On Sep 19, 9:40 am, Martin Koolhoven
wrote:
> On 17 sep, 02:22, kfw1...@yahoo.com wrote:
>
> > On Sep 16, 5:41 pm, Martin Koolhoven
> > wrote:
>
> > > Let;s scrutinize your source:
> > > "Few studies employed control groups and most had small samples. "
> > > So some did. Why only talk about the ones that didn't?
>
> > I can onlyume that those studies had some of the other problems
> > mentioned.
>
> That's quite anumption.
>
> > > You have a point. I guess it comes down to who you believe here. The
> > > one who are against ...s for religious reasons or the one who is
> > > willing to stand up for their rights. My money is on the last one.
>
> > In other words, you see the one side as liberators and the other side
> > (falsely) as oppressors, and for that reason you truth the data of one
> > side and not that of the other. Do I need to point out why that's
> > illogical?
>
> Yes please.
> I do see the religious right as the oppressors, since they have a long
> history of denying any ... rights. If they are the only ones coming up
> with arguements against ... marriage, I can't help but be sceptical.
>
> MK
There is also a high level of dishonesty when using legitimate
studies. The largest number of studies of ... men are the result of
Socialogical HIV and AIDS research. These legitimate studies are
being presented by the religious right and other anti-... sources as
representative of the entire ... male population and being used to
make the very claims that Ken is making about the promiscuity of ...
men in general and how that would effect the raising of children. The
adoption study that Martin cites is a much more accurate
representation of the situation involving ... people who are adopting
because it actually pulls it's information from studies performed
within that population.
I came across this analysis of the situation the other day:
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,003.htm
What the "Dutch Study" Really Says About ... Couples
Jim Burroway
January 9, 2006
One Sunday evening, I finally got around to reading that day's
newspaper when I saw a letter to the editor from Glen Lavy, Senior
Vice President of the conservative Alliance Defense Fund's Marriage
Litigation Center. He objected to an editorial that suggested that
same-. marriage may help to provide stability in the lives of ...
men and women. Lavy's letter read in part:
According to a Dutch study, same-. "partnerships" for young men are
temporal at best, and men in "steady partnerships" have an average of
eight partners per year aside from their "main" partner...1
We've seen that claim before. Whenever discussions about ... marriage
come up, these statistics are tossed around with startling
consistency:
"What does a homo.ual marriage look like? Well, the longest term
that we have available to look at is in the Netherlands. Researchers
found that the average "marriage" between two men lasts one and a half
years. Furthermore, during that time, men have eight other partners
per year." - Dr. James Kennedy2
"A recent study from the Netherlands, where ... marriage is legal, ...
found that even among stable homo.ual partnerships, men have an
average of eight partners per year outside their "monogamous"
relationship." - Christianity Today3
"A recent study on homo.ual relationships finds they last 1-=BD years
on average - even as homo.ual groups are pushing nationwide to
legalize same-. 'marriages.' The study of young Dutch homo.ual men
by Dr. Maria Xiridou of the Amsterdam Municipal Health Service,
published in May in the journal AIDS...found that men in homo.ual
relationships on average have eight partners a year outside those
relationships." - Washington Times4
Now that you've read these claims, what can youume? Like most
people, you're likely to guess that these statistics came from a broad-
based general population survey in the Netherlands studying homo.ual
behavior and ... relationships. Unfortunately, you'd be wrong. It
turns out this "Dutch Study" was performed by a team of researchers
led by Dr. Maria Xiradou that appeared in the May 2, 2003 issue of the
journal AIDS. And what is the title of that study? "The contribution
of steady and casual partnerships in the incidence of HIV infection
among homo.ual men in Amsterdam."5
Dr. Xiridou and her colleagues based their research article on the
Amsterdam Cohort Studies of HIV infection and AIDS among homo.ually
active men.6 These studies began in 1984, and had several different
protocols in their lifetime:
Oct 1984-1985: ... men aged 18-65 with at least two .ual partners in
the previous six months. In other words, monogamous partners were
explicitly excluded.
April 1985-Feb 1988: Study enrollment was continued, except HIV-
negative men were now excluded. Only HIV-positive men were added.
Feb 1988 - Dec 1988: The study was re-opened to HIV-negative men.
Various additional enrollments continued from through 1998. Especially
notable was a special recruitment campaign for men under the age of
thirty beginning in 1995. After 1996, all men above the age of thirty
were dropped from the study. Their data was excluded from subsequent
analyses.
Nobody outside of Amsterdam was accepted into the study except for
AIDS patients who attended clinics in Amsterdam for treatment. This
makes the study almost exclusively an urban one.
So, what do we have? We have a study population that was heavily
weighted with HIV/AIDS patients, excluded monogamous participants, was
predominantly urban, and under the age of thirty. While this
population was good for the purposes of the study, it was in no way
representative of Amsterdam's ... men, let alone ... men anywhere
else.
This turns out to be a very common tactic among anti-... extremists.
Because they're eager to portray their positions as being backed by
scientific research, they often turn to medical studies to support
their arguments. And they are especially fond of studies of HIV/AIDS
and other .ually transmitted diseases (STD's), which they can count
on to provide especially juicy statistics to describe "what
homo.uals do". But of course, all you really learn from these
studies is what some homo.uals do - the ones who go to STD clinics
because they've picked up a disease. By turning to Dr. Xiridou's
study, these activists are following a well-worn path.
