B
BigBadWlf
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Oh no….not Diggs
This guy’s work has been shown to be overflowing with misrepresentations, false comparisons and blatant lies more often than I can count
Let me summarize
Diggs tries to make five distinct claims and them pretend they are facts: 1) gays are more promiscuous than heterosexuals, 2) gays have more STD’s than heterosexuals and more illness in general, 3) the human body was not physically designed for gay anal sex, 4) gays have a higher rate of psychiatric disorders than heterosexuals. And 5) gays and lesbians have a shorter life span than heterosexuals
Diggs fails to support any of these claims and often blatantly lies to give the appearance that the scientific community supports his claims.
He generalizes convenience sample studies as indicative of the gay population at large. Diggs takes studies done in foreign countries about heterosexuals and claims that they are indicative of the gay population at large.
Twice, John R. Diggs includes the study done by Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg in their book, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, as indicative of the entire gay population. In one passage, he even refers to it as “a far ranging study of homosexual men . . .” But Bell and Weinberg never said that their findings were indicative of all gay men. In fact they explicitly deny such a claim. They actually said “. . . given the variety of circumstances which discourage homosexuals from participating in research studies, it is unlikely that any investigator will ever be in a position to say that this or that is true of a given percentage of all homosexuals.”
In another section entitled Physical Health, Diggs claims that gays are victims of “gay bowel syndrome.” The term is an obsolete medical term and even the CDC does not use it. In fact, if one was to look at the endnotes of Diggs’ study, he would find that two of the sources he quoted concerning “gay bowel syndrome” were from articles in published in 1976 and 1983, which is consistent with the years that the term existed. One last source was a letter to the editor printed in 1994 but Diggs does not make it clear as to whatwere the circumstances surrounding it.
In detail
1) Gays are more promiscuous than heterosexuals.
Diggs cites the Bell and Weinberg study to show that gays are radically more promiscuous then straights. However, this interpretation of the Bell and Weinberg study has been rejected not by just the scientific community but by Bell and Weinberg as well. The reason is because of numerous problems found in the study, primarily, they did not use a random sample, they didn’t use a control group. Bell and Weinberg state that “there is no way what we reported can be extrapolated to the population at large.” They cite the following issues:
“The sampling of the homosexuals in the study was not random.”
“No survey of heterosexuals as well as homosexuals… [there is] no correlative data on the heterosexual sample. For all we know the heterosexual sample may have had a greater number of sexual partners than the homosexual sample. Without this control group, we cannot generalize their sample to the population at large, because we do not know that their population represents national norms since we have no heterosexual control group. It is possible that the heterosexual statistics were equally high, and could have shown that the data does not represent promiscuity specifically among gays, but of the sexually active single person in San Francisco in the 1970's.”
“A third problem, still relating to the heterosexual sample, is that it did not represent a true control group. Apart from the fact that the homosexual sample was not random and the heterosexual sample was, the homosexual samples were taken from the following places: singles bars (22%), gay baths (9%), public places (=guys hanging out in parks to find sex partners; 6%), private bars (=sex clubs; 5%), personal contacts (people that the bar people, public place people, bath house people, etc, knew personally and referred; 23%), public advertising + organizations + mailing lists (29%).The heterosexual sample, on the other hand, were people in residential areas, admittedly including married people. These two samples are not parallel, and even if included, the heterosexual data would not be comparable. In order for this data to have been generalizable, the heterosexual sample would have to be drawn from heterosexual singles bars, sex clubs, bookstores, etc.”
“ the use of Kinsey 2-6 for inclusion of homosexual population. The sample does not represent only homosexual persons, but also includes bisexual persons.”
What Diggs ignores are studies comparing promiscuity rates and monogamy rates of heterosexuals and homosexuals
J Harry. Contemporary Families and Alternative Lifestyles, ed by 1983 Macklin, Sage Publ.
L Peplau, Lesbian and Gay Relationships. Journal of Homosexuality 1981 6(3):1-19
J Spada , The Spada Report, New American Library Publ 1979
E O Laumann, JH. Gagnon, R Michael, and S Michaels . The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. 1994 Chicago U Press.
RP Vierod. Prevalence and trends in homosexual behavior in Norway Scandinavian Journal of Social Medicine. 1997 25(1):33-38
MM Dolcini “Demographic Characterizes of Heterosexuals with Multiple Partners: The National AIDS Behavioral Surveys” Family Planning Perspectives. 1993 25 (5): 203-214
S Bryant and JA Demian “Partners National Survey of Lesbian & Gay Couples” Journal of Gay and Lesbian Social Services 1994 1 (2)
JO Billy, K Tanfer, WR Grady, DH Klepinger 1993 Sexual Behavior of Men in the United States Family Planning Perspectives 25:52-60
R Fay CF Turner, AD Klassen, and JH GagnonPrevalence and Patterns of Same Gendered Sexual Contact among Men Science, Vol 243, Issue 4889, 338-348
These studies show that the number of sexual partners homosexuals and heterosexuals have in a lifetime are almost identical. They also show that 80% of same gendered couples are in monogamous relationships, which is about the same as heterosexual couples.
A corollary of this claim involves Diggs claiming that homosexuals are significantly more likely to practices deviant sexual acts, specifically sadism and masochism. He uses two events that took place regarding bondage workshops. However, Diggs lies in his claims about the workshops in that they were presented and attended by heterosexuals.
2) gays have more STD’s than heterosexuals
Diggs makes the claim that gays have a higher rate of STD’s than straights, and that, in and of itself, should be evidence that homosexuality is a sin. African Americans have significantly higher rates of STD’s than whites or gays, I doubt that Diggs would want to use this fact as a tool to initiate the eradication of African Americans. Further, Diggs tries to make the claim that since aids has such a higher rate of infection among gays than straights in the us, he fails to put it into the worldwide epidemiological context, where more than 95% of all cases of aids is transmitted by heterosexuals.
Diggs claims of higher rates of STD’s among homosexuals falls apart when one notes he uses studies about prostitutes attending free clinics in large cities. As one can imagine such women have a high incidence of STD’s. A number of such prostitutes are lesbians, usually these women are younger, often teenagers forced out of their homes by families and engaging in prostitution to survive. Diggs uses the high incidence of STD’s among these prostitutes to claim that Homosexuals in general have high incidents of STD’s. He ignores the fact that were he to use this same population the same conclusion that heterosexuals suffer from extraordinarily high cases of STD’s
Continued
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