10 Reasons why Gay Marriage is Wrong!!

[Ben Kenobi]

Ben, this might be news to you but Heterosexuals get and trasmit AIDS too. Every gay person in the world could abstain from sex and it wouldn't get rid of AIDS. The problem can be attacked with more education/access to condoms and also more testing.

I said swinging lifestyle arrian. Read what I said. I am perfectly aware that AIDS can be transmitted between heterosexuals, which is why I said swinging.

The fact is that gay men disproportionately suffer from the ravages of AIDS, and right now we are not doing much to curtail those effects.

We have been saying condoms and education are the answer, but the problem is getting worse and not better. People are tuning out to these bandaids. The best cure is supposed to be medication that helps after the infection, but that does nothing to reduce the incidence.

[Arrian]

I'd get into the health data, but I'm at work and I'm reasonably sure that if I googled anything with the term "gay" or "homosexual" in it, whatever came up would be blocked.

-Arrian

[lord of the mark]

"In 1994, an obituary study revealed that the median age of death for homosexual males was 42 and for lesbians was 49. Source: Cameron, Playfair, Wellum, " The Longevity of Homosexuals: Before and After the AIDS Epidemic, " Omega Journal of Death and Dying," 1994."

i hesitate to go against Ben, who is surrounded here by critics, but im afraid im going to have point some things out about this.

An obituary study of say, console game players, would probably show a median age of death of 42 or even less. Not cause consoles take years off your life (not that we can exclude that possibility) but because there are very few console players who were born before 1960 or so, and so there wouldnt be many obits of 75 yo console players.

Could that apply to gays? If one posits that a disproportionate number of gays who were over 50 in 1994 were in denial, closeted, etc then it would be unlikely thered be many obits of 75 yo gay men in 1994, even if gayness had no impact on life expectancy. Now this might not be a problem for someone tracking the changes in gay LE, as the study was apparently doing, but it makes it useless for comparing gay and straight LE.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Why should I bother? I already provided one study, and you rejected that study as bull****.

If you are unprepared to at least examine the evidence, then I suggest you refrain from asking for more.

Ben I didn't look at your study but I'm actually prepared to accept for the purposes of argument that there are higher substance abuse rates among the gay population.

My question is more at the root cause. My premise would be that facing constant condemnation and bigotry would be a greater factor than sexuality. Wow I saw a study that showed greater substance abuse problems in the US black population-- I guess being black is the cause .. . it couldn't be the inner city drug culture, parental influences and a feeling of alienation .. . nope . . must be because they are black

[Ben Kenobi]

Are you seriously contending that being gay, in and of itself causes one to be more suseptible to drug and alcohol abuse?

More susceptible? Yes. Like having relatives who have breast cancer makes you more susceptible to getting the cancer yourself. It's a health risk.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Flubber


Ben I didn't look at your study but I'm actually prepared to accept for the purposes of argument that there are higher substance abuse rates among the gay population.

My question is more at the root cause. My premise would be that facing constant condemnation and bigotry would be a greater factor than sexuality. Wow I saw a study that showed greater substance abuse problems in the US black population-- I guess being black is the cause .. . it couldn't be the inner city drug culture, parental influences and a feeling of alienation .. . nope . . must be because they are black

well let me jump back in for Ben. Gays are not (AFAIK) concentrated in poor inner city areas, and their parental influences are the same as straights. Now it COULD be alienation. Or it could be the lack of the "civilizing" influence of a female partner.

OR - since its now stated that gayness is heritable, and we KNOW that alcoholism is heritable, its possible that theres some genetic connection.

[Ben Kenobi]

Excellent Flubber

LOTM:

Don't worry about joining the dogpile. Here are a few other citations that came to the same conclusion.

Life expectancy for a 20 year old gay or bisexual man is 8 to 20 years less than all men. The authors estimate that " nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently age 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday." Source: Hogg. RS., Strathdee, SA., Craib, KJP., O'Shaughnessy, MV., Montainer, JSG., Schechter, MT., " Modeling the impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men," International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol. 26, No. 3, 1997, pp. 657-61.

In 1998, another study using four contemporary databases suggested that homosexual activity may be associated with a lifespan shortened by 20 to 30 years. Source: Cameron, P., Cameron, K., Playfair, WL., " Does Homosexual Activity Shorten Life? ", Psychological Reports, 1998, 83, pp. 847-66.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
It's really both, you choose to follow your religion, and you make the decision whether you believe what that religion teaches is more right then anything else. That's what I mean by choosing one over the other.

But choice is really each person getting what they want individually instead of everyone getting the samething (what someone thinks is best for everyone). I prefer Pepsi to Coke. Therefore the personal benefit of 'choice' is me getting Pepsi, but I would get this benefit whether or not I had a 'choice' between Pepsi and Coke. Unfortunately, someone else who prefers Coke does not recieve as much benefit. There's no intrinsic value to freedom of choice. The value is in each person getting what they want individually.

This is the driving force behind freedom of religion. The benefit of it is not just the pleasure of making a choice for yourself, it's that you get to practice the religion that you actually believe in.

