Science and homosexuality

[Agnostic75]

Originally Posted by Agnostic75

Poor dietary habits, smoking cigarettes, a lack of sufficient exercise, and obesity, are easily as harmful, or more harmful than homosexuality is alleged to be. For example, heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., and it is largely preventable. Thus, no one who eats lots of harmful foods, smokes cigarettes, does not get sufficient exercise, and is obese, (excluding obese people who have hormonal problems), is in a position to criticize homosexuals for scientific reasons.

Originally Posted by tarekabdo12

But homosexuality is abnormal and hazardous.

Poor dietary habits, smoking cigarettes, a lack of sufficient exercise, and obesity are harzardous. Does any of that apply to you? It surely does to many heterosexuals? Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., not homosexuality. Heart disease is frequently preventable.


Many homsoexuals are healthier and happier than many heterosexuals are. How do you account for that?


How do you propose to prevent homosexuality? What options have you provided for homosexuals? Abstaining from sex for life is generally not a viable alternative since that would frequently lead to more physical and mental stress than was present before. The desire to have sex is usually a very strong urge in humans and other animals, and cannot easily be eliminated.


Why are you more interested in the health risks of homosexuality than other health risks?

As one person told you, statistical studies apply only to the sample group of homosexuals, not to the general population. Surely the vast majority of homosexuals are not pedophiles, are not drug addicts, and are not alcololics.

Consider the following,

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/02/27/MNG1H59R5Q1.DTL

Originally Posted by sfgate.com

Bill Maier, vice president of the conservative evangelical organization Focus on the Family, said "the research seems to indicate that (long-term relationships) are very rare [among gay men] and that promiscuity is still very common. ... Men tend to be less into commitment."

Originally Posted by sfgate.com

Not so fast, said Darren Spedale, a law and business student at Stanford University, who studied divorce rates in Denmark in 1996-97, seven years after same-sex registered partnerships were legalized. He found that 17 percent of gay partnerships ended in divorce compared with 46 percent of the straight relationships.

"Same-sex couples who enter into marriage-type relationships have obviously given it much more thought. ... A lot of them, in general, have had longer relationships previous to tying the knot," which decreases the likelihood of divorce, said Spedale, who is completing a book on the subject.

Dale Bullock founded Bonds Limited, an organization devoted to bringing together gay couples seeking lifelong, monogamous relationships. Over the past decade, he's made 228 matches. One hundred sixty of his couples are male; all but seven are still together.

[Agnostic75]

Message to tarekabdo12: Consider the following:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

Originally Posted by cdc.gov

Leading causes of death - 2002

1 - Heart disease: 696,947

2 - Cancer: 557,271

3 - Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 162,672

4 - Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,816

5 - Accidents (unintentional injuries): 106,742

6 - Diabetes: 73,249

7 - Influenza/Pneumonia: 65,681

8 - Alzheimer's disease: 58,866

9 - Nephritis, nephritic syndrome, and nephrosis: 40,974

10 - Septicemia: 33,865

http://myhealth.barnesjewish.org/healthnews/healthday/051112HD529099.htm

Originally Posted by myhealth.barnesjewish.org

Better lifestyle habits -- think less junk food, more fish and more exercise -- can help prevent 80 percent of coronary heart disease and 90 percent of type 2 diabetes.

That's the thrust of a report scheduled to be presented Saturday by Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Harvard School of Public Health's department of nutrition, at the American Society of Nephrology's annual meeting, in Philadelphia.

There is a huge potential for reducing the major causes of death, from cardiovascular disease and diabetes," said Willett, whose report was titled "Diet and Optimal Health: A Progress Report."

