Friday, July 13, 2007

Gay marriage more deadly than smoking?

Be on the lookout for the latest Paul Cameron "statistic" that is making the rounds on conservative airwaves. Namely that homosexual partnerships are more dangerous than smoking. Sandy Rios of Culture Campaign even referred to it on Bill O'Reilly's show this past Wednesday night when he said, "Well,what people don’t understand is that the homosexual lifestyle, especially for men, is deadly. It takes their life ten to twenty years earlier than straight men."

It would be worth your while to go to Box Turtle Bulletin and click on all the pertinent links regarding this latest Cameron study, which allegedly shows that partnered gays and lesbians in Denmark and Norway die 24 years earlier than their straight counterparts.

To give the study the appearance of credibility, Cameron claims to have presented it at the Eastern Psychological Association this past March. But in truth, the presentation was merely a poster he displayed at the meeting for one hour among 70 other posters. It was not approved for presentation at the EPA meeting as a paper or address. EPA president Philip N. Hineline even issued a lengthy statement correcting the misinformation Cameron has spread about his "presentation" at the EPA meeting. In conclusion Hineline states:

There was nothing in the materials submitted by the author for review by EPA that indicated that the work could, or would, be informative with respect to the longevity of homosexuals.


I recommend that you read Jim Burroway's analysis of Cameron's study, to give you a better idea of why this paper could not have met the EPA's standards of sound research methodology.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)