discreet, guess which demographic group has the very lowest HIV+ rate? Lesbians. So by the "spreading AIDS" logic, are female homosexuals better than male or female heterosexuals?
Oh and Debra law you can sit and call me ignorant and call me everything else but you havn't shown me any evidence of why you support homosexuality or how it would benefit society. you just name call...so when i see your sn i can assume it is mindless slander
You are ignorant. You're the one who wrote the ignorant posts leaving no doubt.
I support liberty and equal protection under the law. I support the constitution. You don't.
How does your ignorance of the supreme law of the land benefit society? How does your religious persecution of others benefit society?
Don't bother answering. I've had enough of your mindless, shallow, intolerant, hateful, hypocritical dribble.
Ok think about it this way, smoking is harmful and is why we must pass laws (sue tobacco companies, limit smoking, etc.), then we need to consider that smoking decreases life by approximately 7 years. The average lifespan for a man is shortened from 77 years to 70 years. This is 7 years off of a retired person's life. 7 years not drawing social security or medicare.
Homosexuality shortens the lifespan by 35 years. (5 times worse than smoking.) Life span is shortened from 77 years to 42 years. Asuming retirement at age 65, society looses 23 years of productive work, taxpaying contribution, etc. Also, medical costs due to HIV/AIDS is much higher than medical care to smokers.
By the way im still waiting to hear arguments from the other side. Besides you calling me a bigot and everything else i havn't heard anything convincing me homosexuality is ok. Ill post some of the things i have found from research. And then maybe you can try a lil and find an argument besides calling me a religious bigot and ignorant. Enjoy
According to the Centers For Disease Control, 65% of all reported AIDS cases among U.S. males since 1981 have been men engaged in homosexual behavior. (CDC HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report, May 1998)
According to the CDC (1996), Federal money spent per death for Cancer was $3,776.00, for heart disease it was $1,056.00, and for AIDS/HIV it was $39,172.00.
According to the 1986 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), homosexuals account for an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of the cases of Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and Gonorrhea.
The risk of anal cancer "soars" by nearly 4,000% for men who have sex with men. The rate doubles again for those who are HIV positive. Condoms offer only limited protection. (Between the Lines, "Anal Cancer and You," Sept. 29, 2000.)
Men who engage in sodomy are 860% more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease (STD), increasing up to 500% their risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.( Centers for Disease Control, "Resurgent Bacterial Sexually Transmitted Disease Among Men Who Have Sex With Men," September 10, 1999)
There are higher rates of non-fatal suicidal behavior among those with homosexual attractions than among the heterosexual population. (From a study in the March 2003 issue of The American Journal of Psychology)
Women who commit sex acts with other women face a significantly higher risk of bacterial vaginosis, breast cancer and ovarian cancer than heterosexual women. (Medical Institute of Sexual Health, "Health Implications Associated with Homosexuality," 1999)
Anal Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection is nearly universal among HIV-positive homosexual or bisexual men and about 60% in HIV-negative men exhibiting the same sexual behavior. (Infectious Disease News, "Because of HPV, anal cancer screening indicated for certain high-risk groups," October, 1997)
A recent study conducted in the Netherlands ?- where gay marriage has been legal for several years ?- found that the average homosexual relationship lasts only 1.5 years.(Maria Xiridou et al, "The Contributions of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection Among Homosexual Men in Amsterdam," AIDS, 17 2003: 1029-38)
A 1991 study of homosexual men revealed that their average number of lifetime partners was 308. ((H. Meyer-Balburg et al, "Sexual Risk Behavior, Sexual Functioning and HIV-Disease Progression in Gay Men," Journal of Sex Research, Vol. 28, No. 1: 3-27)
A New England Journal of Medicine study of homosexuals who kept sexual diaries indicated that their number of annual sexual partners averaged nearly 100. (L. Corey and K.K. Holmes, "Sexual Transmission of Hepatitis A in Homosexual Men." New England Journal of Medicine, 1980, vol 302: 435-438)
Another major issue is the average lifespan of homosexuals compared to heterosexuals:
For homosexual males with a partner, the average lifespan was 45. For homosexual males without a partner, the average lifespan was 46. (Deaths examined between 1999 and 2001. Homosexual Partnerships and Homosexual Longevity: A Replication. Psychological Reports - 2002, 91, 671-678)
Out of 6,574 homosexual deaths, the average lifespan if AIDS was the cause of death was 39. The average lifespan if AIDS was not the cause was 42. For lesbians, the average lifespan was 44. (Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, Volume 29, Number 3, 1994. The Longevity of Homosexuals: Before and After the AIDS Epidemic.)
