence to state that drug use is caused by attraction to the same gender; American/Western gay club culture isn’t the same as “the gay lifestyle”.
Markxxx, I can honestly say as a 48 year old Gay man who has never done anything stronger than a joint, that I know very few Gay men who are leading “unhealthy lifestyles”…
Then again, I’ve been married to my partner for over 21 years, so the few times I’ve gone to bars I’ve been totally bored in about an hour, and leave… I stop in about once a year, and realize that, yep, they’re still boring and full of drunks… I must have missed the meth bar though…
I have a wide circle of Gay friends - and none of them do drugs or have been beaten up before, during or after one night stands. And some of em even go to bars on a regular basis.
Markxxx, I’m thinking you need to get out more - and NOT to bars filled with meth-heads… you should make it past 40 no problem…
More anecdotal stuff: I was a bar back and occasionally worked security at a very popular area nighclub gay night, and I saw perhaps a dozen people using drugs in two years. Mostly GHB (this was eight years ago) and ecstasy, and never meth.
By contrast, I usually saw at least a dozen people openly using drugs on any given *night *(other than gay night). Mostly just joints, but still.
I don’t know about your circle of acquaintances, but it’s very different from mine. I’m in regular contact with about 200 gay men and about 50 lesbians. Very few of them hang out in bars or do drugs. There are a few obvious exceptions, but probably the same percentage as any other population. A few decades ago you would have been right; there was a high incidence of alcoholism and drug abuse. But it’s not nearly the problem it used to be. After our chorus rehearsals, a lot of the guys go out to a bar. But there’s more dancing and eating and “social” drinking than drug usage.
I’ve been checking my email fairly regularly, hoping that I would get an email from the pastor with what the studies he used were. Instead, I just received an email from Mail Delivery Subsystem saying “Delivery to the recipient has been delayed, Message will be retried for 2 more day(s).”
I wonder if that’s because there’s something wrong with the church email system, or if he’s just been deluged with emails after doing a sermon on homosexuality.