Topic: CNSNews.com
Remember how professional gay-basher Matt Barber likes to spread lies and misinformation about gays? Well, here's another example.
We've previously noted the gay-bashing ("Homophobia: the rational fear that 'gay sex' will kill you!") in a Barber op-ed reprinted a couple weeks ago by CNSNews.com and WorldNetDaily. Barber also wrote:
To the consternation of "gay" activist flat-earthers and homosexual AIDS holocaust deniers everywhere, one such study, conducted by pro-"gay" researchers in Canada, was published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, or IJE, in 1997.
While the medical consensus is that smoking knocks from two to 10 years off an individual's life expectancy, the IJE study found that homosexual conduct shortens the lifespan of "gays" by an astounding "8 to 20 years" – more than twice that of smoking.
"[U]nder even the most liberal assumptions," concluded the study, "gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871. … [L]ife expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men."
As blogger Jon Rowe points out, this study took place before newer medications for AIDS victims were introduced. Further, the authors of that IJE study issued an update in 2001:
[I]t appears that our research is being used by select groups in US and Finland to suggest that gay and bisexual men live an unhealthy lifestyle that is destructive to themselves and to others. These homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and well being.
The aim of our research was never to spread more homophobia, but to demonstrate to an international audience how the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men can be estimated from limited vital statistics data.
[...]
In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.
This update is mentioned nowhere in Barber's op-ed. Indeed, we find nowhere on the CWA website where Barber or any other CWA official notes the 2001 update (though there are plenty of references to the original 1997 study).
Who's surprised? We're not. After all, CWA hired Barber knowing what it was getting, which makes the entire organization just as intellectually dishonest as Barber.
