Debate on Homosexuality/Gay Marriage: Statistics Part 1.

One of the studies brought up claimed that Canadian homosexuals had an average life span equal to people living in 1871 in the same area. I managed to actually find this a published copy of this study. 

Modelling the Impact of HIV Disease on Mortality in Gay and Bisexual Men

First off this study's goal was to demonstrate that the effect AIDS was having on the gay community in that area. The first problem with this study is that it is rather old, it was published in 1997 and most of the figures were gathered in the early 90's. Not only was AIDS infecting more people at this time but medical treatments for it have improved greatly in the last 20 years. On top of that the published study states that there were certain factors they did not control for like the fact that suicide rates are higher in most homosexual populations. Given the limited nature of the study as well as the age it is difficult to make any definitive conclusion here.

He also brought up gay bowel syndrome. I must confess that I was actually unfamiliar with this term though perhaps I had heard in before and had just forgotten it. I looked this term up too and was unsurprised that this term is no longer used by anyone in the actual medial community. It was a term coined in 1976 that was an umbrella term for a large number of problems. Even as early as 1985 a journal of gastroenterology had this to say about the diagnosis:

The "gay bowel syndrome" was first used to describe not a syndrome, but a list of conditions. The term hides the problems facing the gastroenterologist. Firstly, the sexual orientation of a patient may not be easily ascertainable in the setting of a general outpatient clinic. Secondly, many infections of the gay bowel are asymptomatic and are missed without full microbiological screening. Thirdly, coinfection is common and the organism isolated may not be causing the symptoms and signs. Finally, the bowel has limited and non-specific clinical and histopathological responses to many infections.

There seem to be a myriad of reasons why the medical community do not view this as an actual medical condition, so the fact that it is brought up at all by Vocab begs a question about the quality of the research he is relying on.  It is also worth bring up the general problem I have in bringing up an argument like this seems to be built upon an assumption that sexuality, and indeed in particular anal sex is the only meaningful thing about the relationships of gay men.  I've met quite a few gay men who would disagree with that. (I.E. all of them)

Another host of statistics were also brought up talking about how promiscuous the average homosexual is, on the statistics he brings up I cannot really speak in great detail because; though I looked, I could not find any reputable sites that verify any of the figures Vocab gave. I found many sites published by religious believers and other anti-gay advocates repeating these figures but no links to any studies or abstracts that I could examine to see how reliable these figures are.

I did, however, two studies that offer different figures. The first study can be found here, "So you think gay men are promiscuous?". This one is based upon figures tabulated from OKCupid questions. It's fairly recent, but to be fair it's a self selected group so it may not be representative of the average gay person. However, it does at least show that there are some gay people who do not fit the stereotype.

Another study can be found here, The New England Journal of Medicine: Homosexuality. I found this study four pages deep in a Google search on the Wiki page about promiscuity. Though slightly older (1994) it has this to say:

Of heterosexually active adults in the general population, about 20 percent of men have had 1 sexual partner during their lives, 55 percent have had up to 20 partners, and about 25 percent have had 20 or more partners11. Some older studies conducted before the epidemic of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) indicated that homosexual men were more likely than heterosexual men to have had a very large number of sexual partners14. More recent population-based studies have found this to be relatively uncommon. For instance, Fay et al.10 found that of men who had homosexual contact after the age of 20, almost all had 20 or fewer homosexual partners in their lifetimes. Of 1450 men in the sample, only 2 were reported to have had 100 or more same-sex partners10. The inconsistency in the data on the number of sexual partners of homosexual men probably reflects flaws in the sampling techniques of the earlier studies (e.g., recruiting subjects in gay bars) and their completion before the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic.

So there we have it, according to The New England Journal of Medicine, the studies Vocab brought up are generally discredited because of poor sampling techniques just like the study by Paul Cameron I brought up early on in the debate.

