The Forum > Article Comments > The truth on homosexual health > Comments
The truth on homosexual health : Comments
By Alan Austin, published 14/9/2012It appears to be true that GLTB people do live shorter lives, which ought to give cause for discussion not necessarily denunciation.
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Posted by GlenC, Saturday, 15 September 2012 1:34:02 PM
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Glen C,
This is about a conferred legitimacy upon a (social) state of union between consenting adults. Your "sons" and "daughters" example is interesting. Sons (male) are different from daughters( female). How does it follow that the "legitimised union/marriage" of homosexuals differs from a "legitimised union/marriage" of heterosexuals? The legitimised union or "marriage" of either is merely that - there is no "difference". The "meaning" of marriage is not being changed - merely extended. Since we're indulging in semantics.... Posted by Poirot, Saturday, 15 September 2012 2:29:09 PM
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Excellent discussion – mostly. Thanks all.
@Jay: intriguing recollections. Much appreciated. A quibble could be with 'gay life' or 'gay culture'. Do you accept that there’s a wide range of gay lifestyles? I’m thinking of young Christian writer/activist Matthew Vines. And of Zach Wahls’ family in Ohio. (Both viral, easily googled.) These lifestyles are in a different moral universe from the dangerous underground of which you vividly write. @individual, diver dan and Raycom: I suspect we are all using the term ‘homosexuality’ quite differently. It’s perhaps late to say this, but the word has many different applications, doesn't it? So unless we mean the entire sphere of sexual nature, experiences, lifestyles, scientific research, social analysis and theological reflection, it is probably better to use other terms. To illustrate, which of these same-sex activities do you mean when you use 'homosexuality': * small boys in the bath playing with their willies * same-sex adolescents masturbating together * sportsmen slapping each other on the bum * sportsmen and women showering naked together * natural same-sex sexual orientation * occasional fleeting homoerotic fantasies * faithful, monogamous, life-long same-sex unions * married adults going to gay bars for casual sex * men paying boys or other men for sex * wild drunken sex with strangers at gay bars * adults sexually abusing vulnerable children in their care * weird sex in Satanic rituals * homosexual gang rape Pretty sure you’re not referring to all of them. So would be good to specify. At minimum, please differentiate between orientation and behaviour. @GlenC: Re “Supporters of gay marriage are actually agitating for its meaning [marriage] to be changed by legislation — for a new meaning to be foisted on us all.” Not really, Glenn. The opposite, in fact. Legislation was foisted on Australians in 2004 when the definition in federal legislation was changed to exclude gay couples. Marriage equality advocates would be happy to reverse this and have the government but out. Answers to your questions: (a) yes, and (b) they have that already but it seems unnecessary and still implies a lesser status. Cheers, AA Posted by Alan Austin, Saturday, 15 September 2012 4:09:19 PM
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AA wrote: "Not really, Glenn (sic). The opposite, in fact. Legislation was foisted on Australians in 2004 when the definition in federal legislation was changed to exclude gay couples. Marriage equality advocates would be happy to reverse this and have the government but out."
AA, I think you are really being disingenuous here, Tricky, actually. I'm responding to the optimistic claim that the meaning of "marriage" has already evolved to embrace same-sex relationships. Perhaps a large majority of people will come to regard same-sex relationships as being no different from two-sex relationships, but they haven't yet. Your assertion that we had foisted upon us in 2004 a legal requirement to stop accepting gay couples as married in the normal sense implies that we had always regarded gay couples as no different from heterosexual couples. That's bizarre. The 2004 act might have foisted upon us a legal requirement to accept that "marriage" meant what the parliament said it meant. It certainly did not impose on the majority of us a legal requirement to change what we had always assumed "marriage" to mean. In fact, it confirmed that, legally, the word meant what we had long taken it to mean; what it had long ago evolved to mean. Now, supporters of gay marriage are asking the parliament to force us to replace the evolved meaning of a word with a legislated one. Most Australians are comfortable with the idea of same sex couples having all the legal rights of traditional married couples but it seems reasonable to expect sex couples to coin their own word to connote that relationship, at least as a temporary measure. It could be tactically smart for them to do so; to bide their time until "marriage" evolves to encompass same sex as well as traditional couples. If the word does so evolve, they will have made their point and won the day without rancour. If it doesn't, they might have to accept that, linguistically, there was no point to be made. Posted by GlenC, Saturday, 15 September 2012 10:13:01 PM
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Im a gay man. Now in the early 1980s during the aids/HIV epidemic when a gay person was diagnosed with aids we generally expected to die in under five years, and many did. Now most of the studies that people are using as evidence that we gay men die earlier then heterosexuals on average comes from studies conducted during the 1980s when the aids/HIV epidemic was at it's height. Today's gay men live healthy lives, and we do not expect to die earlier then the average heterosexual male. What's offends us gay people is when people use thirty or forty year old studies as evidence to justify there discrimination today against us gays and lesbians. It would have been good if the author of this opinion piece had actually stated a plan, and how he would improve the overall health of gay people - such as the extremely high gay teen suicide rate in Australia. The truth is that the author of this opinion does not really care about the average gay persons health, otherwise he would not have used years old outdated studies when we could have easily chosen recent studies of gay men's health.
Posted by jason84, Sunday, 16 September 2012 4:32:45 AM
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Gay marriage 'improves health'
Legalising same-sex marriage may create a healthier environment for gay men, say US researchers. The number of visits by gay men to health clinics dropped significantly after same-sex unions were allowed in the state Massachusetts. This was regardless of whether the men were in a stable relationship, reported the American Journal of Public Health. A UK charity said there was a clear link between happiness and health. Research has already suggested that gay men are more likely to suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts than heterosexual men, and that social exclusion may be partly responsible. FROM: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16203621 Posted by jason84, Sunday, 16 September 2012 4:41:37 AM
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I believe that Individual is right and that Poirot is missing the point. Supporters of gay marriage cannot argue that the meaning of "marriage" has already evolved; they are actually agitating for its meaning to be changed by legislation — for a new meaning to be foisted on all of us by decree.
Consider two related questions:
(a) Should same sex couples have the same legal rights as traditional married couples including the right to call their relationship a marriage?
(b) Should same sex couples have the same legal rights as traditional married couples provided that they use a word other than "marriage" to describe their relationship?
I suspect that a huge majority would assent to (b) but that there would be no majority for (a). If this proved to be true, you could not argue that the meaning of "marriage" has already evolved to include same sex relationships, or is likely to any time soon.
I'm sure that most people still regard a homosexual relationship as categorically different from a heterosexual one. Not inferior, not less acceptable — just different. And it's linguistically convenient to have different words to indicate categorically different things. We would strongly oppose any suggestion to drop the distinction between "son" and "daughter" — to argue that we might just as well call all our offspring "sons" — because male and female children are, after all, of equal worth. The argument for retaining different category words for homosexual and heterosexual relationships is not as strong as it is for male and female offspring, but to many it's still pretty strong.
It's important, too, to note that the opposition of many Australians to changing the meaning of "marriage" has nothing to do with religion or any other kind of folk lore or myth; it's entirely to do with concern for our language.