Is it true that gay men have a shorter life expectancy than heterosexuals?

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that it's true statistically. I mean just the suicide stats are probably enough to make it true. In the end I'm not sure it has to be personally relevant. I mean being poor shortens your life expectancy. Being non-white shortens it in the States. Living in the US shortens it as opposed to certain other countries. A population as a whole is subject to a lot of statistically relevant stressers that don't apply to all of its members.

 

My Dad's a pretty homophobic conservative guy and he says being gay is what makes people kill themselves. He's also spouted that stuff about "homosexuals statistically having shorter lifespans" but I don't know how true any of it is. He's probably thinking of statistics released during the height of Reagan's AIDS crisis.

 

Women do statistically live longer than men, that's just a fact. But I think the right-wing, the American right-wing in particular, want for LGBT people to die. Look at Ronald Reagan, he let so many people die of AIDS on his watch because of his beliefs that he can be likened to a figure like Hitler or Stalin, except instead of killing us through action, he killed us through willful inaction.

 

Unfortunately the world tends to follow suit with whatever the United States is doing. When we elected Trump, Brazil elected a similar guy named Jair Bolsanero, who's also a terrible person. The UK elected that Boris guy. Russia re-elected Putin. Whatever the USA does, the whole world seems to follow in their footsteps for some reason and I don't know why. Europe largely seems to be immune to this sheep mentality but like you said there are right wing parties in Spain (that's part of Europe, right?) that are stirring the pot in a negative way. The point is that eventually there's a paradigm shift where the tables are more or less turned and we all "switch" identities from conservative to more liberal.

As far as the whole "homosexuals living shorter lives" things go, like I said, my Dad, who's pretty homophobic himself, says that the reason gay people commit suicide is simply because they're gay. I don't think that's true, or at least, I don't want to believe that being LGBT inherently makes you want to kill yourself. I could be wrong, though because as someone who deals with a lot of mental illness issues already, I do deal with suicidal ideation on a daily basis and I wonder why I can't just get through the day without being calm and complacent just once. Is that because I'm queer? I don't know, maybe. I wonder if being on the LGBT spectrum and having mental illness go hand in hand?

 

No, I agree with you, but he's what's called a Republican and they just make stuff up as they go along because they're desperately trying to relive the 1950s postwar era when steel was made in America and "men were men." But Republicans like my Dad don't seem to understand or even care that LGBT people aren't accepted and figure that a gay man committing suicide must be the "will of God," or something along those lines. Never mind that the homophobia in the Bible comes from the Jewish part of the Bible and that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. But it's this twisted mentality by mostly older people that ruins everything for the rest of us.

 

For heterosexuals men who get married there are studies showing they have a “marriage advantage”. A lot of society reinforces advantages to being in a committed couple. So, if you want to live longer find a great person to settle down with. Sadly, it seems bisexuals who marry someone of the opposite sex have no such marriage advantage.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00813-2

 

I wouldn't really consider myself "bisexual," more like homoflexible. This is why when someone asks me "Are you gay?" I say "No, I'm queer." Because there's really no good word for what I am. I'm just queer. I'm sexually queer and I'm queer in the sense that I'm a peculiar person. I always laugh whenever I see an old episode of The Simpsons and Homer sees something strange and says "Hmm, that's queer." But does the fact that I'm queer mean I'm going to live a shorter life than a heteronormative person?

Maybe.

But I think other factors will play into my demise, like my weight, the fact that I'm a pretty heavy smoker and that I have poor hygiene all factored in with my mental illnesses existing comorbidly with these physical factors I think I will die around age 49-50. So I have about seventeen years left, give or take a year or two.

 

That's interesting.

Doesn't that imply that part/all of the health advantage that comes monogamous relationships is from the sexual fulfilment aspect - in that for straight/gay folk that can be more straightforward in a mono- set-up but more difficult/less likely for a bisexual?

Has there been any similar research done on various forms of poly relationships? I wonder if they are healthier for folk.

 

@Dreamsexul you ask a good question about sexual fulfillment and longevity. It isn’t just the intimacy, it is “higher social support” too, which in societies (like ours) that emphasize being in couples means singles don’t have an advantage. Bisexuals may be in a couple but their sexuality may be a cause of stress on that system (the past 18 months of being out to my wife, and the emotional roller coaster that resulted from that honesty, has rapidly taken nearly all the remaining color from my graying hair), and stress is related to poor health outcomes (as are behaviors which reduce health, such as not going to the doctor or not being open with your doctor which is more true for bisexuals, statistically, though not true for me). Here is a study that tries to address what you raised:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5496682/pdf/nihms868119.pdf
“Preliminary evidence suggests that higher social support is associated with longer telomere length in a sample of older adults (Carroll et al, 2013). Additionally, ambivalent relationships, characterized by both high positivity and high negativity, have been related to shorter telomere length (Uchino et al., 2012). This may suggest that one way in which lower-quality relationships affect health is through an influence on telomeres. Partner status is also associated with telomere length (Mainous et al., 2011; Yen et al., 2013). Compared to married/never married individuals, divorced/ separated individuals show shorter telomeres, when controlling for sociodemographic and health confounds (Whisman et al., 2016).”

So in terms of what the original poster asked, being in an intimate relationship that has high positivity and also social support should help with longevity.

 

@DecentOne
I may be getting it wrong, but does that boil down to:

In the right society, having a positive sexuality-compatible monogamous relationship is better than no such relationship, but no relationship is better than a bad one.

I wonder if for some people, having a positive sexually-compatible poly relationship is even better than a mono one, since the support network would obviously be increased.

 

I have no idea if studies have been done on poly relationship and longevity or stress, I suppose you could do an internet search. My guess is that societal misunderstanding or pressures, and inability to be out as poly at work, may bring additional stress to individuals in a polycule, which may negate at least some of the positivity within the polycule itself. The support network is not necessarily increased, the way it is for opposite-sex mono couples, and (more recently in several places) same-sex mono couples.

 

@DecentOne
But the sensible expectation would be that in an accepting society, poly relationships would be healthier than mono ones, right?

 

@Dreamsexul , I suggest you start a new thread if that is where you want the conversation to go, as that isn’t anywhere close to what the original poster was asking.

 

Sorry, it's just how our conversation naturally developed. I realise it's gone off on a tangent and I apologise for my inadvertent de-rail.