I don't fault Vocab for not giving me the actual study names in the short discussion we had but perhaps if we continue this discussion at a later date he can provide links to the actual papers that make these claims. I won't hold my breath on this one though because similar figures have been repeated among Christian circles for more than two decades now and I have yet to find someone who can actually point to a viable peer reviewed study backing them up. These figures usually come from conservative Christian think tanks and upon close examination the studies don't hold up very well.

Tomorrow I'll be posting about some of the studies about gay marriage that were brought up.

Debate on Homosexuality/Gay Marriage: Introduction.

Just before the American Atheist convention I did a debate on Homosexuality/Gay Marriage with Vocab Malone and here it is. I have a few posts to put up about this debate which will be going up in the next few days.

Homosexuality/Marriage DEBATE [04/14/2013]

Like with most short form debates there are simply lots of things that can't be said in the time allotted. Points were made by my opponent which I was unable to give response to due to time constants and and also points I made which I believe I should clarify here since there are no time constraints on my blog. In fact we covered so many topics that I have broken this post up into several shorter posts rather than ask you to read what could easily amount to ten pages of writing all at once.

A lot of this debate came down to who had the better statistics. Now after explaining why I had a problem with Paul Camron's methodologies I stated that what I generally discovered across the board with the statistics quoted by people arguing against homosexuality was that the studies were either badly flawed or the figures were poorly contextualized. It was therefore interesting to me that Vocab spent most of the debate doing what I just described. He quoted a lot of statistics in the third segment which we did not have a chance to fully discuss because of time constraints, and also because he quoted several studies which I was unfamiliar with and thus could not really comment on. I have had a chance to review some of those statistics/studies now and so I will be posting a few articles over the next few days reviewing them as well as a few other claims made in the debate that I felt deserved closer analysis.

Before I delve into the particulars of the problems with some of  Vocab's arguments, I would start by pointing out that even if the claims were right it would not really change my conclusions about gay rights very much. Most of his arguments did not, and could not really speak to the morality of homosexual behavior, and his references to the bible and people being made in the image of God were pointless since he cannot demonstrate that any of those claims are true.

Furthermore, many of his statements were based upon a naturalistic fallacy. For instance claiming that anal sex is bad because the rectum is designed for expelling things rather than having things enter them. We as humans do many things we were not "designed" to do. In any case, potential risk alone cannot be the sole measure of right or wrong, we must, at a minimum, also measure potential benefits as well. What are the benefits in this case you might ask? Well, for one thing people who accept themselves as they are are generally better adjusted and happier, this is one of the reasons homosexuals who go into programs to cure them of their homosexuality are known for having higher rates of depression and suicide. I'll be talking about this more in a separate post.

It is also problematic that Vocab seems to distil the entirety of what it means to be gay down to "butt sex is unnatural." Most gay people would point out that there is more too it than that. Further, we could also argue that sexual organs are not meant to be put in ones mouth but this doesn't stop heterosexuals from having oral sex either, and many of the health concerns he mentions can apply to heterosexual sex too. Of course we didn't actually address that point so I suppose it's possible Vocab is against both oral and anal sex between heterosexuals too.

In any case, tomorrow I will go into some of the problems with some of the statistics Vocab brought up.

Why Gosnell's abortion clinic convinces me we need to to protect abortion rights.

For anyone unfamiliar here is a link to the story.

Abortion Doctor’s Murder Trial Sparks Media Debate

First, let me say that what Gosnell has done is immoral and criminal. It's why he is on trial after all. He not only killed infants after they were born, he preformed illegal procedures, used dirty or faulty equipment and used underage poorly trained staff that resulted in women dying from botched abortions. No pro-choice advocate is in favor of protecting or excusing what Gosnell has been accused of. 

It is interesting then that there are so many conservative, pro-life groups claiming that the liberal pro-choice groups are trying to cover up the news story to as to protect the reputation of abortion. When I goggled the topic I found many articles on it, even excluding the articles written about how many other people weren't writing articles about it. One wonders about the irony of people writing about how no one writes articles about a subject while those same people fail to write any articles about the subject they are complaining no one writes about. 

