A few days ago, I discussed Matt Barber’s bigotry toward homosexuals. Today I want to reply to another article by Barber, “‘Gay’ Sex Kills.” He writes:
Can you imagine officials at a middle school, junior high or high school setting aside a day to promote “tolerance” for heavy smoking and drinking among children? How about a day where teachers encourage kids to “embrace who they are,” pick up that crack pipe and give it a stiff toke? …
That’s exactly what the homosexual activist “Day of Silence” is all about — advancing, through clever, feel-good propaganda, full acceptance among children of the homosexual lifestyle.
Barber’s comparison of homosexuality to smoking and drinking is ridiculous. People can choose whether to smoke or drink; those things are not inherent in one’s character. Homosexuality, by contrast, is a deeply ingrained characteristic. I don’t know whether homosexuality has a genetic component, but whether or not it does, it is deeply embedded in personality. (That said, I favor market education in which, I suspect, most schools would eschew political activism in favor of learning.)
One can form a psychological addiction to smoking or drinking, but such addictions can be formed and broken. Homosexuality is entirely dissimilar. Sexual orientation precedes puberty; it is latent from a very young age. Of course, a homosexual can choose not to practice homosexuality, just as a heterosexual can choose to practice gay sex or to become celibate. (At some point we might distinguish between a homosexual orientation and homosexual practice; for example, prison rape hardly indicates an orientation.) While it is obviously possible to choose to have sex with people of different genders, homosexuality as an orientation seems to be unalterable or very close to it.
Moreover, there’s nothing inherently wrong with homosexuality. Insofar as homosexuality can lead to loving relationships and healthy sex, it can be a good thing, just as heterosexuality can be a good thing.
Barber notes that male homosexuality is associated with AIDS:
By recently admitting that “HIV is a gay disease,” Matt Foreman, outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, acknowledged what the medical community has known for decades: the homosexual lifestyle is extremely high-risk and often leads to disease and even death.
In fact, multiple studies have established that homosexual conduct, especially among males, is considerably more hazardous to one’s health than a lifetime of chain smoking.
To the consternation of “gay” activist flat-earthers and homosexual AIDS holocaust deniers everywhere, one such study — conducted by pro-“gay” researchers in Canada — was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology (IJE) in 1997.
While the medical consensus is that smoking knocks from two to 10 years off an individual’s life expectancy, the IJE study found that homosexual conduct shortens the lifespan of “gays” by an astounding “8 to 20 years” — more than twice that of smoking.
“[U]nder even the most liberal assumptions,” concluded the study, “gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871. … [L]ife expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”
This morose reality makes a strong case for a fitting redefinition of so-called “homophobia,” that being “Homophobia: The rational fear that ‘gay sex’ will kill you!”
No one doubts that male gay sex is associated with a higher incidence of AIDS. But this does not establish Barber’s point. Female gay sex is not so associated; does Barber therefore approve of female but not male homosexuality? Furthermore, unsafe heterosexual relations with multiple partners is also associated with a higher incidence of various diseases, while monogamous homosexual relations are not.
Barber’s comparison of homosexuality to chain smoking fails. Chain smoking harms the health of anyone who tries it, though the magnitude of the harm depends a great deal upon genetics and luck. Male homosexuality, on the other hand, is risky only with partners who might have AIDS. Two healthy men who enter a monogamous relationship have no more chance of getting AIDS than Barber does.