Interesting article on homosexuality

[DanKroh]

"Can we get a scientifically derived conclusion or position on this subject from the American Psychiatric Association?"

 

Yes.

 

The general position on homosexuality is here:

http://www.psych.org/Departments/EDU/Library/APAOfficialDocumentsandRelated/PositionStatements/199216.aspx

 

The position statement on same-sex marriage is here:

http://www.psych.org/Departments/EDU/Library/APAOfficialDocumentsandRelated/PositionStatements/200416.aspx

 

Position statement on gays in the military:

http://www.psych.org/Departments/EDU/Library/APAOfficialDocumentsandRelated/PositionStatements/199013.aspx

 

The American Psychological Association's policy statement is here:

http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx

 

Their education booklet on homosexuality is here:

http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/just-the-facts.aspx

[CalicoPenn]

You've posted, pretty much verbatim, an article from Champion News from October 2006 by John Biver that was mostly links to other articles with no journalistic balance and expect us to what exactly? Accept that this is factual information that proves that homosexuality is wrong?

 

I tried to follow one specific link once I found the original article. I was awfully curious about what the Immunological Journal had to say about parts not fitting since the presumptive act it likely speaks about is enjoyed by both heterosexual and homosexual couples who never seem to have a problem getting the parts to fit. The link led me to the NARTH website and a "page not found" message - a dead link. So I looked up the Immunological Journal where I discovered that it is a Chinese medical journal funded by the Chinese government - gee, I don't suppose that a journal funded by a government that exerts an awful lot of social control over it's citizens wouldn't possibly be a mouthpiece for an official state position, would it?

 

Then I started to look at some of the stats - like 54% of all AIDS cases were homosexual men by 1998 - and the way it's written, the reaction might be "54% - wow, that's a lot", until I remembered that in the 80's the percentage of all AIDS cases that were attributed to homosexual men were in the high 90's. I might write the sentence "by 1998, AIDS cases amongst homosexual men dropped to only 54% of the total" and worry more about what that meant for heterosexuals.

 

I could go point by point and rip the "article" to shreds but I'd rather not bother. Other people have probably done it before me - that is if they actually bothered to read Champion News - and frankly, you wouldn't change your mind. I deal with the fallout these attempts to justify bigotry by mis-using and mis-quoting scientific journals and statistics everyday. Those troubled youth - driven to attempt to take their own lives by the bigotry of people who spout and repeat the claptrap you posted - deserve my time more than this does.

 

If you are truly wanting to get the facts, then I suggest signing up at your local community college for a course on statistics that will teach not only how to derive statistics but also how to interpret statistics, and how people lie using statistics and a course on how to research, how to tell the difference between journal articles, media articles and internet articles, how to tell the difference between legitimate sources and pseudo-sources, and how to think critically about what you're reading.

 

 

 

[vol_scouter]

CalicoPenn wrote: "I might write the sentence "by 1998, AIDS cases amongst homosexual men dropped to only 54% of the total" and worry more about what that meant for heterosexuals. "

 

HIV/AIDS remains primarily a disease of homosexual males, prostitutes and IV drug addicts. Prostitutes have a high rate of IV drug abuse which prompts some to say that the disease is mostly gay males and IV drug addicts. This is a statement of transmission and should not be construed as a condemnation.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

According to the CDC, heterosexual transmission is 31% of new HIV cases, while injection drug users are 16% (USA cases only).

[vol_scouter]

Merlyn,

 

The last studies (a few years ago) that I read stated that the majority of the heterosexual transmission was in prostitutes. Those studies noted that the incidence of IV drug abuse is very high among prostitutes but they were counted in the heterosexual transmission. The main mode of transmission is anal intercourse and IV drug abuse.

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

That's not what the CDC says; it has heterosexual transmission higher than IV drug use, and no notation that, somehow, they would put some IV drug use numbers under heterosexual transmission. It's AIDS and HIV transmission via heterosexual contact.

 

Addendum: vol_scouter, you seem to be doing this:

1) hooker gets AIDS from IV drug use (1 case of IV drug use transmission)

2) hooker gives AIDS to customer via heterosex (1 case of heterosexual transmission)

 

You seem to want to "blame" case 2 above on IV drug use, and state that IV drug use is one of the main modes of transmission; that's just not so. Case 2 is heterosexual transmission. You don't get to count that as IV drug transmission, because it isn't.(This message has been edited by Merlyn_LeRoy)

[Scoutfish]

I wonder exactly what the parameters for classification are. I agree with Merlyn in this particular instance.

 

Remember Ryan White: Got HIV from IV injection ( blood transfusion) at hospital.

 

Would that fall under: IV use becaause trhat's where he got it from....