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5114a2.htm

Originally Posted by CDC (Centers For Disease Control)[/quote

Annual Smoking-Attributable Mortality, Years of Potential Life Lost, and Economic Costs --- United States, 1995--1999

Cigarette smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States and produces substantial health-related economic costs to society. This report presents the annual estimates of the disease impact of smoking in the United States during 1995--1999. CDC calculated national estimates of annual smoking-attributable mortality (SAM), years of potential life lost (YPLL), smoking-attributable medical expenditures (SAEs) for adults and infants, and productivity costs for adults. Results show that during 1995--1999, smoking caused approximately 440,000 premature deaths in the United States annually and approximately $157 billion in annual health-related economic losses. Implementation of comprehensive tobacco-control programs as recommended by CDC could effectively reduce the prevalence, disease impact, and economic costs of smoking.

http://www.ash.org.uk/html/factsheets/html/fact15.html

Originally Posted by ash.org.uk

Cigarette smoking is linked with a wide range of psychiatric diagnoses including anxiety, agoraphobia and panic disorder but especially with depression. Many epidemiological studies have reported an association between clinical depression and smoking. Some have concluded that the effects of long-term nicotine exposure on the brain may have a causal influence on major depression while others suggest that shared environmental or genetic factors may predispose to both smoking and major depression. A longitudinal study by Breslau et al found that a history of daily smoking increased significantly the risk of major depression. This was consistent with earlier reports which suggested that previous smoking history increased the risk of depressive symptoms and increased the risk of attacks of major depression.

http://www.wvdhhr.org/bph/oehp/obesity/mortality.htm

Originally Posted by wvdhhr.org

According to the National Institutes of Health, obesity and overweight together are the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States, close behind tobacco use. An estimated 300,000 deaths per year are due to the obesity epidemic.

Are you interested in how hazardous those health problems are for people, including the hazardous costs of health care?

[Agnostic75]

Originally Posted by Agnostic75

Poor dietary habits, smoking cigarettes, a lack of sufficient exercise, and obesity are harzardous. Does any of that apply to you? It surely does to many heterosexuals? Heart disease is the number one killer in the U.S., not homosexuality. Heart disease is frequently preventable.

Originally Posted by tarekabdo12

But still homosexuality is abnormal and hazardous.

No one who has poor dietary habits, smokes cigarettes, does not get sufficient exercise, and is obese (not including obese people who have hormonal problems), is in a position to criticize homosexuals, and is a hypocrite. Many Muslims who criticize homosexuality have poor dietary habits, smoke cigarettes, do not get sufficient exercise, and are obese

"Abnormal" does not automatically mean "unhealthy." For example, it is abnomal to have a genius IQ, but there is not any scientific evidence that having a genius IQ is unhealthy.

[Agnostic75]

Message to tarekabdo12: Consider the following from the opening post:

"Statistics regarding many things can be misleading. For example, regarding the percentage of homosexuals who have elevated levels of distress as compared with heterosexuals, consider the following hypothetical analogy:

"100 heterosexuals, and 100 homosexuals were studied regarding drug abuse. 15% of the heterosexuals reported drug abuse, and 25% of the homosexuals reported drug abuse. The difference is substantial, but it is important to note that nowhere near 25% of the homosexuals experienced drug abuse “because” they are homosexuals. That is because if they had been heterosexuals, the 25% figure would have been close to 15%. So, only about 10% of the homosexuals experienced drug abuse “because” they were homosexuals."

Thus, your statistics are greatly flawed since even if they are accurate, they do not explain that the percentage of homosexuals who have elevated levels of distress "because" they are homosexuals are much smaller than the stated statistics.

Are you actually implying that, for example, the best treatment for homosexuals who are alcoholics is to try to become heterosexuals?

[Agnostic75]

Originally Posted by tarekabdo12

Homosexuals got homosexuality removed from the list of mental illnesses in the early 70s by storming the annual American Psychiatric Association (APA) conference on successive years. "Guerrilla theater tactics and more straight-forward shouting matches characterized their presence." Since homosexuality has been removed from the APA list of mental illnesses, so has pedophilia (except when the adult feels "subjective distress."

Are you claiming that the members of the APA who voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM voted against what they actually believed? If so, please provide your evidence. Today, do you think that anti-gay heterosexuals could storm an American Psychiatric Association meeting and force members to vote against their beliefs?

How can you not be aware that lots of evidence was studied and discussed before homosexuality was removed from the DSM? Whether or not most or all of the evidence was valid, it was discussed and considered a lot.

What evidence do you have that homosexualilty belonged in the DSM in the first place?

Regardless of what happened back then, today, the vast majority of mental health professionals do not believe that homosexuality is a mental illness.

