Because I hate bad statistics

[maradydd]

The following is a response to this post about California's Proposition 8. I left it as a comment there, but comments are moderated, and somehow I don't think it will get posted. Thus, y'all get to read it here.

Amy writes:

"After legalizing same-sex marriage 5 short years ago HIV/AIDS has increased in Massachusetts with more than 40,000 being infected each year."

I don't know what Amy's source on this figure is, but I did some research, and this claim is not only wrong, it's wrong on several orders. The first same-sex marriage in Massachusetts was performed on May 17, 2004. Since then, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS -- "prevalence" meaning "how many people have it" -- has increased, but the rate of increase has fallen off sharply.

First of all, according to the Massachusetts Office of Health and Human Services' epidemiology department, whose 2007 report you can read for free, as of November 1, 2007 there were only 16,866 people known to be living with HIV/AIDS in Massachusetts.

How could there be 40,000 new cases a year if the total number of cases in the state is less than half that?

The report also examines the trends in HIV infection. As you can see in the chart (the right-hand one on the first page), the number of newly diagnosed HIV infections dropped sharply between 2004 and 2005 and again in 2006. If you look at the first page of the data tables, you'll see that in 2003 the total number of cases was 14,992 and in 2004 it was 15,633. That's an increase of 641 cases. In 2005 the number was 16,217 -- an increase of 584 cases. In 2006 the number was 16,621 -- an increase of 404 cases. For the first ten months of 2007 it was 16,866 -- an increase of 245 cases.

What we can see from this is that the rate of new infections in Massachusetts has not only fallen since the introduction of gay marriage, it has fallen more quickly. 57 fewer people got infected in 2004 than in 2003. 180 fewer people got infected in 2005 than in 2004. And 159 fewer people got infected in the first ten months of 2007 than in all of 2005. If we project that trend out to the end of 2007, that would be 190 fewer new infections.

I'm sorry, Amy, but your argument doesn't hold up.

Comments

[bunnykitteh.livejournal.com]

Oh thank you thank you thank you!

1) Thank you for doing this research... I *knew* that argument of Amy's was just waiting for this.

2) Thank you SO MUCH for your tags on this post. I SO needed a laugh (or three) after talking to my grandma about Prop 8.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

You're quite welcome. Feel free to link, if you like. I'm glad it gave you a laugh, too. :)

[bunnykitteh.livejournal.com]

I forwarded it on to Amy and all our friends ;-)

Forgot one

[dv-girl.livejournal.com]

It's a shame that it didn't list the sexuality of the newly infected. New cases of HIV infection has been on a serious decline in the gay community for close to a decade now. It's mostly kids with lacking sex education that are getting hit these days.

Re: Forgot one

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

The data tables sort of go into that, on page 15 where it talks about exposure mode. However, the data aren't broken down by year; it merely looks at all diagnoses from 2004-2006.

Interestingly, male/male sex without IV drug use and "undetermined" are the two lead causes, at 37% -- in fact, undetermined is highest. (Though, note that "heterosexual sex with partners with unknown risk and HIV status" is rather disingenously included under "undetermined". If that were combined with the "heterosexual sex" category, that would be a whopping 33% of cases. Dammit, people, use condoms!)

I can understand why they didn't put that in the report, though; getting people to tell the truth about their sexual orientation is hard due to stigmatisation (boo, hiss), and people are probably self-reporting about how they got infected.

[patrickat.livejournal.com]

I left it as a comment there, but comments are moderated, and somehow I don't think it will get posted.

The best bloggers always moderate comments to keep any pesky FACTS from sneaking in to ruin their argument. /sarcasm

Something similar to Prop 8 passed here in Ohio in 2004. The Republicans used it as an incentive to get conservatives to the polls and hand the state to Bush. I really hope the 2008 election doesn't see more states writing discrimination into their constitutions.

[michiexile]

Also because it's so much cleaner to fight the mountains of spam in your moderation queue than in your comment threads.

Seeing the pile of unchecked comment spam drown out the legitimate discussions is a good blogkiller.

[michiexile]

Not, notedly, that I in any way condone her behaviour. I'm just pointing out that there are more reasons to moderate blogs than to protect your pwecious arguments.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, I get very little comment spam, despite the fact that I allow anonymous commenters and have had a couple of posts (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=maradydd&keyword=famous+on+the+internet&filter=all) receive hundreds of comments (many from non-LJ users) thanks to propagation on BoingBoing, Reddit, Digg, and so on.

The fact that LJ provides a "Delete this comment" link in every notification email makes it easy to keep the spam down. I only delete comments that are obvious spam, e.g. links to online pharmacies/gambling sites/porn/&c.

[michiexile]

LiveJournal is really good on controlling spam levels. I run a wordpress blog on my closet server, and there I am VERY happy that I see every comment from a non-known commenter before anyone else. There's a LOT of porn links streaming in on that blog (normally dedicated to mathematics)...

[quirkybird.livejournal.com]

On the anumeric side, I am also fascinated as to her logic on how legalizing committed same-sex unions will result in an uptick in promiscuous, unprotected gay male sex (presumably the source of infection, from her perspective).

Theories?

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Theories?

She's a noxious harridan who wishes to write her prejudices into law?

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm baffled about that one too, given that monogamy is often the point of marriage. (Not so for polyfolk, obviously.)

Further, I'd think that the belief that one might someday commit to a lifelong monogamous relationship would be an encouragement to be more careful about HIV.

No, I think ilcylic nailed it: there's no logic to the argument, it's just a scare tactic aimed at paving the way for further anti-civil-rights legislation.