 

Heterosexual: which he was....

or would it count as coming from ( supposedly)

 

a drug user,

 

a homosexual,

 

or prostitute - for which the IV needle MAY have previously been used on?

 

Or would that not count at all as it was a Hospital screw up?

 

 

[NJCubScouter]

And what does all this about AIDS mean to the discussion anyway? Are gay people necessarily "bad people" because they are at higher risk of a particular disease? And yes, I know that behavior is part of the story here, but how far do you want to take that? Do you realize that a woman who becomes pregnant is at infinitely higher risk of dying in childbirth than a woman who never becomes pregnant? How reckless of these women to get pregnant, to put themselves at that kind of risk. (/sarcasm off)

[packsaddle]

NJ, the recent discussion in this thread has given me a sense of 'dejavu all over again'. It's almost as if we've been transported back to the early 1980's when Jerry Falwell proclaimed that "AIDS is God's punishment" and Senator Denton from Alabama said, "Oh, let the faggots die." And the Reagan administration basically ignored the emergence of this disease because they associated it with gay men....until it emerged in the blood supply and in young children and hemophiliacs...but by then they had squandered precious time to get vital research started that might have saved lives, yes even the lives of some of those evil gay persons that they didn't care about. I feel like I'm watching the same terrible old movie again in this thread - prejudice against a group of people, based in religion, then leads to greater misery for everyone. The shame is that this kind of prejudice seems to be alive and well.

[Eagledad]

>>And yes, I know that behavior is part of the story here, but how far do you want to take that?

[Beavah]

Yah, vol has da right understanding of how medical research and statistics are done, eh? It is his field, after all. Merlyn is again quoting sources that he doesn't fully understand. There's comfort in that kind of fundamentalist notion that all da information is in the text, but that's only true for one Text, if any .

 

Thanks to DanKroh for all da APA cites, eh? They show pretty clearly that there wasn't any scientific basis, just da normal actions of a political lobby with a viewpoint. I have no problem with that, eh? That's just democracy. People with political viewpoints put out policy statements all da time. Yeh just have to be careful to be mentally awake and run all such things through a fine filter.

 

Beavah

 

[DanKroh]

"They show pretty clearly that there wasn't any scientific basis, just da normal actions of a political lobby with a viewpoint"

 

Yeah, because the opinions of all those professionals psychiatrists were only influence by their political opinions, and not informed by years of reading and conduction research in their own field, huh?

 

Pot, meet kettle.

[Beavah]

Nah, because they started with an assumption based on their definition of mental illness. I can't speak to whether homosexuality is a mental illness, eh? But if da psychiatric community feels research shows that it isn't, I'll go along. It's interesting to me that they also find it associated with a much higher rate of mental illness, but then that can be due to anything from collateral genetic effects to lack of social acceptance, perhaps.

 

But da argument is not about mental illness, eh? It's about public policy. And I don't think an honest psychiatrist would claim to have special research insight into public policy. Just like everybody else, all they're doing is lobbying for da personal viewpoint of a majority of their active members (if that... often da way position statements are drafted causes 'em to be more strident than the real opinion of da average member of any organization).

 

Perhaps a few sociologists would have a thought to consider, but yeh can't easily conduct experiments on societies, eh? So our sociologists are always no better than our economists . Given that we're hard pressed to find many stable, successful societies in da history of the world that didn't put some form of taboo on homosexual behavior, I'm not sure an uncontrolled experiment on our society in a way contrary to da ethical beliefs of a substantial portion of our citizenry is a sound public policy choice.

 

Beavah(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[Merlyn_LeRoy]

Beavah writes:

Merlyn is again quoting sources that he doesn't fully understand. There's comfort in that kind of fundamentalist notion that all da information is in the text, but that's only true for one Text, if any

 

Beavah, I notice all you did was try to imply that I'm wrong, without actually having the guts to state it outright or even state what part of my statement was wrong. You keep doing this, as if you're an "expert" in whatever the current argument is about, yet you're too cowardly to put forth your own take on it.

 

The CDC spells out AIDS transmission pretty clearly, and if you have other information, post that, or shut up. You usually add nothing to a conversation except a lame fake hick accent.

[Beavah]

Merlyn, vol_scouter is da medical professional and expert who actually read the studies instead of just Googling the CDC. He explained why you were wrong, not me. I simply pointed out that I agreed with him, because in most of your writing here you have a habit of latching onto isolated quotes that yeh find on the web without taking the time to actually understand the discipline. And it's necessary to understand da discipline in order to put an isolated quote in context. Whether it's law, medical research, or BSA policy and practice. Understanding takes time and effort beyond Google, eh?

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)