I'm not convinced there is any attempt to avoid the subject, but I'm more interested in how pro-life proponents always take stories like this one as evidence we need to make all abortions illegal. It should be immediately apparent why this is absurd because what Gosnell was doing was already illegal. He should not have gotten away with it as long as he did, and there is evidence there were serious failures in the system that should have worked to shut him down, but you can't use Gosnell's actions as an argument against legal abortions anymore than you can use people who attempt to incite violence through speech as an argument against all free speech of any kind.

The problem is that I think most pro-lifers have a basic misconception about the pro-choice movement. That is to say they believe that pro-choice advocates like abortion. We don't like abortions; this is why, for instance, pro-choice advocates fight so hard for easy contraception access especially for the poor.  I have never personally met anyone who is pro-choice who would be bothered by the number of abortions being zero if all of the reasons people got abortions went with them. If you want a world without abortion then give us a world without birth defects, pregnancy related health issues, rape and incest, birth control failures, and the failures of sex education which often cause people to have unprotected sex when they do not want children.  Give us that world and abortion will disappear because no one will want one.

Is such a world hard to provide, Impossible perhaps? Then we will never have a world with zero abortions and because of this we must therefore focus on how to make the number as low as possible. Which brings us back around to Gosnell. Pro-life advocates act like it is legal abortion that allows people like Gosnell to exist, but this is completely and totally wrong. In fact is the the pro-life movement that allows people like Gosnell to exist.  Don't believe me? Check out these facts.

Worldwide Abortion: Legality, Incidence and Safety

There are two important facts here. One, the areas of the world who generally outlaw or restrict abortions have the highest abortion rates, often 29-32 out of 1,000 or higher. While areas with the most permissive abortion laws like Europe have the lowest, 12 out of 1,000. On top of that, the areas that outlaw abortion have the highest rates of unsafe abortions. I.E. they have the highest rates of people like Gosnell. 

Now, I'm not claiming that the abortion restrictions themselves raise the rate of abortions though they almost definitely raise the rates of unsafe abortions. Many of these countries that outlaw abortion do so based upon religious sanctions they have on sexual behavior and with those laws often go restrictions on access to birth control safe sex education. They also have little if any social services to help women who have a pregnancy they cannot afford. What we can take from this is that making abortion illegal has little to no affect on how many people seek abortions, the only thing that affects that number is making sure unwanted pregnancies don't happen in the first place as well as providing adequate health care to women who are pregnant or think they might become so. 

Yet on these fronts we see pro-life advocates standing in they way almost every time. Arizona is an abstinence only state who refuses to fund Planed Parenthood because of pro-life advocates. People in Africa are told not to use condoms by pro-life advocates. Every time I turn around pro-life groups claim they want to end abortion but then they do things are are guaranteed to increase it. It turns out that we pro-choicers are better at being pro-life than the pro-life movement is, and it's about time we started letting people know that.

Sexist shirts from Marvel.

I'm a nerd and I'm proud of it, I also think nerd culture should be well positioned to be more aware of gender issues than the population in general, which is why this story made me sad.

Sexist 'Avengers' T Shirts Tell Boys To Be Heroes And Girls To Need A Hero 

Marvel is selling these two shirts, the left one for boys and the right one for girls.

 

What kind of subtle sexist messages are we selling to children with these shirts? Some people have said that this is no big deal because the shirts are marketed to kids, but I think this actually makes it worse. Childhood and adolescence are when most people form a lot of their ideas about the world including how they relate to the other gender. Of course some people overcome those ideas in adulthood, but many will not. It is a bad idea to start kids out by providing them with sexist gender stereotypes before they are even old enough to fully understand what a gender stereotype is. 

We already have enough of this stuff from religion. I expect better from my nerdy icons.

