Debate:Homosexuality and statistics

This is a Debate page. Feel free to add your own spin on the story. Please keep it civil! This debate was created by Eira.

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"Homosexuality and Statistics" Sane Disputatimus

I found some statistics about HIV prevalence, and a break down of their risk category. I'm using the 2005 diagnoses, as we want the most current rate of diagnoses as possible, rather than one that may be biased by previous behavior.

Important to note before even looking at the chart is that Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) covers a larger group than people who identify as gay, or bisexual. Keeping with CP's bias, I took the strong presumption that any homosexual experience was gay or bisexual, so MSM works nicely here for "anyone you could possibly call gay."

known MSM only...........47.9%
known MSM only to men....65.2%
drugs alone..............20.4%
drugs + MSM...............5.0%
drugs + MSM to men.......65.2% 6.8%
simply drugs..............25.3%
male simply drugs........18.1%
drugs only...............20.3%
drugs only to men........17.9%
known non-MSM............48.6%
known non-MSM to men.....34.0%
entirely hetero men......11.8%
drugs-only to all drugs..72.6% only considers men
MSM + drug to all drugs..27.4%
drug + MSM to all MSM....10.4%
only MSM to all MSM......89.6%
simply female............26.5%
entirely hetero women....18.7%
other/unknown.............1.2%
WSW only..................0.0%

Of note, drug users contained a little over 1 in 4 of the entire HIV population (both men and women). If you were a man and used did use intraveneous drugs, almost 3 in 4 hadn't engaged in any MSM contact at all, and all individuals men using drugs and were MSM contained only about 1 in 10 in of the entire MSM population. It would appear that no matter who you are, HIV drug risk for anyone is more significant than in MSMs among their own population. This would indicate either safer drug use by MSM, or less drug use by MSMs than compared to the entire population. Comparing only drug using men without MSM to MSM all men, you still have nearly 1 in 5 that only did drugs of the male population. Among men, you're twice as likely to get HIV from drugs if you never engage in homosexual contact at all, than if you did.^{wild ass guess!} I would presume this to be the result of better education among the MSM community about the dangers of drug use.^{wild ass guess!}

The number of people who contracted HIV while being known to be non-MSM was about 1 in 3, while about was 2 in 3 known to be MSM only (including drug users). That's only about one-half for non-MSM compared to MSM. Certainly, it raises your risk factor by 100% (x + 100% * x = 200% * x), and that's notably significant, but that means for every two MSM that contracted HIV, there was a straight guy who contracted HIV. It can hardly be called a "gay-only" disease by any definition.

Simply being female, 1 in 4 contracted HIV out of the entire HIV contracting population than men. As well, out of the entire population contracting HIV, women whose only risky behavior was heterosexual sex contracted HIV at a rate of nearly 1 in 5. This is actually about on par with male drug use. So, females engaging in high risk sex contracted HIV in almost a one-to-one rate with male drug users. That means that for every male drug user contracting HIV, there was a female contracting HIV strictly through heterosexual sex. Apparently, we've gotten to the point where just being a risky heterosexual women is just as likely as contracting HIV as a male drug user.

The statistics are fun, and obtained from the referenced site. Since I don't own mathematical processes, these numbers are free to be used anywhere, and please expound upon your findings here with me. --Eira ^yay! The Goat be praised. 13:13, 9 January 2008 (EST)

I don't disagree with your main point (I think you're saying that you can't call HIV a gay disease), but I may have some disagreements on your numbers. I don't quite think it's fair to say things like If you did use intraveneous drugs, almost 3 in 4 hadn't engaged in any MSM contact at all since a significant chunk of those drug users are women who obviously could never be in the "men having sex with men" category. In fact, the source doesn't talk about female-to-female sexual contact at all, and women can't really be tossed into the mix when considering male-to-male sexual contact, so let's assume we can only use these numbers to talk about men at least as far as homosexual contact comparisons go. According to the source, 28,037 men were diagnosed with HIV in 2005. Of those, 18,722 were what you're calling "MSM" who didn't use drugs and an additional 1,336 were MSM who did use drugs. That's 20,058 total MSM, or 72% of all men diagnosed. If you randomly picked out a man who was diagnosed with HIV in 2005, there's a greater than 7/10 chance that the man you chose had sexual contact with other men. Obviously there's more to the story than just that, and HIV is by no means a gay-only disease, but there's no denying that participants in male-to-male sexual contact are considerably over-represented in HIV diagnoses, especially when you consider that such individuals make up what, maybe between 10 and 20 percent^{wild ass guess!} of the male population but account for 72% of male HIV diagnoses.--Bayes^update 14:26, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Actually the CDC reports that there has never been a confirmed infection of a women strictly through having sex with other women. No matter how unsafe that sex was. All women who have had sex with other women, and contracted HIV had another risk factor. Therefore, the occurance for "WSW only" is 0%. As well, all risk factor groups for women have the exact same prevalence with or without WSW. So, listing WSW is meaningless, however I have explicitly added that prevalence rate. --Eira ^yay! The Goat be praised. 16:36, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Sorry, the statistic that I reference ("drugs-only to all drugs") does only consider men, yet that information was left out, sorry for the confusion. I agree, the other statistic would be fairly meaningless. --Eira ^yay! The Goat be praised. 16:42, 9 January 2008 (EST)

I admit to spinning the article a bit. The text portion deals with numbers that people typically see from the media. As well, in providing bigger numbers and saying "nearly" makes the prevalence sound more prevalent than it is. --Eira ^yay! The Goat be praised. 17:18, 9 January 2008 (EST)

As you may have noticed the value that you calculated yourself is quite different from the 65.2% that I calculated. The reason for this is that you used the first table, which only includes 33 states. The following table has all 50 states + Washington D.C. This gives almost a 7 to 10 for the prevalence which you made (which is much less than 75% or 3 in 4, but certainly the prevalence is not over 70%. A much closer rate for that would be 13 in 20. --Eira ^yay! The Goat be praised. 17:18, 9 January 2008 (EST)

Yeah, I see where the 72% / 65% discrepancy comes in. I misread what the two tables were actually showing; for whatever reason, I thought the top one was for 2005 only, and the bottom one was going to be all years prior up to and including 2005. So yeah, 13/20 (not quite 7/10, but almost :-)) is more correct. I didn't realize that female-to-female sexual contact hasn't been shown to transmit HIV, I guess I didn't pick that up in atheistic public school health class. I guess we'll just have to start promoting lesbianism for public health reasons.--Bayes^update 17:41, 9 January 2008 (EST)

An interesting idea, to promote lesbianism... however it would fail for the same reason that proscribing heterosexuality and sexual abstinence fails... people will always do as they wish. I, for one, am far too attracted to men... even though I'm aware that lesbianism carries much less chance of affecting my health, I could never be one. (Trust me, I tried in college.) So, I'd probably just end up marrying a woman and looking by all outward appearances to be lesbian... while running a sex service for all the frustrated males who would be forced to celibacy. :) I'm sure it would pay quite well... true, prostitution would be illegal in that situation as well, but I'm already breaking the law to be with the men anyways! --Eira ^omtg! The Goat be praised. 06:30, 2 May 2008 (EDT)