Anti-Gay Prejudice Is Literally Killing Gay People

I often state that while they try to pretend otherwise anti-gay Christofascists in actuality want all of us gays dead.  A new study released by Columbia University reveals that in some countries these "godly folk" are having some degree of success in this unspoken goal: gay individuals living in countries with high levels of anti-gay bigotry, prejudice, and hate, are expected to die 12 years earlier than their peers living in more progressive nations.  The findings were based on a review of 20 years of data.  I often state that the "family values" crowd has blood on their hands and this study indicates that, yes, they do in fact have blood on their hands.  Will these people feel and ounce of remorse?  Of course not, they are too busy congratulating themselves on their piety and poisonous religiosity.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the study findings.  Here are highlights:

A study just released by Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health finds that gay people living in communities entrenched with high levels of anti-gay bigotry, prejudice, and hate, are expected to die 12 years earlier than their peers living in more progressive and accepting environments.

“Shorter life expectancy of 12 years on average for LGB individuals in communities with high vs. low stigma,” a statement on the study reads.

“Our findings indicate that sexual minorities living in communities with higher levels of prejudice die sooner than sexual minorities living in low-prejudice communities, and that these effects are independent of established risk factors for mortality, including household income, education, gender, ethnicity, and age, as well as the average income and education level of residents in the communities where the respondents lived,” the study’s lead author, Mark Hatzenbuehler, PhD, assistant professor of Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia, said in a statement. “In fact, our results for prejudice were comparable to life expectancy differences that have been observed between individuals with and without a high school education.”

Ironically, conservatives for decades have been touting faux-scientific claims that gay people die decades earlier than heterosexuals. Most recently, RNC Committeeman Dave Agema of Michigan has been criticized for pushing a website that has published preposterous lies, like the “median age of death of homosexuals is 42 (only 9% live past age 65).” It also calls gay people “filthy.” Are the anti-gay hate groups and those pushing anti-gay bigotry responsible for creating an environment that is literally killing LGB people? Possibly, since this study seems to say, “yes.”

Next time you hear Tony Perkins and others seeking to export homophobia to Africa or hear a pastor bellowing anti-gay screeds from the pulpit, know that they are literally killing people.  These folks need to be expelled from decent society and the nation's political process.