This is why we need to legalize gay marriage.

So this happened.

Gay Man Arrested At Missouri Hospital For Refusing To Leave Sick Partner

Roger Gorley was arrested because the family members of his partner Allen(presumably because they don't approve of homosexuality) refused to allow him hospital visitation. When he refused to leave security handcuffed him and removed him from the hospital then the family filed a restraining order.

Further, for those who say that a lot of these rights like hospital visitation can be achieved without marriage through other types of contracts it should be noted that Gorley has power of attorney which apparently the hospital refused to verify.

Laws in this area are changing slowly, but it is clear that until gay people are allowed to marry these instances of discrimination are likely to continue with limited legal recourse to the victims.

An argument I wish people would stop using: Atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color.

A meme has being going around the internet for a while now. It's usually something like atheism is a religion like bald is a hair color, off is a T.V. station, not collecting stamps is a hobby or other similar witticisms.

This is a response to theists suggesting that atheism is a religion. It's not a particularly convincing or useful in my opinion; for one thing I'm not a big fan of pretending an analogy is the same thing as an argument. Now, don't get me wrong I'm not going to argue that the atheism actually is a religion. What I will argue is that this is designed to be a sort of quick witty sound byte, with out any substance or meaning. It does not encourage any sort of discussion about the claim and will likely cause both of you to walk away from the interaction without learning anything about one another or yourself. Religion is a broad word with a lot of different meanings, so dismissing the statement without exploring what the theist means does no one any good.

Perhaps they think we are like a religion because we have meetings and social groups and some of us involve ourselves in activism. In this since I would be happy to admit atheists are like religious people, but only that we are all human and desire social interaction with others, and we also often wish to improve the world in which we live, and make it better for ourselves and our family. What's wrong with any of that? I didn't reject religion for anything here.

Or perhaps they think we are like religion because we are outspoken and possibly evangelistic about our beliefs. This one is only partially true. Of course some atheists, like myself, are quite outspoken, and I think there are good reasons for that, but I do think there is a significant difference between me and many religious evangelists. Most evangelism relies heavily on emotional arguments, not rational ones. In fact I was often told in my religious days to not rely on facts too much because the only thing that would ever convert people was "experiencing the risen Christ." The evidence isn't there so evangelists rely on personal testimonies and salesmanship so tricky an Amway representative would feel shame. Emotional manipulation is not a path to truth, people should be convinced of your claim because it is backed with good evidence.

Of course I often hear is that atheism is a religion because atheists have just as much faith that god does not exist as theists have that he does. On this point I obviously disagree completely. If they agree that faith is belief without evidence then it cannot possibly take faith to reject their claim and if they do not accept that definition then they still need to present evidence for their version of god. In other words this criticism is nothing but a smoke screen to attempt to move the burden of proof.

The point is, instead of using an argument that is completely dismissive, I would suggest asking the theist for clarification of this statement. How exactly is atheism like a religion? What specific thing do we do that they think is something only a religious group would do? Rather than shutting down the conversation this requires the theist to justify their position, and might just change their mind a bit about atheists.Comparing atheism to baldness or inactive televisions does none of this. It is the verbal equivalent of flipping off your opponent, it might make you feel better but it's not useful.

Creationist bets 10,000 dollars no one can disprove Genesis.

Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo

Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo, a member of the Creation Science Hall of Fame, wagered $10,000 that evolutionists cannot disprove the literal reading of Genesis. 

I would note that Mastropaolo's Ph.D. is in kinesiology and is therefore not terribly relevant to an examination of the physics or geology involved in radiometric dating or most of the other things he seems to think he is an expert it.

Full article here:

Prominent Creationist Explains Plan To Win $10,000 Wager About Genesis

So Mastropaolo correctly points out that proving the earth is old would disprove the Genesis account.

What evidence do they have that original creation didn't happen?" Mastropaolo said. "In order for them to cast doubt on that Genesis narrative, they have to prove that the Earth is very, very, very old.