And of course, to spotlight the anti-... lobby's most glaring logical
fallacy, I would like to point out that these "statistics" have
nothing to do with ...s at all.
So let's review the claims against what the study actually says.
Claim #1: The study was of homo.ual relationships between married
homo.ual men.
This study was not about homo.ual relationships. The authors are
mostly doctors and epidemiologists - they study how diseases are
passed along from one person to the next. Their research article
presented a mathematical model that was intended to predict how HIV
and AIDS would spread among ... men. If a couple is monogamous, then
by definition they would not be contributing to the spread of HIV and
AIDS. Monogamous couples were simply irrelevant to the study, which is
why they were explicitly excluded.
Claim #2: Homo.ual relationships last for an average of only one and
a half years, making same-. marriages short-lived.
The first problem we have here is that anyone who was over the age of
thirty was excluded from the study. By keeping the age of the sample
population to those thirty and under, this artificially limits the
length of time any of them could have been in a "steady relationship".
You're certainly not going to find any twenty-nine-year-olds in thirty-
year relationships, or even fif-year ones.
But that's not the only problem. The study didn't ask if any of the
participants were married because they couldn't marry. Marriage
equality didn't arrive in the Netherlands until April 2001, two years
after the study ended. Instead the participants were simply asked if
they had a "steady relationship" with no further guidance on what that
means. People dating for a few weeks could consider themselves in a
"steady relationship" - which would be a far cry from full-fledged
marriage.
This is an important pont. If legally recognized marriage had been an
option for these couples (and if the researchers had been interested
in studying only married ... men), they would have had a consistent
standard for excluding those couples who were merely dating, or even
those who were living together but who didn't want to get married.
That would have been the only valid way to compared married ...
couples to married straight ones. You would have weeded out those who
don't want to marry, or who weren't at that stage in their
relationships where they felt ready to be married. After all, not all
straight couples in "serous relationships" are married. By including
couples in short-term relationships as well as those who don't want to
be married, the average length of relationships is significantly
lowered.
And of course, monogamous couples were excluded from the study
altogether. I don't think it is too much of a stretch toume that
non-monogamous relationships are less likely to be as stable as
monogamous ones. By excluding monogamous couples, the average is
likely reduced even more.
To make a valid comparison to straight couples, we would need to
compare this group of ... men to married and unmarried urban straight
couples - all under thirty and all non-monogamous. This didn't happen.
Claim #3: Men in homo.ual relationships on average have eight
partners a year outside those relationships.
The authors quoted that average in their study, but they never tried
to claim that it was true for ... men as a whole. Because the study
excluded monogamous couples, the stated average would naturally be
excessively high. What's more, we don't know how much this average was
skewed because we don't know how many monogamous couples were
excluded.
The only thing we can conclude from this study is that when people
decide to be non-monogamous, they decide to be really non-monogamous.
As we have seen, the "Dutch study" claims made by anti-... activists
are seriously distorted. Like most of their claims about ... men's
.ual behavior, anti-... activists rely on studies that are not
representative of the general population. What's worse, they
especially rely on studies culled from STD clinics for most of their
claims. And by not telling you the nature of these studies or their
participants, they are engaging in a deliberately deceptive practice.
And they get by with it because theyume you won't read these
studies yourself, which is a safeumption for most readers. After
all, who has the time to go to a medical library to look up these
studies in arcane professional journals?
These activists know that STD studies are a reliable source of
statistics describing the behavior of irresponsible ... men and women.
But these studies are far from representative of the ... population as
a whole. If you don't believe that, then perhaps you should check out
what straight STD patients are doing.
Notes:
1=2E Lavy, Glen. Letter to the editor. "Dangerous Stand, Skewed Facts"
Arizona Daily Star (July 31, 2005): H3. Available online at
http://www.dailystar.com/dailystar/opinion/86403php. [BACK]
2=2E Kennedy, D. James; Newcombe, Jerry. What's Wrong with Same .
Marriage? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2004): 22. [BACK]
3=2E Benne, Robert & McDermott, Gerald. "Speaking Out: Why ... Marriage
Would Be Harmful." Christianity Today (Feb 16, 2004). Available online
at http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/107/41.0.html. [BACK]
4=2E Fagan Amy. "Study finds ... unions brief. Washington Times (July
11, 2003). Available online at http://www.washtimes.com/national/20030711-1=
21254-3711r.htm.
[BACK]
5=2E Xiridou, Maria; Geskus, Ronald; de Wit, John; Coutinho, Roel;
Kretzschmar, Mirjam. "The contribution of steady and casual
partnerships in the incidence of HIV infection among homo.ual men in
Amsterdam." AIDS 17, no. 7 (May 2, 2003): 1029-1038. Available online
at http://www.aidsonline.com/pt/re/aids/fulltext.00002030-200305020-00012.h=
tm.
[BACK]
6=2E For a more detailed description of the Amsterdam Cohort Studies'
participants, see Dukers, Nicole H.T.M.; Goudsmit, Jaap; de Wit, John
B=2EF.; Prins, Maria; Weverling, Gerrit-Jan; Coutinho, Roel A. ".ual
risk behaviour relates to the virological and immunological
improvements during highly active antiretroviral therapy in HIV-1
infection." AIDS 15, no. 3 (Feb 16, 2001): 369-378. Available online
at http://www.aidsonline.com/pt/re/aids/fulltext.00002030-200102160-00010.h=
tm.
Additional information can be found at the Amsterdam Cohort Studies'
web site at http://www.amsterdamcohortstudies.org.
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