Doug PollardSo tell me again - who's the liar?
If it's true, she'll be in congenial company when she next meets Jim Wallace, leader of the Australian Christian Lobby.
Yesterday he dredged up the old lie that gays have shorter lifespans than straights: a lie that has been nailed again and again. But like the Ju-liar tag, it refuses to go away.
THE TRUE STORY
In case Wallace is merely ignorant, here's the facts, from the Southern Poverty Law Centre and their excellent expose of ALL the lies used by self-styled "Christians" to demonise gay people.
"This falsehood can be traced directly to the discredited research of Paul Cameron and his Family Research Institute, specifically a 1994 paper he co-wrote entitled, "The Lifespan of Homosexuals."
"Using obituaries collected from gay newspapers, he and his two co-authors concluded that gay men died, on average, at 43, compared to an average life expectancy at the time of around 73 for all U.S. men. On the basis of the same obituaries, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 times more likely to die in car accidents than heterosexuals, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks than whites, and 11 times more likely than blacks to die of the same cause. He also concluded that lesbians are 487 times more likely to die of murder, suicide, or accidents than straight women.
"However, like virtually all of his "research," Cameron's methodology is egregiously flawed — most obviously because the sample he selected (the data from the obits) was not remotely statistically representative of the LGBT population as a whole. Even Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called Cameron's methods "just ridiculous."
1994: BEFORE EFFECTIVE AIDS DRUGS
Note the date: 1994 - the year the death rates from AIDS peaked. The year before effective drugs became available for the first time.
"In the 1980s and early 1990s, HIV/AIDS was a major cause of death among adults in the U.S., with the mortality (death) rate climbing every year from 1987 to 1994. By the latter year, the disease had become the leading cause of death among adults 25-44 years of age.
"A significant decrease in AIDS mortality first became apparent in 1996, the year after the first protease inhibitor (PI) was introduced. In 1997 the number of HIV/AIDS deaths fell by nearly 50%, followed by a further 20% reduction in 1998. By 1999, however, the decline had leveled off. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), HIV/AIDS deaths fell from more than 51,000 in 1995 to about 16,000 in 2002" The Body Pro
IT'S A LIE
Add it together and what do you get? Not a study of the lifespans of all gay men, or even a representative sample. Not a study based on the lifespan of gay men in 2012.
Instead, the 'study' is based on the age of death of gay men whose obituaries were published US gay newspapers in 1994, at the time when deaths from AIDS were reaching their peak.
Not every gay man who died in 1994 had an obit in a gay paper. In fact, older gay men, probably still closeted, would never have an obit in a gay paper. Even if they lived in a big city, where most gay papers are published.
This piece of propoganda was never representative of the lifespan of all gay men, even then, and it certainly isn't now. It began as a lie. It's still a lie.
TELL JULIA GILLARD
UPDATE
The Prime Minister has announced she is withdrawing from the ACL Conference because of Jim Wallace's offensive words.
Please, go to Julia Gillard's website and say thank you. She should not be giving credence to this man. She should not address his hysterically anti-gay organisation. And she has finally realised it.
Now she is finally 'moving forward', let's keep up the momentum. Soon new proposals re anti-discrimination law will be published. We need to ensure the religious exemptions are consigned to history, where they belong.
UPDATE 2 - THE REAL FACTS
I was going to spend time researching Wallace's claims and debunking them in more detail, but fortunately I don't have to: Crikey beat me to it. A comprehensive article that exposes his claims as 'mostly rubbish'.
