A study published in February by the American Journal of Public Health found that gay men in Massachusetts were in better physical and mental health after that state became the first to recognize same-sex marriage in 2003. Researchers examined the medical records of 1,211 gay and bisexual men who went to “a large, community-based health clinic” in a “large metropolitan city” and compared the patients’ use of medical services before and after the law went into effect.
“One mechanism that may explain these findings is a reduction in the amount and frequency of status-based stressors that sexual minority men experience when institutionalized forms of stigma are eliminated,” they wrote.That last part hits on a point that Dan Savage raised in the post I link to below. Here's the relevant part of Dan's post:
The haters have it backwards. It's not that self-hatred in many gay people causes personally-destructive behavior. It's that the external hatred all gay people have to endure—discrimination, oppression, bigotry, and rejection by family members poisoned by "faith"—can lead to substance abuse, punishing sexual excess, and suicide. Being gay doesn't damage us. It's the way we are treated for being gay that leaves many of us damaged. Johann Hari said it best:It reminds me of the old fear that being gay was a security risk. And I've never said this before publicly, but the fact that it was considered a security risk made it a security risk.
Being subjected to bullying and violence as children and teenagers makes gay people unusually vulnerable to depression and despair. The homophobes then use that depression and despair to claim that homosexuality is inherently a miserable state—and we shouldn’t do anything that might “encourage" it. They create misery, and then use it as a pretext to create even more misery.
The stigma pushed gays into the closet which made them have "a secret." Get rid of the stigma, you get rid of the need to have a secret, and the security risk vanishes.