A small example of the toll of the homosexual lifestyle, which debra law shows that not only is homosexuality a moral issue, it is also an issue of why a public health risk should not be promoted or endorsed as a "gay" or alternative lifestyle by any politician.
i was wrong with 35 most of the sources say between 40 and 45.
If you want to prove it just type it in google. I think you taking the motive to educating yourself will help you in life
It's just part of your religious persecution / hate-mongering rhetoric. I'm not going to waste my time to google your rhetoric. Either you have a bona fide source for your information; or you're spreading disinformation. If you had legitimate sources for your lying statistics, you would produce them.
I happened in here not knowing exactly what the topic was. When I noticed homosexuality, I was not really interested. I am neither pro nor con on this topic as long as it does not involve me. I did, however, read a few of the posts (very few). Gernerally between Discreet and Debra Law.
I was surprised at the stats that Discreet was flailing about. I could understand Debra_Law not wanting to look up what Discreet was throwing about.
Out of curiosity, I googled the subject. I found nowhere near the 35 years, let alone the 40 - 45 years that Discreet was talking about.
What I found was more like 8 - 20. Also, smoking is not 7 years, it is more like 14 years.
I drew the following from a Catholic site since I figured they would not purposely report on the low side.
In a major Canadian center, life expectancy at age20 years for gay and bisexual men is eight to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality continues, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban center are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871."
FWIW
well all of those studies involve a different group poll so there are different results but my point is that homosexuality shortens a man;s life and 20 years in my opinion is still significant. Why shouldn't we warn people as to the affects of being gay like we warn them about smoking cigarettes.
Discreet wrote:well all of those studies involve a different group poll so there are different results but my point is that homosexuality shortens a man;s life and 20 years in my opinion is still significant. Why shouldn't we warn people as to the affects of being gay like we warn them about smoking cigarettes.
In your very first post you stated that you didn't think that homosexuality was good for society. Now you state that you think homosexuals should be warned about the effects of being gay... likening it to the effect of smoking cigarettes.
I could be wrong, but I would think that homosexuals know the effects of being gay. Just as we heterosexuals know the effects of unprotected sex.
Are you an advocate for homosexuals having safe sex to prolong their life expectancy. Or, are you advocating that society does not want or need to see gays at all.
IMHO, people deserve to be respected as people regardless of their sexual orientation, skin colour, language etc.
Intrepid wrote:Discreet wrote:well all of those studies involve a different group poll so there are different results but my point is that homosexuality shortens a man;s life and 20 years in my opinion is still significant. Why shouldn't we warn people as to the affects of being gay like we warn them about smoking cigarettes.
In your very first post you stated that you didn't think that homosexuality was good for society. Now you state that you think homosexuals should be warned about the effects of being gay... likening it to the effect of smoking cigarettes.
I could be wrong, but I would think that homosexuals know the effects of being gay. Just as we heterosexuals know the effects of unprotected sex.
Are you an advocate for homosexuals having safe sex to prolong their life expectancy. Or, are you advocating that society does not want or need to see gays at all.
IMHO, people deserve to be respected as people regardless of their sexual orientation, skin colour, language etc.
Perhaps we should outlaw sex period.
We don't need it anymore. We can use test tubes for reproduction.
And if humanity doesn't reproduce: better yet, the earth can get a break from the virus called humanity.
I just wanted to present some facts on homosexuality because i disagree with you i think most people do not know anything about being gay. they don't know they are damaging their own health, reducing their lifespan, and setting themselves up for getting aids and getting other stds. If smoking is considered bad because it lowers your lifespan by say 8 years then why don't people accept that homosexuality is bad.
