Negative Health Consequences of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior
The health effects of same-sex sexual behavior are many. The public, government, and judiciary are being lead to believe that same-sex sexuality is a normal variant with interactions and results equivalent to heterosexual sexuality. However, this position runs contrary to professional literature and the track record of history.
Andrè Van Mol, MD
July 27, 2011
The health effects of same-sex sexual behavior are many. The public, government, and judiciary are being lead to believe that same-sex sexuality is a normal variant with interactions and results equivalent to heterosexual sexuality. However, this position runs contrary to professional literature and the track record of history.
By any repeatable measure, the percentage of the population identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (GLBT) is small. The United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that men having sex with men (MSM) comprise approximately two percent of the population, or four percent of the U.S male population.1 The University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center has conducted surveys regarding homosexuality since the late 1980s and deems that approximately two percent of the U.S. population identifies as either gay, lesbian, or bisexual.2 The 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth conducted by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics found that among women ages 18 to 44, 3.5 percent identified as bisexual with 1.4 percent identifying as homosexual, gay, or lesbian. Among men of the same age group, 1.7 percent claimed gay identity with 1.1 percent identifying as bisexual.3
The question of the ultimate origin of sexual orientation is not yet definitively answered, but there is very little evidence that anyone is inherently of alternative sexual orientation.
A 1993 scientific literature critique by Byne and Parsons in Archives of General Psychiatry reviewed the major studies on the subject and found no evidence favoring sexual orientation being either genetically or biologically determined.4
Researchers Friedman and Downey of Columbia University School of Medicine remarked, “At clinical conferences one often hears . . . that homosexuality is fixed and unmodifiable. Neither assertion is true. . . . The assertion that homosexuality is genetic is so reductionist that it must be dismissed out of hand as a general principle of psychology.”5
Dr. Francis S. Collins, current Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, asserted that homosexuality “is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA” and that “whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations . . .” 6 Predisposition is not destiny.
The 2008 American Psychological Association’s brochure Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality: Answers to Your Questions For a Better Understanding states, “There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay, or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles; most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”7
GLBT-oriented men and women may not choose their attractions, but, short of force, they do choose their sex partners. From a national health perspective, the issue is not the origins of homosexual or GLBT orientation, but the consequences of engaging in such sexual activity.
The negative health consequences of alternative sexuality are made more understandable by first recognizing the nature of the sexual practices at issue. A 1979 survey in the book The Gay Report revealed the percentage of gay men who engaged in the following practices: 99% oral sex, 91% anal sex, 82% rimming (analingus), 22% fisting, 23% golden showers (urination on another), 4% scat (defecation on another). 8 The book’s two authors were of same-sex sexual attraction. A May 2011 medical journal article found that felching (“sucking or eating semen out of someone's anus”) was a sought-after practice in one-sixth of men’s profiles in “one of the largest Internet websites specifically targeting MSM looking for partners for unprotected sex.”9
The Gay Lesbian Medical Association (GLMA) web site describes the following detrimental effects associated with same-sex sexual practice: higher rates of HIV/AIDS, substance abuse, depression/anxiety, hepatitis, sexually transmitted illnesses (anal papilloma/HPV, gonorrhea, syphilis, and chlamydia), certain cancers, alcohol abuse, tobacco use, eating disorders, and (in subsets) obesity.10
In February 2009 a Canadian GLBT group filed a human rights complaint against the Canadian government and Health Canada asserting that the Canadian GLBT population had poor statistics for life expectancy (twenty years short of standard), suicide, alcohol and illicit drug/substance abuse, cancer, infectious disease, HIV/AIDS, and depression. This is noteworthy in that it challenges the assertion of those claiming the negative health statistics attributed to individuals of GLBT orientation are merely a function of the lack of acceptance of such individuals, and that said statistics would improve with their increased acceptance. Canada provides a highly supportive government, celebration from liberal churches, and a public coerced into silence by hate speech codes, yet the poor health indicators for the GLBT populace remains. This demonstrates that acceptance and affirmation of same-sex sexuality is not the promised antidote for the problems inherent in GLBT sexuality.
To reiterate, The Gay Report, the Gay Lesbian Medical Association, and the Canadian GLBT coalition’s human rights complaint are sources from within the GLBT population.
REDUCED LIFE EXPECTANCY
Dr. J. Satinover documents that homosexuals lose twenty-five to thirty years of their lifespan. Gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, herpes, HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections, enteric infections and disease, cancers, alcoholism, suicide, and numerous other causes are listed. 11
A 1997 Canadian study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology noted that in urban gay areas, homosexual men had a life expectancy comparable to that in Canada in the 1870s. The researchers concluded, “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”12
SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED INFECTIONS/DISEASES (STIs or STDs)
Data presented at the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention's 2010 National STD Prevention Conference showed the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) was over 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women. The rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM was over 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women.13
Furthermore, a study discussed at the International AIDS conference in 2000 documented that sixteen percent of HIV-positive gay men in a nationwide sampling in the United States admitted to at least one incidence of unprotected intercourse with an unaware partner.14
The CDC also warns on their Viral Hepatitis Scientific Information - Populations at Risk web page, “Men who have sex with men (MSM) are at elevated risk for certain sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, HIV/AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, and Chlamydia . . . Approximately 15%–25% of all new Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infections in the United States are among MSM.”15
The CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention reported in April 2011 that, “The sexual health of gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in the United States is not getting better despite considerable social, political and human rights advances. Instead of improving, HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) remain disproportionately high among MSM and have been increasing for almost two decades.”16
A study in a 1999 edition of the American Journal of Public Health found that bisexual women were more likely than heterosexual women “to report drug use in the 3 months before the study, a greater lifetime number of male partners, a sex partner who had had sex with a prostitute, an earlier age at sexual debut, and forced sexual contact,” and concluded, “Health workers should be aware of bisexual experience among women, since this may be a marker for multiple risk behaviors for HIV/STDs.”17
A 2000 study in the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections asserted that women who have sex with women (WSW) had higher rates of bacterial vaginosis, hepatitis C, and HIV risk behaviors (specified as “more likely to report previous sexual contact with a homo/bisexual man . . . or with an injecting drug user . . .”) than the heterosexual control group.18
These sources demonstrate that GLBT individuals not only have higher positivity rates of STIs and HIV, but do not always inform their sexual partners of the presence of such, and that some of their sexual partners could still be of the opposite sex despite a self-identification as same-sex attracted. STIs among GLBT persons are not exclusively a GLBT problem, but can affect the population at large.
Negative Health Consequences of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior – Christian Medical & Dental Associations® (CMDA)
