No-Smoking Scientist Urges Sen. Portman to Change Gay Marriage Stance

Dr. Paul Cameron, the first scientist to document the harms of secondhand smoke, went to Ohio’s capital Wednesday to call upon Republican Sen. Rob Portman to reconsider his recently announced support for gay marriage. 

“Sen. Portman, gay marriage is hazardous to one’s health. For the sake of the son you love, urge him to marry a woman,” Cameron said. 

“Danish government statistics show that wedded gays and lesbians die 10 to 20 years earlier than the conventionally married,” the scientist added, citing a study of gay marriage by pro-LGBT researchers Morten Frisch and Jacob Simonsen that appeared in the March issue of Oxford’s International Journal of Epidemiology. Frisch and Simonsen found that the average age of death for homosexually married men and women is approximately 60 years of age; for the conventionally married, it is about 80 years. 

Cameron, who holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Colorado and is chairman of the Family Research Institute in Colorado Springs, said, “Sen. Portman’s son, Will, a college junior who has revealed his homosexuality, recently wrote in the Yale Daily News, ‘We’re all the products of our backgrounds and environments … We should think twice before using terms like ‘bigoted’ to describe the position of those opposed to same-sex marriage.’

“Will Portman is right. Many decent people, even at fine schools like Yale and Ohio State, are simply unaware that the science has long indicated the senator’s son and others were not born gay. Now Denmark’s government statistics show Will Portman would likely die much earlier if he marries a man, while heterosexual marriage would probably add years to his lifespan.

“The Danish study by pro-gay scientists, as well as my own research, offers answers to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s question to gay marriage opponents in recent oral arguments: ‘What harm [do] you see happening and when and how?’” 

Referencing his own study of 2,428 obituaries from the San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe, Cameron said the median age of death for conventionally married men is 82 and for women is 85, similar to the findings of the Denmark study.

Of 1,400 obituaries in the San Francisco press, he said the median age of death was 54 for homosexuals who died without a listed partner and 51 for those with a listed partner. For lesbians, Cameron said the median age of death was 56 for those without a listed partner but 54 for those with. For transsexuals, the corresponding figures were 46 and 42.5. 

“Whether informal, as in San Francisco, or formal, as in Denmark, homosexual partnerships were associated with lessened lifespan—just the opposite of man-woman marriage,” Cameron said. 

He then turned his attention to the science of sexual orientation by saying, “Bad science is bipartisan. An April NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 50 percent of Americans imagine with Rob Portman, against the empirical evidence, that people are born gay. Ted Olson, the GOP lawyer who argued for gay marriage in the Supreme Court as sworn to tell the truth, falsely wrote in the Journal that homosexual orientation is ‘a characteristic with which they were born and which they cannot change.’

“In fact, twin studies show that homosexual interests are not DNA-determined, like race, gender and eye color, so gay analogies to the civil rights struggles of the last century are inept. How else does one explain how Ellen DeGeneres’ first ‘lifetime partner’ could abandon homosexuality for traditional marriage? Sen. Portman’s son was no more born with homosexual preferences than anyone is born with a sexual taste for children—both are acquired and can be controlled.” 

Portman, considered last year as a possible running mate for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney (who facilitated the first gay marriages in the U.S. as governor of Massachusetts, pursuant to a state court ruling), has seen his popularity fall since declaring himself in favor of gay marriage a month ago, according to a Quinnipiac poll reported Friday in The Washington Post. 

Cameron says he went to Columbus to plead with Portman because he understands the nation’s most powerful Republican, House Speaker John Boehner, is working with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Portman to install a former Ohio lobbyist for homosexual marriage, Matt Borges, as state party chairman this Friday—a move opposed by 84 Tea Party, Christian, pro-life and GOP conservatives led by former State Rep. Seth Morgan of Dayton, in a recent public letter that made headlines statewide. 

“No responsible leader of any party, and certainly no conservative with any integrity, would be supporting same-sex marriage if he actually understood the empirical science that associates homosexuality with early death and disproportionately high rates of pedophilia, pederasty, molestation and predatory recruitment,” Cameron said. 

Meanwhile, in Boehner’s district, others have been running TV spots for weeks that associate Boehner with homosexuals in the Boy Scouts and with U.S. debt-financed subsidies for abortionists. 

Cameron said, “For the same reason society is concerned about the health effects of secondhand smoke, Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court should oppose the rush to nationalize same-sex marriage. Litigating for ‘marriage equality’ is like suing to suspend gravity; as a matter of science, gay marriage is very clearly unequal in terms of procreative and mortality prospects.

“Because married heterosexuals live longer and healthier, public policy should encourage young people to enter traditional marriage. I imagine Sen. Portman recognizes that our aging society needs healthier people and more babies, not the higher morbidity and mortality associated with homosexuality. The lifespan evidence suggests that his son, Will, and all of us are designed for heterosexual commitment.”