And there is a big difference between hating something and supporting it. For example if i feel smoking is bad for someone and i have a friend that smokes, i am not going to hate him because of that. I will tell him of the health risks that he is doing to himself but i will not hate him. Same with homosexuality i do not hate gay people i just don't support their in my opinion bad habit
extra medium wrote:We can use test tubes for reproduction.
Technically, test tubes aren't used to make "test tube babies". Petri dishes are, coz it's done under a microscope. It's just that "test tube" was used as the word to describe it, because the laymen public knows more about test tubes than petri dishes.
Discreet wrote:I just wanted to present some facts on homosexuality because i disagree with you i think most people do not know anything about being gay. they don't know they are damaging their own health, reducing their lifespan, and setting themselves up for getting aids and getting other stds. If smoking is considered bad because it lowers your lifespan by say 8 years then why don't people accept that homosexuality is bad.
I tried searching for the actual studies and I found on mention of them on Entrez PubMed. Usually, if a study is done and made in a respectable journal (which usually reflects on the quality of the research) then it can be found on Entrez PubMed. I could not find it.
By typing in
homosexual "life span" in Google, the first link I get to is this:
http://yarchive.net/med/gay_life_span.html, where a doctor is commenting on how he couldn't possibly imagine there being any data on HIV-negative homosexual men, seeing as people don't take records of that sort of thing.
I also got this article:
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_cameron_obit.html, stating that a study conducted by the Cameron Group isn't very scientific and has skewed results.
EDIT: Wait! I just found a number of websites that talk about reduced life span in homosexuals. They're all Christian anti-gay websites and all quote the number given by Paul Cameron, who was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 for misrepresenting the findings of others and engaging in dubious research techniques.
Quote:And there is a big difference between hating something and supporting it. For example if i feel smoking is bad for someone and i have a friend that smokes, i am not going to hate him because of that. I will tell him of the health risks that he is doing to himself but i will not hate him. Same with homosexuality i do not hate gay people i just don't support their in my opinion bad habit
Homosexuality is not a bad habit. Unsafe sex is a bad habit. Smoking is a bad habit. Homosexuality amongst females, however, is considered great pornography and men just love to watch that.
Go figure.
Thanks for tracking down the numbers, Wolf. I suspected they were spurious but didn't have time to track 'em down myself.
hey wolf none of your links work...
That's strange... they don't work.
However, when I copy and pasted the URLs into the web browser address bar, they worked perfectly fine.
Here are the contents of both links, however:
Quote:From: ((Steven B. Harris))
Subject: Re: HIV is no hoax !
Date: 14 Jun 1995
[email protected] (Michael Shaw) wrote:
>>Rich:
>
>>For someone supposedly knowledgable about health to deny this fact is
>>shocking.
>>
>>Still....
>>
>>Before AIDS, you may have heard of Hepatitis, which was always at much
>>higher incidence in the groups mentioned. But, here's a good one from a
>>recent issue of the Omega Journal of Death and Dying (Dr. Paul
>>Cameron)--
>>
>>The median age at death of homosexuals who die of AIDS is 39.
>>
>>The median age at death of homosexual men who die of causes other than
>>AIDS is 42.
Comment: Does Cameron give a reference? I cannot imagine where he
would get the figure for homosexual life span in the absense of AIDS,
since homosexuality is not something the doctor checks off on the death
certificate, and surely not something the country mortality stats
record. Do you suppose a few of such folks might just... well... slip
through?
The only place I can imagine any stats on gay male mortality coming from
would be things like the San Francisco Men's Health study, and even here
they are going to be skewed if there is any age censoring at all in the
inclusion criteria, or even if there is any censoring from willingness
to participate in the study, both of which are inevitable. Do openly
gay men in San Francisco have a higher mortality than gays in the
closet? Or gays in (say) Iowa? It's easy to imagine so.
Finally, I should note that any study of mortality in gay men needs to
compare not AIDS-death age with non-AIDS-death age, since a certain
number of HIV-positive men commit suicide, and don't get classed as AIDS
deaths, and a certain number of HIV-positive people also die of medical
causes related to HIV and don't get classed as AIDS-deaths (the Liberace
set). What we're REALLY after, therefore, is life expectancy of
**HIV-negative gay men**. I've love to have that number if you have it.
But I don't think you do.
