Gay Lifestyle; Public Health Concerns or Discrimination?
Timothy Birdnow
Our health Tsar, Kathleen Ivanovna Sebelius (or Gilligan, which was her father's - former Ohio governor John Gilligan - name and suits her better - she fouls things up worse than the John Denver character) Has hatched up a new plan:
"HHS announces new draft standards to improve the monitoring of health data by race, ethnicity, sex, primary language, and disability status, and begins planning for the collection of LGBT health data"
End excerpt.
According to the press release:
"HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced new draft standards for collecting and reporting data on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status, and announced the administration’s plans to begin collecting health data on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations. Both efforts aim to help researchers, policy makers, health providers and advocates to identify and address health disparities afflicting these communities.
“Health disparities have persistent and costly affects for minority communities, and the whole country,” Secretary Sebelius said. “Today we are taking critical steps toward ensuring the collection of useful national data on minority groups, including for the first time, LGBT populations. The data we will eventually collect in these efforts will serve as powerful tools and help us in our fight to end health disparities.”
Under the plan announced today, HHS will integrate questions on sexual orientation into national data collection efforts by 2013 and begin a process to collect information on gender identity. This plan includes the testing of questions on sexual orientation to potentially be incorporated into the National Health Interview Survey. The department also intends to convene a series of research roundtables with national experts to determine the best way to help the department collect data specific to gender identity."
End excerpt.
Health disparities?
Yes, of course there are health disparities; part of the reason that there is a societal interest in discouraging homosexual behavior is because it is unhealthy. Male homosexuals in particular are in contact with considerable fecal matter, though both sexes indulge in oral/anal activity, essentially eating excrement. Anal sex, too, causes tears in the tissue of the anus and whatnot, and a common problem among homosexuals is "gay bowel disease", the result of a parasite invading these unhealing tears. By it's very nature homosexual activity is dangerous and a health hazard; there is entry in the exit, so to speak, and we all know what happens to cars that go against the "do not enter" signs on the highway.
But it's worse, because many of the practices of homosexuality involve multiple partners, and all manner of sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic in the gay community. There are some odd fetish behavior involved, too, including the use of animals and physical abuse. And the psychological impact of this is terrible; suicide is a common cause of death.
For instance, the American Journal of Public Health issued a report saying that homosexuals are five to six times more likely to committ suicide than heterosexuals. (1)
Homosexuals rarely live into their sixties.
This is not a moral judgement but a litany of health concerns about the gay lifestyle. Within the spectrum of homosexual behavior are some fairly straight-laced individuals, ones who live a reasonably moderate and monogamous life. But, having crossed the Rubicon, there are some astoundingly promiscuous and libertine individuals; a 1991 study (Meyer-Bahlburg) put the average number of sex partners for gay men at 308. The Journal of Sex Research reported:
"Some 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported between 501 and 1,000 partners, with a further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent having had over 1,000 in the course of their lives." (2)
STD's, as well as other transmittable diseases that are not necessarily sexual in nature, are numbers games; the more intimate contact the more likely the transmission. Remember, the purpose of sex is to exchange DNA, and diseases are composed of DNA (or on rare occasions RNA). You're begging a hitchhiker to ride along when you make too many stops.
So, there are serious "disparities" in health between the LGBT community and the "straights". But those disparities have nothing to do with societal indifference or discrimination and everything to do with the behavior of the minority community.
There is a compelling societal interest in discouraging homosexual behavior. That does not mean that those who practice such behavior are to be mistreated or discriminated against, but we should be particularly dilligent to make the risks clear to those who are considering experimenting with it. We do this with other things; we discourage teen drinking, or the use of heroin. Heroin addicts are "born that way" but we try to keep people from actually using heroin because it is so destructive. There is no heroin rights movement, no organizations dedicated to ending discrimination against heroin. On the contrary, we devote a good deal of time and effort to making heroin scarce, to discouraging people from experimenting with it, to warning people of the danger of the heroin lifestyle. Yet we treat homosexuality differently. Why?
