Posted by
Karl Lembke on Saturday, November 14, 2009 2:10:18 PM
Bert Chapman, Government Information and Political Science Librarian at Purdue University, offers his
Economic Case against Homosexuality. His argument is that, leaving aside Biblical passages, homosexuality costs more than we can tolerate.
I distinguish between acceptance and tolerance. Acceptance of a thing means I consider it a good thing, and wish there were more of it. For example, cheap energy. Tolerance of a thing, on the other hand, means I consider the thing less than optimal, and indeed, harmful. It's not a good thing. Good things don't have to be tolerated -- they get accepted. Tolerance recognizes a balancing act -- how much of a bad thing can we tolerate in our lives, or in society. It would be nice, for example, if people ate only healthy food and maintained an ideal weight. But we tolerate a certain amount of unhealthy eating, because the alternative -- government food police -- would be worse.
Chapman's premises are that AIDS costs us an inordinate amount of money and other resources, and that benefits made available to same-sex partners will raise the cost of these benefits for married couples. (He spends a paragraph on prison rape, but I don't know anyone who is in favor of rape.)
AIDS is expensive. It's probably more expensive now than it was when it was an automatic death sentence. We have treatments that will extend life, but that means any treatments will be administered for decades instead of months. Here, the ways we can reduce the cost of treatment are make the treatment less expensive, or stop treating. The second choice is not one we're willing to make as a society, so we're kind of stuck doing research.
We could also focus more on prevention, but the populations that have the highest incidences of AIDS -- gay men and IV drug users -- may not approve of some of the steps that could be taken. IV drug use is already illegal, so I'm not sure if legal sanction for homosexuality would affect anything. Indeed, jailing gay men would simply turn the problem into a prison rape problem. (By definition, all sex in prison is rape, since it's all illegal.) However, should we take a look at the prevalence of "bare-back" parties and groups that cater to people who are actually trying to get infected?
We could treat AIDS like other STDs and enforce mandatory reporting and contact tracing. And indeed, maybe we should. I don't know if quarantines should be enforced against AIDS patients or those who are HIV positive, but if the argument is made that AIDS is an equal opportunity killer and could affect anyone, maybe that justifies stern steps.
As for the issue of benefits and insurance costs, that's more of a complaint about socialistic regulations than about homosexuality. If insurance companies were allowed to distinguish (so far, a more acceptable word than "discriminate") between same-sex partnerships and married couples, they could adjust the cost of the premiums to reflect observed differences in risk. If it turned out same-sex partnerships had lower risks than married couples, they would have lower premiums. (And no one would complain.) If this sort of distinction is forbidden, then the effect is that the lower-risk population subsidizes the higher-risk population. If same-sex partnerships have lower risks than married couples, their premiums, being higher than their level of risk calls for, represent some amount of money going to subsidize the higher risks for married couples.
As it stands, gay rights activists object to the notion of allowing insurance companies to make these distinctions and adjust premiums accordingly. A cynic might suggest it's because they know what side of the risk differential they're on.