Steve Harris, M.D.
Source:
http://yarchive.net/med/gay_life_span.html
Quote:The Cameron Group's "Gay Obituary" Study
Cameron, Playfair, and Wellum (1994) counted obituaries in various gay community publications and claimed to be able to use them to calculate the average life expectancy for homosexuals.
Their conclusion - that homosexual men and women have a shorter life span than heterosexual men and women - provides a textbook example of the perils of using data from a convenience sample to generalize to an entire population.
Death Notices and Obituaries
Most city newspapers include a section containing death notices for community residents. These notices - which can carry a small fee for printing - typically list the name, age, address, and survivors of the deceased, along with information about funeral or memorial services. Funeral directors often assist the loved ones of the deceased in submitting such notices.
Gay community newspapers do not have sections of death notices. When the AIDS epidemic began to claim the lives of so many gay and bisexual men in the 1980s, however, many gay newspapers began to print obituaries. Except in the case of prominent community figures, these obituaries are typically written by (or based on information from) the loved ones of the deceased.
Assuming that the deceased person wasn't famous, an obituary appears in a gay community newspaper only if (1) a loved one or friend notifies the newspaper about the death (and, in many cases, writes the obituary) and (2) the editor decides to print the obituary.
Consequently, many gay men and lesbians who die never have an obituary in a gay community publication. Here are just a few examples of who is left out of gay newspapers' obituaries.
gay men and lesbians who were not involved in the gay community
gay men and lesbians who were in the closet about their sexual orientation
gay men and lesbians whose loved ones or family didn't want their homosexuality to be known
gay men and lesbians whose loved ones or family simply didn't think of sending an obituary to a gay community newspaper
gay men and lesbians whose loved ones did not write an obituary for some other reason (e.g., they were too grief stricken)
gay men and lesbians who died without leaving anyone to write an obituary for a gay publication (e.g., those whose loved ones and relatives died before them).
An accurate estimate of the life span of gay men and lesbians would have to count such people. By restricting their analysis to obituaries in gay newspapers, however, the Cameron group systematically excluded them from the sample.
Internal Inconsistencies
The inadequacy of the Cameron group's approach is evident from internal inconsistencies within their own data. Compare the data about lesbians reported in their obituary study, for example, to data from their so-called national survey.
In their obituary study, the Cameron group claimed that the average lesbian life-span is similar to that of gay men who do not have AIDS ("under 50 years" versus "mid-40s," respectively). But if this is true, and if obituaries are indeed a valid source for this type of data, the ratio of gay male obituaries to lesbian obituaries should be about the same as the ratio of gay men to lesbians in the population.
From their survey data, the Cameron group has claimed to know the number of gay men and lesbians in the population. If we believed their numbers, we would set the ratio of gay men-to-lesbians at about 1.6-to-1 (or approximately 2.6-to-1 if bisexuals are omitted).
But the ratio of gay male-to-lesbian obituaries in the Cameron group's study is quite different - approximately 6-to-1 if AIDS and violent deaths are excluded, 32-to-1 if they are included.
Thus, at least one data set has to be wrong. Either the obituaries data do not include a representative sample of lesbians, or the Cameron group's population estimates based on their survey data are invalid.
An observer with training in research methodology would most likely conclude that both sets of data are fatally flawed.
This example is provided as simply one illustration of the flaws in the Cameron group's methods.
Conclusion
Obituaries in gay community newspapers do not provide a representative sampling of the community. This is evident in the fact that only only 2% of the Cameron group's obituaries were for lesbians. Moreover, community newspapers tend overwhelmingly to report deaths due to AIDS (only 11% of Cameron's gay male obituaries were not related to AIDS). In addition, community newspapers tend not to print obituaries for people who are not actively involved in the local gay community, those who are in the closet, and those whose loved ones simply don't submit an obituary to a local gay newspaper.
The Cameron group's gay obituary study reports many numbers and statistics. However, they are absolutely worthless for estimating the life expectancy of gay men and lesbians.
