Empirical Evidence Against the Viability of Gay Practice

Another Response to a Gay Friend's Blog:

Of course, Scripture demonstrates my position – the practice of homosexuality is self-destructive – more explicitly and authoritatively than any other source of truth, as Florence had pointed out with her citation of Romans 1. However, you subjectivize the use of Scripture as merely a matter of interpretation. I suspect that if I countered by pointing out that whatever you write is also simply a matter of interpretation – on both your part and the readers – you would respond, “That’s precisely my point. It’s all subjective, just a matter of our own individual perspectives. Therefore, we are left to freely grope without objective guidance within the context of our personal relationships!”

Consistent with this, you dismiss the “historical argument” that I’ve presented against the viability of homosexual practice, and now you write about the anecdotal evidence: “this is not an empirical argument and consider this phase of our discussion closed.”

I’m left to ask what arguments are left that you might consider weighty? (I suspect that there are none, and that “the freedom to choose” will trump any evidence.) However, you seem to leave the door cracked to “empirical argument.” However, since we don’t have any statistical studies that have been passed down from ancient Greece and Rome, I have to resort to more recent studies.

The following are stats I gleaned from an ex-gay, now Catholic, David MacDonald (www.GayTestimony.com). He claims that the following are stats that the gay community in Canada has also endorsed:

• Life expectancy of gay/bisexual men in Canada is 20 years less than the average; that is 55 years.
• GLB people commit suicde at rates from 2 to 13.9 times more often than average.
• GLB people have smoking rates 1.3 to 3 times higher than average.
• GLB people have rates of alcoholism 1.4 to 7 times higher than average.
• GLB people have rates of illicit drug use 1.6 to 19 times higher than average.
• GLB people show rates of depression 1.8 to 3 times higher than average.
• Gay and bisexual me comprise 76.1% of AIDS cases
• Gay and bisexual men comprise 54% of new HIV infections each year… 26 times higher than the average.

These stats argue not only that the gay lifestyle is self-destructive, but also that these problems reflect the fact that they are endemic to it. Although, it seems that LGBTs largely acknowledge this sad reality, they generally counter that these costs are merely the product of stigmatization. However, these same stats seem to be found in even the most gay-friendly environments:

• “However, even in the Netherlands, which has been far more tolerant to same-sex relationships and which has recently legalised same-sex marriages, high levels of psychiatric illness, including major depression, bipolar disorder (‘manic depression’), agoraphobia , obsessive compulsive disorder and drug addiction are found.” (Sandfort TG, et al. Same-sex sexual behavior and psychiatric disorders: findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS). Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001; 58 :85-91.)

You might retort that these are “interpretations” or only statistical realities that aren’t true for everyone practicing same-sex sex. However, even if you are correct, these stats should coerce us to warn those who want to embrace this lifestyle instead of encouraging it.

Even more significantly, these horrifying stats should prompt us to consider that perhaps there might be something morally wrong about this practice. Perhaps, it is as the Bible asserts:

• “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (1 Cor. 6:9-10)

However, this isn’t the end of the story. Scripture doesn’t leave us without hope. The next verse asserts:

• “And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (Verse 11)

Those who come to Christ repentantly have become new people. I wouldn’t be writing against the sin of homosexuality unless I was convinced that our God has the perfect remedy (1 John 1:9). We may continue to struggle against our many sins, but the important difference is that we now struggle with our loving and merciful God at our side!