Debunking myths about LGBTQ+ people | News, Sports, Jobs – Marshall Independent
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To the editor:
There’s a very good reason why no public school teaches the myths being peddled by people like Chad Conway. That is because they are just that, myths.
Chad used obviously false and misleading information in his letter dated Aug. 10. He appears to have gotten all of his “facts” from far-right political/religious organizations such as the Family Research Council.
The FRC and organizations like them routinely publish misleading and false information about the LGBTQ+ community in order denigrate LGBTQ+ people and to further their political/religious agenda. I’ll debunk just a couple of the more egregious myths here as I’m limited on space.
I’ll start with the myth that the average gay man has over 1,000 sexual partners in their lifetime. This myth comes from a book published in 1978 called “Homosexualities” by Bell &Weinberg. This book used survey participants from the San Francisco Bay area, many of whom were male prostitutes. Not only is this outdated, but the survey participants were clearly not representative of the wider US population. In surveys that are recent and representative of the US population as a whole, most gay men say they have 0-1 sexual partners per year and that over their lifetime they may have between 10-20 sexual partners.
His statistic that 86% of of gay men get HIV after entering a monogamous relationship is also a myth. In this case, he is misrepresenting data directly from the CDC.
The data from the CDC says this: “In 2018, men accounted for 30,691 (81%) of the 37,968 new HIV diagnoses in the United States and dependent areas. Most (86%) new diagnoses among men were attributed to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men.”
It wasn’t hard debunking these myths. Just a few minutes of research showed that Chad’s “facts” were either flat out lies or a blatant misrepresentation of the actual data.
The disinformation that people like Chad and these far-right political/religious organizations spread is not new nor is it well intentioned. It’s meant to deceive and sway public opinion so they can enact their religious agenda as law.
Anthony Studemann
Marshall