Stupid id as Stupid Does

The Camerons, that crazy, rabid anti-gay father and Son team, has a new paper out claiming that Gays only live to 52. (I love the name of the file: Homo_Footprint).

Cameron has been debunked many times before by everyone except for the religious right, who lap him up like a lime Rickey on a summer’s afternoon.

Gay.com has a piece on some of the lies surrounding his credentials.

I thought I would read the article and see how obvious the bias was. And, since I subjected myself to it, I thought I would subject you to it as well.

The Article starts with a quandary. A study in Canada showed that, on average, 1.7 % of people self-reported being gay (18-60). But, if you include 60+, that number drops to 1.4%. So, what’s the deal?

Well, obviously, the gays in the younger groups die off well before reaching 60. hence, the drop. Now, some of the less educated among you, might think that maybe there is a correlation between youth and comfortability with ‘outing’ yourself. You’re a heathen, of course. It’s because gays die at age 52.

Now, if you look at the (minimal) data Cameron shows you as to how he arrived at the figure, you find something interesting, though not surprising. As the % of those who identify as homo/bi or straight drop, the ‘unknown’ category jumps accordingly. If the change in the homo/bi category was because they were dying off faster than the straights, you would expect not just a drop in the homo/by %, but also a corresponding jump in the straight %. This doesn’t occur. Instead, the amount of unknowns jump.

Why? Cameron doesn’t both to explore or explain, just assumed the percent drop in homo/bi is due to the death of people in that group.

A similar problem exists in the Denmark/Norway statistics. Denmark started allowing gay unions in 89. Norway, in 93. Cameron assume, incorrectly, that once those options were available, gays flocked to them in equal distribution.

Instead, it is far more likely that younger people sought out this option while older couples, probably already had legal protections in place and didn’t bother. (This, again, assumes that the older population was even in relationships as frequently as the younger crowd, which is a dubious assumption). Since, then, it seems reasonable to assume the age of those partnered skewed young, then the age of those who died while partnered would skewer young as well.

The last bit is the US bit, which has been debunked before. Rather than basing his conclusions off of any actual data, he combed through the obituaries of the Washington Blade, and counted those who were gay, and how old they were when they died.

The problems with that method boggles.