Now, you're saying that gay people have a choice to not be gay, but my point is that the value in having that choice is getting what you want. So it's pointless to say that they can choose not to be gay when they want to be gay.

[Ben Kenobi]

Flubber:

Gay men were almost ten percentage points more apt to suffer mental disorder (44% to 35%) than heterosexuals, with almost the same relative rate for lesbians compared to straight women (44% to 34%).

Homosexual men are less likely than heterosexual to be involved in a steady relationship with one partner (48.4% to 38.9%), with the divergence in the statistic for women being considerably smaller (37.5% for lesbians, 35.7% for heterosexual women). Both gay men and women were found to live alone more often than the straight respondents.

Concerning drug use, 52% of homosexual men and 44% of lesbian women reported such activity within a 30-day period preceding their interview, as contrasted with 45% and 33% of the straight men and women, respectively.

38% of gay men and 31% of the lesbians admitted having been physically attacked during the preceding five years, with the rates for heterosexual men and women once again being proportionately lower, despite their much larger representation in the population. Lesbians were the group reporting the highest rates of actual physical harm and/or bullying behavior at the hands of another.

54% of the homosexuals and 56% of lesbians had inflicted harm upon themselves, as opposed to 41% of straight men and 50% of straight women.

King, M., E. McKeown, J. Warner, A. Ramsay, K. Johnson, C. Cort, L. Wright, R. Blizard, and O. Davidson, "Mental Health and Quality of Life of Gay Men and Lesbians in England and Wales, British J. of Psychiatry (2003),183, 552-558.

[Flubber]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi


Ok, but now you cannot say that their decision has no impact on me and on the rest of society. We get to have a say whether society ought to recognise their relationships, and our opinion counts just as much as theirs.

OH Ben !!!

IN Canada we have had our say and the people say yes . . .

Isn't democracy grand??

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi



Or are they about love and honour and trust and commitment? About a man and a woman coming together, where the two become one?
.

Exactly -- apply that to same-sex relationships and you are getting it.

There is no reason that "society " can't benefit just as much from long term homosexual relationships. Its not all benefits you know . . . With marriage can come suppprt obligations as well

[lord of the mark]

ben did they just compare that to all straight males, or did they seperate out males by marital status. IIUC theres a body of evidence that being married is better than being single for male health - anyone whose been nagged by their wife to exercise more, drink less, etc could come with some explanations why. Its not clear from this if the important thing is being married to a FEMALE, or being MARRIED to a female. If the latter, gay marriage could possibly reduce gay death rates.


"Homosexual men are less likely than heterosexual to be involved in a steady relationship with one partner (48.4% to 38.9%), with the divergence in the statistic for women being considerably smaller (37.5% for lesbians, 35.7% for heterosexual women). Both gay men and women were found to live alone more often than the straight respondents"

and the social conservative argument for gay marriage is that it MIGHT reduce these divergences. Even if being straight is a better lifestyle than being gay, being gay and "MARRIED" might be a much better lifestyle than being gay and NOT married. Something to consider, for sure.

[Arrian]

I said swinging lifestyle arrian. Read what I said. I am perfectly aware that AIDS can be transmitted between heterosexuals, which is why I said swinging.

I suppose I didn't understand what you meant by "swinging lifestyle" and thought you meant gays. Please define the term, then.

More susceptible? Yes. Like having relatives who have breast cancer makes you more susceptible to getting the cancer yourself. It's a health risk.

But, but... I thought being gay was a CHOICE, Ben? Having a family history of a health condition is about your genetic makeup. Are you contending that gays are genetically predisposed to have drug/alcohol problems? Because if you are, you've accepted that it's not a choice.

Second, I'm with Flubber in questioning whether it's merely being gay that creates the added risk, or if it's the result of rejection/denial and societal stigma associated with homosexuality.

-Arrian

[Ben Kenobi]

Kid:

This is the driving force behind freedom of religion. The benefit of it is not just the pleasure of making a choice for yourself, it's that you get to practice the religion that you actually believe in.

Now, you're saying that gay people have a choice to not be gay, but my point is that the value in having that choice is getting what you want. So it's pointless to say that they can choose not to be gay when they want to be gay.

And, have I said gay men should be prevented from having sex with each other?

[Arrian]

well let me jump back in for Ben. Gays are not (AFAIK) concentrated in poor inner city areas, and their parental influences are the same as straights. Now it COULD be alienation. Or it could be the lack of the "civilizing" influence of a female partner.

It's possible, I suppose, but I don't think one can draw any conclusions (at least now). But that still means there's nothing problematic about lesbians. Further, not allowing gays to marry will have what effect on this? NONE. If anything, more gay marriages will have a positive health effect.

-Arrian

[Kidlicious]

I think that alcoholism and drug addiction is something that maybe more common with either homosexuals or heterosexuals, but it's not true that 'stopping being gay' will cure you of alcoholism. To stop being an alcoholic you have to deal with that individually, whether you are gay or straight.