So, along comes science with it's radiometric dating, dendrochronology, plate tectonics and the like, all of which demonstrate the earth is much older than 10,000 years. Ah, says Mastropaolo, those tests are all flawed. Why can't we trust radiometric dating?

As evidence he cites inconsistency in radiometric estimates of the Earth's age. In 1921 it was estimated that the world is 1.5 billion years old, while in 1991 it was estimated that the world was 4.5 billion years old.

Ah, that's right science sometimes changes because of new information so it must be totally wrong.

In fact Mastropaolo has a "calibration equation" he uses that basically seems to break down to claiming that every 1.163 million radioisotope years equals only 10 actual years. So apparently his argument is that 1,163,000 equals 10 and therefore creationism makes perfect sense.  He also believes that there were still dinosaurs around as little as 1,000 years ago.

After a bit of internet searching I managed to find his actual website (Science Supports Literal Genesis) in which I discovered what this "calibration equation" consists of. Part of his argument actually consists of claiming that most societies throughout history until recently believed the earth was younger and assuming that those answers must be the correct ones because they are the more common ones. The argument is based in extremely simply algebra and functionally ignores all of the discoveries in physics and geology that caused scientists to the change the estimates. 

Here is another in his long list of bizarre arguments.

Besides unreliability, another reason for rejecting the radioisotope data was their bias for older ages of the Earth. Note that the estimate in 1921 was 1.5 billion years old whereas the estimate in 1991 was 4.54 billion years old. These data would have us believe that in the 70 solar years from 1921 to 1991 the Earth, and everything on the Earth, aged 3.04 billion years.

It's difficult to tell if he statement is sarcastic or if he legitimately believes that these date changes were actually caused by the mere passage of 70 years and not because of a refinement of radio-isotope dating methods gave us more accurate results.

Over and over again he seems like he creates bizarre arguments to deny scientific consensus in order to justify his conclusions.  So it seems that Mastropaolo's claim that it is impossible to disprove Genesis is true...if you start out by throwing out all the evidence that proves it wrong.

Back from American Atheist convention and other things.

I apologize for not posting much this month, but I have been doing things.

I Spent this week in at the American Atheist Convention in Austin, TX. I met a lot of people in the movement I haven't had the chance to meet before and I learned some great things from the speakers.

Most of the talks haven't been posted on YouTube but I did find the one from Matt Dillahunty on skepticism, so I'll post that for those who are interested.

AACON 2013 Matt Dillahunty speaks on Skepticism and Atheism

Here is a few pictures I got at the convention:

With Darrel Ray, author of Sex and God

With Dan Fincke from Camels with Hammers

With a new friend Ben Conner at the pub crawl on Saturday

Some random guy at the bar who jumped into the photo
I don't know who he is.

A photo I took of my leg and a table by accident.

I also did a debate on  March 25th about gay marriage with Vocab Malone, you might remember him as the guy I debated abortion with a few months ago. We touched a a number of topics in the debate some of which we didn't have a change to delve into deeply, and both of us brought up a lot of statistics. I was planning a post to go up when the episode is posted, but it was ending up crazy long so I'm probably going to break it into four of five posts dealing with topics separately. I'm still putting some time into researching a couple of the statistical claims my opponent brought up, since many of the claims he brought up can be found on hundreds of websites most of sites by fundamentalist Christians with clear anti-gay biases,  it makes finding the legitimate published studies or even an abstract difficult. Even then one has to read the study to see if the conclusions reached by Vocab and other fundamentalists are legitimate conclusions to reach from said study.

This is often the way it is with debates, particularly ones that involve statistics. It is incredibly easy to make a claim, but as a skeptic I don't want to dismiss a claim without giving a proper reason so it can often take much longer to debunk a claim than to make it. I'll wait until the actual debate is online in a week or two to post anything though.