Postscript
In a 1997 column in the Weekly Standard, former Secretary of Education William Bennett referred to the findings of Cameron et al.'s obituary study, although he did not cite Cameron by name. He again referred to Cameron's conclusion about the truncated life span of homosexuals in an appearance on ABC's "This Week" program.
In 1998, after Andrew Sullivan wrote an article challenging the statistic, Bennett wrote in a letter to the New Republic (1998, February 23, page 4): "Given what I now know, I believe there are flaws with Paul Cameron's study. One cannot extrapolate from his methodology and say that the average male homosexual life span is 43 years."
References
Bennett, W.J. (1997, November 24). Clinton, gays, and the truth. Weekly Standard, page 13.
Cameron, P., Playfair, W. L., & Wellum, S. (1994). The longevity of homosexuals: Before and after the AIDS epidemic. Omega, 29, 249-272.
Sullivan, A. (1998, January 5). False Bennett: Gay bashing by the numbers. New Republic, page 15.
Source:
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_cameron_obit.html
I don't believe that I have any business interfering in what consenting adults do in the privacy of there bedroom. That being said, I'm uncomfortable with people making out in public(gay/straight/2 animals..doesn't really matter) But I tend not to look at things which offend my sensibilities.
Thats kind of how I look at this issue as well. I dont want ppl telling me I cant eat pepperoni coz they are not kosher, so I dont tell them what to do in their bedroom.
Also I'm an old fashioned conservative, the less government interference in society the better.
About the effects on society..i glanced through the earlier posts and someone said that gays make a larger contribution to society and science?? I'm no expert but correlating sexual orientation to scietific achievement seems far fetched, though the harvard pres did try to correlate it (science)to gender of all things. Its a like saing x% of convicts chew gum..
Other effects on society, I guess what is really important is what will be ure own effect on society? Is it really your concern to measure the social contribution of others? I dont believe my support or lack thereof will stop anyone from being gay, it will just provoke a heck of a lot of angry responses, and I'll lose a couple of good friends.
Discreet, your arguments so far in this thread have been extremely fallacious, and too many of them are commonly held amongst the anti-gay camp. I'll tackle them in the order that I can remember them, but if I miss any feel free to remind me.
Firstly, your comparison to bestiality: this is a very basic one. There is no valid comparison because of the matter of consent - disgust is not, and never should be, the litmus test for law or morality. Animals, minors, rape victims, toasters, and so on are unable to give consent and so cannot legally be involved in either sex or marriage. I don't agree with arbitrary morality: I think that there should always be precedents used, and for this issue consent is that benchmark. This applies especially to whether the law should be involved, as legality and morality are not necessarily the same thing. You can hold whatever views you wish, but that does not mean they should be made into law.
Then there's your complaint about Darwinism. This I disagree with because it presumes to know the will of nature, almost as arrogant an idea as believing to know the mind of God. We can study evolution for a further hundred years and chart species progressing through the fossil record as much as we like, but I doubt we will ever truly understand all the subtleties of human genetics.
There are studies showing that when you increase the population density of a mouse enclosure that the incidence of homosexuality increases (and anyone who's seen Jurassic Park knows about the frogs that change sex in a similar manner). This could suggest some sort of population control or 'worker ant' failsafe; worker ants being the ants that contribute to their society while not actually passing on their own genes in most cases. Of course, I'm merely conjecturing here but my point is that you can't make the "it's anti-Darwin" case like you are trying to. The inability to pass on genes is a poor reason for sex to be disallowed - do you believe that the infertile, the menopausal and the elderly shouldn't be allowed to have sex, or that it should be disapproved of?
I feel no need to address your post about the threatened suspension of anti-gay t-shirt wearers because it is clearly a different matter from the question of whether homosexuality is moral or not. Issues of free speech are separate, and your news article is a bit of a red herring, so to speak. Similarly I am not going to read the articles you posted until you explain why you have cited them. Posting random sources with no explanation in your own words does not a credible argument make.
I'm sure I've missed a couple of your arguments, but I've run out of time to write more, so remind me of them and I'll reply again.
Oh, and hello everyone!
