A choice or a curse?

Homosexuality shortens the lifespan by 35 years.

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.

We can use test tubes for reproduction.

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

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.

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.