Health Issues
• Scientists, doctors and people in general don’t
agree about what causes homosexuality or, for that matter, what causes
heterosexuality. Some say it is a matter of choice; others say it is
predetermined; some claim it is partially choice and partially
predetermined.
• According to studies done by Alfred C. Kinsey and
his fellow researchers in the 1940s and 1950s, more than 10% of the
population of the United States – or about 20,000,000 people – have had
a very significant homosexual dimension in their adult lives. The
results appear in Sexual Bahavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual
Bahavior in the Human Female (1953).
• Within the typical family grouping of mother,
father, four grandparents, two children, one aunt and one uncle, it is
very likely that at least one family member has a homosexual
orientation.
• Lesbian, gay and bisexual people come from all
walks of life. Almost everyone knows someone who is lesbian, gay, or
bisexual, even though they may not know that they do.
• The American Psychiatric Association passed a
resolution in 1973 declaring that homosexuality is not an illness and
that they deplore all public and private discrimination against
homosexuals.
• The American Psychological Association adopted a
similar resolution in 1975, urging that all mental health professionals
work to remove the stigma associated with homosexual orientation.
• Many health professionals believe that homophobia
(an irrational and persistent fear of homosexuality) is the real social
disease.
• AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome) is a
disease whose victims are about 70% homosexual in the United States.
However, a high percentage of these people are also intravenous (IV)
drug users. In Europe, about half of AIDS victims are heterosexual and
half homosexual; in Africa it appears to be an overwhelmingly
heterosexual disease. AIDS isn’t a gay disease; it just first appeared
within the gay male community in the United States.
• AIDS cannot be transmitted through casual contact –
such as shaking hands with someone who suffers from the disease.
Exchange of bodily fluids – such as blood or semen – with someone who
has the virus is necessary for a healthy person to contract AIDS. Safe
sex practices (and, for drug users, using only sterilized needles)
greatly reduce the chance of getting AIDS.
• Lesbians are at the lowest risk of HIV (or any STD)
transmissions. Heterosexual women of color are the fastest growing
segment of the HIV+ population in the United States.
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