What does pedophilia have to do with homosexuality? Homosexuality is legal. Pedophilia is illegal. The vast majority of homosexuals, surely over 90%, are not pedophiles.

In fact, pedophilia is in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Consider the following:

Pedophilia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), pedophilia is a paraphilia in which a person has intense and recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about prepubescent children and on which feelings they have either acted or which cause distress or interpersonal difficulty. The current DSM-5 draft proposes to add hebephilia to the diagnostic criteria, and consequently to rename it to pedohebephilic disorder.

If you met a gay man, for the first time, and did not know anything about him, for all you know, he might be healthier and happier than you are. Many homosexuals enjoy better physical and mental health than many heterosexuals do.

You said that homosexuality is hazardous. Actually, what is hazardous is demeaning people's character with false or misleading evidence.

[Agnostic75]

Originally Posted by tarekabdo12

Homosexuals got homosexuality removed from the list of mental illnesses in the early 70s by storming the annual American Psychiatric Association (APA) conference on successive years. "Guerrilla theater tactics and more straight-forward shouting matches characterized their presence." Since homosexuality has been removed from the APA list of mental illnesses, so has pedophilia (except when the adult feels "subjective distress."

Are you claiming that the members of the APA who voted to remove homosexuality from the DSM voted against what they actually believed? If so, please provide your evidence? Today, do you think that anit-gay heterosexuals could storm an American Psychiatric Association meeting and force members to vote against their beliefs?

How can you not be aware that lots of evidence was studied and discussed before homosexuality was removed from the DSM? Whether or not most or all of the evidence was valid, it was discussed and considered a lot.

What evidence do you have that homosexualilty belonged in the DSM in the first place?

Regardless of what happened back then, today, the vast majority of mental health professionals do not believe that homosexuality is a mental illness.

What does pedophilia have to do with homosexuality? Homosexuality is legal. Pedophilia is illegal. The vast majority of homosexuals, surely over 90%, are not pedophiles.

If fact, pedophilia is in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Consider the following:

Pedophilia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), pedophilia is a paraphilia in which a person has intense and recurrent sexual urges towards and fantasies about prepubescent children and on which feelings they have either acted or which cause distress or interpersonal difficulty. The current DSM-5 draft proposes to add hebephilia to the diagnostic criteria, and consequently to rename it to pedohebephilic disorder.

If you met a gay man, for the first time, and did not know anything about him, for all you know, he might be healthier and happier than you are. Many homosexuals enjoy better physical and mental health than many heterosexuals do.

[Agnostic75]

Originally Posted by Agnostic75

Some people claim that there is lots of scientific evidence against homosexuality, but that is not true.

Originally Posted by Skwim

Not clear on what scientific evidence against homosexuality would be. Are people saying science claims homosexuality doesn't exist?

The rest of the opening post made it quite clear to any rational person that I, and my sources, believe that homosexuality exists.

Originally Posted by Agnostic75

Are people who say that there is a lot of scientific evidence against smoking cigarettes saying that science says that smoking cigarettes does not exist? Of course not.

Originally Posted by Skwim

Are people who say that there is a lot of scientific evidence against telekinesis saying that science says that telekinesis does not exist? Possibly. The point being, the way you phrased your statement does not necessarily lead to an "of course not."

Your attempt to compare the existence of homosexuality with the existence of telekenesis is patently absurd. How many people do you know of who claim that homosexuality does not exist?

[Averroes]

With all these links and elongated posts non of you in the opposition can prove homosexuality is scientifically bad. The only other argument you can give that proves anything remotely related to homosexuality is male gay sex....

Thats it!

[Agnostic75]

Originally Posted by Averroes

With all these links and elongated posts non of you in the opposition can prove homosexuality is scientifically bad. The only other argument you can give that proves anything remotely related to homosexuality is male gay sex.

That's it!

Yes, and of course, gay sex can be practiced with reasonable safety under certain conditions.

[Averroes]

Originally Posted by Agnostic75

Yes, and of course, gay sex can be practiced with reasonable safety under certain conditions.

Of course but between two men nobody can predict how the other partner sex's the other whivh of course can lead to physical problems