[spider88.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to figure out how domestic violence would rise. Does she think domestic violence between cohabitating people isn't really DV? Does she think marriage makes people hit each other? Or does she think some voodoo is occuring that makes heteros hit each other when gays get married?

Baffling.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I did a tiny amount of digging on the DV issue. It's harder to research, because while public health is a statewide issue and thus the state must publish regular reports, domestic violence is usually a county or local issue and I don't think there are state agencies that composite the data together.

I did find some stuff on DV-related homicides. Those have gone up since 2004. However, I don't see how that can be claimed to be the result of gay marriage; the report was one page and didn't break it down by the genders of the couple. In 2007 there were 55 DV-related deaths, by the way: 42 murders and 13 suicides in 37 incidents. (It counts children being offed.)

[michiexile]

Am I bad person for rearing back even at the sight of that picture at the top of her blog layout?

[graydon.livejournal.com]

What on earth brought you to that blog? It's absurd!

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

bunnykitteh knew this person back in high school, wrote a response to it, and then linked to that response in foxgrrl's LJ. I read the response, read the original post, and went WTF MATH.

[kayjkay.livejournal.com]

I added you as a friend back when the whole debacle over the Orphan Work's Act had everyone up in a tizzy, hope you don't mind.

Folks like Amy fail to realize that that loving marriage she has with Michael wouldn't be the same less than 100 years ago. She'd basically be property. But telling Yes to 8 supporters things like that gets under their skin because they have no fundamental knowledge of what marriage was to begin with. In the mid 1800's, it wasn't even defined as a man and a woman.

It just gets my goat. I'll be voting tomorrow, ending the H8TE of Prop 8 hopefully :/

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I'll see your lack of historical knowledge and raise you a couple centuries. Gay marriage has been a tradition on this continent longer than standard judeo-christian-heterosexual-before-God marriage. Google for various legitimate marriage arrangements under Navajo culture.

[kayjkay.livejournal.com]

I did not know that... and that is awesome :) I'll look it up.

[feralnerd.livejournal.com]

Well done.

[baphnedia.livejournal.com]

Nice work!

(that's all I'll say for now, I need to get back to writing a novel, wewt)

[nibor.livejournal.com]

40,000 is the number of cases per year in the US, per http://www.whitehouse.gov/onap/facts.html
I find it unlikely that all of them would be living in Massachusetts.

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Aha! I was wondering where that number was coming from.

And yeah -- Massachusetts as a state only has about six, seven million people living in it. A new-infection rate that high would be insane.

[nibor.livejournal.com]

Also, according to this very unscientific number from cnn:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/06/16/feyerick.samesex.marriage/index.html

"More than 10000 couples" have been married. So how do 20,000 people in committed relationships account for 40,000 * 4 years = 160,000 infections?

Just a bizzare claim all around. I think one could also say that Ohio banned gay marriage, and HIV infection rates in the US are 40,000 year and be just as relevant. I think Texas probably upped the speed limit to 80 in some places around then, too.

[kragen.livejournal.com]

Bravo for bringing evidence into this discussion.

She didn't claim the rate of new infections had risen; she said "HIV/AIDS", which presumably means "HIV/AIDS prevalence", had risen. She is correct about that, as you confirmed. That rise is hardly surprising, though; as far as I know, HIV prevalence has risen every year in every state since HIV was discovered, because there's no cure, it takes a long time to kill you, it's a contagious disease that currently affects a small fraction of the population, and humans have no natural immunity. This means that the increase is not due to same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, and maradydd's analysis, looking at the rate of change in the rate of change, is the right approach.

Perhaps Amy is parroting someone who actually knew what they were talking about, and left out qualifiers like "40 000 new cases per year in the US"?

For what it's worth, the number of new infections is not the same as the change in the number of cases. The number of cases can increase because people with HIV immigrate from other states (and actually you would expect the same-sex marriage law to encourage this), and it can decrease, or increase by a smaller amount, when people die or emigrate to other states.

A plausible case for legal same-sex marriage increasing the incidence of domestic violence can be constructed as follows:

• Legal same-sex marriages will increase the number of same-sex partnerships by making them more attractive to people who might otherwise end up single or with an opposite-sex partner. (Seems likely; in fact, you might even say reducing the number of same-sex partnerships busted up by societal pressures is kind of the point of same-sex marriage!)
  
• Male-male partnerships have higher rates of domestic violence than opposite-sex partnerships. (I think this is empirically supported but I forget where to find the evidence. It is hardly surprising, though; men are, on average, far more aggressive than women.)
  
• The people who commit that domestic violence in male-male partnerships would commit less of it if they were single or with an opposite-sex partner. (Plausible (for example, maybe fighting back increases the amount of domestic violence, and women are less likely to fight back), but I would want to see evidence to support it.)
  
• Either female-female partnerships don't have lower rates of domestic violence than opposite-sex partnerships, or the rate is lower by less than the contribution from male-male partnerships, or the increase in the number of female-female partnerships will be much smaller than the increase in the number of male-male partnerships. (All three of these are plausible.)
  

Rather than speculating among like-minded people about how those who disagree with us are "noxious harridans", it would probably be more productive to sit down with them and try to empathize with them. Even when they're wrong, and even when they're not 100% genuine. In the long run, that's the only way to resolve contentious issues for real. Getting angry at strawman caricatures we construct in our own minds will just deepen the divisions in our society.

Orson Scott Card wrote a pretty good (clear, logical, somewhat misinformed, based on premises I disagree with) explanation of why he thought gay marriage was a threat to marriage in the Mormon Times: State job is not to redefine marriage, 2008-07-24.

See also my related comment on another friend's blog.