Shorter life span - toxic gay culture or lonliness?
According to a major study by the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “bisexual women die, on average, nearly 40 percent younger than heterosexual women, while lesbian women die 20 percent sooner.” These are tragic numbers that should concern all of us, regardless of our attitudes towards lesbianism and bisexuality. If you care about people, this is sad to hear. As reported in the Daily Mail , “The researchers used data from the Nurses’ Health Study II, a cohort of over 100,000 female nurses born between 1945 and 1964 and surveyed since 1989.” So, while the study focuses on a particular segment of society, it relies on a tremendous amount of data and covers almost thirty years of death records. What was the cause of these alarmingly shortened life expectancies? According to lead author Dr. Sarah McKetta, a research fellow at the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute, “The difference in mortality is said to be due to the ‘toxic social forces’ LGBTQ people face, which can ‘result