Both are "victimless crimes" in the truest sense of the word; what one does in one's bathroom with a needle bothers no-one else, and likewise what one does in the bedroom. But both are terrible health hazards, and the fact that a homosexual has a partner that can be infected makes it perhaps more dangerous from a societal perspective. (Yes, I know; addicts may committ crimes to get their fix while a quickie is usually free - unless it involves ex-boyfriends of Barney Frank.)
But the point of this HHS change isn't just to gain information to combat homosexuality, but is intended to be a tool. It will collect data to use to "prove" gay people are discriminated against because they are less healthy, and will then be used to demand greater acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. Oh, and more money.
Gargantuan amounts of money have been thrown at AIDS, and it is now borderline manageable. There was no discrimination there, despite the fact that AIDS was and is an overwhelmingly homosexual illness.
(As further proof of the psychological health risks of homosexuality, there are "bug chasers", men who actively try to contract HIV so as to prove their authenticity in the gay community. If Christians sought to contract, say, Leprosy to prove their fidelity to God they would be harshly condemned, and a huge uproar would result. Yet seeking to get sick means society should spend more money on gay health...)
If homosexuals want government out of their bedrooms, shouldn't they reject this intervention by Sebellius and HHS?
References:
(1) Gary Remafedi, Simone French, Mary Story, Michael D. Resnick, and Robert Blum, “The Relationship Between Suicide Risk and Sexual Orientation: Results of a Population-Based Study,” American Journal of Public Health 88 (1998): 57–60, cited in Neil E. Whitehead, “Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems,” National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, http:// www.narth.com/docs/whitehead.html.
(2) Paul Van de Ven, Pamela Rodden, June Crawford, and Susan Kippax, “A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men,” Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354, cited in Timothy J. Dailey, “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk,” Insight 238, Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/get/ is01j3.cfm.
Our health Tsar, Kathleen Ivanovna Sebelius (or Gilligan, which was her father's - former Ohio governor John Gilligan - name and suits her better - she fouls things up worse than the John Denver character) Has hatched up a new plan:
"HHS announces new draft standards to improve the monitoring of health data by race, ethnicity, sex, primary language, and disability status, and begins planning for the collection of LGBT health data"
End excerpt.
According to the press release:
"HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced new draft standards for collecting and reporting data on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language and disability status, and announced the administration’s plans to begin collecting health data on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) populations. Both efforts aim to help researchers, policy makers, health providers and advocates to identify and address health disparities afflicting these communities.
“Health disparities have persistent and costly affects for minority communities, and the whole country,” Secretary Sebelius said. “Today we are taking critical steps toward ensuring the collection of useful national data on minority groups, including for the first time, LGBT populations. The data we will eventually collect in these efforts will serve as powerful tools and help us in our fight to end health disparities.”
Under the plan announced today, HHS will integrate questions on sexual orientation into national data collection efforts by 2013 and begin a process to collect information on gender identity. This plan includes the testing of questions on sexual orientation to potentially be incorporated into the National Health Interview Survey. The department also intends to convene a series of research roundtables with national experts to determine the best way to help the department collect data specific to gender identity."
End excerpt.
Health disparities?
Yes, of course there are health disparities; part of the reason that there is a societal interest in discouraging homosexual behavior is because it is unhealthy. Male homosexuals in particular are in contact with considerable fecal matter, though both sexes indulge in oral/anal activity, essentially eating excrement. Anal sex, too, causes tears in the tissue of the anus and whatnot, and a common problem among homosexuals is "gay bowel disease", the result of a parasite invading these unhealing tears. By it's very nature homosexual activity is dangerous and a health hazard; there is entry in the exit, so to speak, and we all know what happens to cars that go against the "do not enter" signs on the highway.
But it's worse, because many of the practices of homosexuality involve multiple partners, and all manner of sexually transmitted diseases are epidemic in the gay community. There are some odd fetish behavior involved, too, including the use of animals and physical abuse. And the psychological impact of this is terrible; suicide is a common cause of death.
For instance, the American Journal of Public Health issued a report saying that homosexuals are five to six times more likely to committ suicide than heterosexuals. (1)
Homosexuals rarely live into their sixties.
This is not a moral judgement but a litany of health concerns about the gay lifestyle. Within the spectrum of homosexual behavior are some fairly straight-laced individuals, ones who live a reasonably moderate and monogamous life. But, having crossed the Rubicon, there are some astoundingly promiscuous and libertine individuals; a 1991 study (Meyer-Bahlburg) put the average number of sex partners for gay men at 308. The Journal of Sex Research reported:
"Some 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent reported between 501 and 1,000 partners, with a further 10.2 percent to 15.7 percent having had over 1,000 in the course of their lives." (2)
STD's, as well as other transmittable diseases that are not necessarily sexual in nature, are numbers games; the more intimate contact the more likely the transmission. Remember, the purpose of sex is to exchange DNA, and diseases are composed of DNA (or on rare occasions RNA). You're begging a hitchhiker to ride along when you make too many stops.
So, there are serious "disparities" in health between the LGBT community and the "straights". But those disparities have nothing to do with societal indifference or discrimination and everything to do with the behavior of the minority community.
There is a compelling societal interest in discouraging homosexual behavior. That does not mean that those who practice such behavior are to be mistreated or discriminated against, but we should be particularly dilligent to make the risks clear to those who are considering experimenting with it. We do this with other things; we discourage teen drinking, or the use of heroin. Heroin addicts are "born that way" but we try to keep people from actually using heroin because it is so destructive. There is no heroin rights movement, no organizations dedicated to ending discrimination against heroin. On the contrary, we devote a good deal of time and effort to making heroin scarce, to discouraging people from experimenting with it, to warning people of the danger of the heroin lifestyle. Yet we treat homosexuality differently. Why?
Both are "victimless crimes" in the truest sense of the word; what one does in one's bathroom with a needle bothers no-one else, and likewise what one does in the bedroom. But both are terrible health hazards, and the fact that a homosexual has a partner that can be infected makes it perhaps more dangerous from a societal perspective. (Yes, I know; addicts may committ crimes to get their fix while a quickie is usually free - unless it involves ex-boyfriends of Barney Frank.)
But the point of this HHS change isn't just to gain information to combat homosexuality, but is intended to be a tool. It will collect data to use to "prove" gay people are discriminated against because they are less healthy, and will then be used to demand greater acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle. Oh, and more money.
Gargantuan amounts of money have been thrown at AIDS, and it is now borderline manageable. There was no discrimination there, despite the fact that AIDS was and is an overwhelmingly homosexual illness.
(As further proof of the psychological health risks of homosexuality, there are "bug chasers", men who actively try to contract HIV so as to prove their authenticity in the gay community. If Christians sought to contract, say, Leprosy to prove their fidelity to God they would be harshly condemned, and a huge uproar would result. Yet seeking to get sick means society should spend more money on gay health...)
If homosexuals want government out of their bedrooms, shouldn't they reject this intervention by Sebellius and HHS?
References:
(1) Gary Remafedi, Simone French, Mary Story, Michael D. Resnick, and Robert Blum, “The Relationship Between Suicide Risk and Sexual Orientation: Results of a Population-Based Study,” American Journal of Public Health 88 (1998): 57–60, cited in Neil E. Whitehead, “Homosexuality and Mental Health Problems,” National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, http:// www.narth.com/docs/whitehead.html.
(2) Paul Van de Ven, Pamela Rodden, June Crawford, and Susan Kippax, “A Comparative Demographic and Sexual Profile of Older Homosexually Active Men,” Journal of Sex Research 34 (1997): 354, cited in Timothy J. Dailey, “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk,” Insight 238, Family Research Council, http://www.frc.org/get/ is01j3.cfm.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 6:19 AM
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