“You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear. You’ve got to be taught from year to year.”
— Oscar Hammerstein II, “South Pacific”
Perhaps it could be called “the Trump effect” — statements so wildly wrong, exaggerated and irresponsible that it is astonishing that anyone would believe them, let alone say them. That could certainly be said of recent statements about gay suicide deaths made by Dave Robinson, the communication director of the Salt Lake County Republican Party. Robinson, who says he knows gay people who have had “over 2,000 sex partners,” speculates that there is a causal relationship between promiscuity and suicide.
What is particularly puzzling is that Robinson is gay, which makes it more likely that those unfamiliar with the nature of homosexuality or the causes of suicide and its prevention might be influenced by his assertions. His misleading and inflammatory declarations are akin to those that have persisted in Mormon culture for decades that homosexuality is a chosen and changeable sexual orientation. The evidence is clear that homosexuality results from normal variation in human developmental biology, not from any personal decision or moral defect.
In resurrecting the mythology about gay hypersexuality that arose at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the last century, Robinson enflames people’s worst fears and prejudices about LGBT people, especially when he accuses gay men of having rampant unprotected sex “like bunny rabbits.” There is no reliable scientific evidence that hypersexuality (HDI), a proposed clinical disorder found in both heterosexual and homosexual men and women, leads to suicide. The tragedy is that Robinson’s comments are likely to increase discrimination and rejection of LGBT people, which increases vulnerability and risk, especially among young people in Utah, where adolescents are more likely than any other age group to die by suicide.
According to the authors of What Health Care Professionals Need to Know About Sexual and Gender Diversity (2015), “The myth about the ‘hypersexuality’ of LGBTQ people is related to our cultural anxieties about ‘promiscuity.’” Robinson’s comments run the risk of increasing those anxieties at a time when there is tremendous ignorance and misinformation about gay suicide, thereby increasing the rejection of LGBTQ individuals, which in turn contributes to increased suicide risk.
According to research conducted by Caitlin Ryan and her colleagues at the Family Acceptance Project, LGBTQ youth who experience high rejection by their families and caregivers are eight times more likely to attempt suicide compared with those with no or low levels of family rejection. According to a study by the CDC, gay, lesbian and bisexual youth are nearly three times as likely as straight youth to contemplate and five times as likely to attempt suicide.
The irony of Robinson’s irresponsible statements is that suicide among gay men and lesbians, especially the young, is much more likely the result of the absence rather than the abundance of sexual expression, combined with the guilt experienced by those from conservative religious cultures who even contemplate having sex outside marriage. For LGBTQ Mormons who are offered no prospect of sexual expression outside heterosexual marriage, the risks for suicide ideation are particularly high because they face the prospect of a life with no romantic relationships or sexual expression.
The terrible unspoken assumption behind Robinson’s comments is that LGBTQ people are inherently promiscuous, without the same moral impulses common in the heterosexual majority. In truth, like everyone else, LGBTQ people aspire to family and commitment.
Utahns need to take the high rate of suicide, especially among young people, seriously. We can begin by insisting on facts rather than fiction, and on science rather than myth. The solution to extremely high suicide rates does not lie in condemning or reinforcing prejudice. It lies instead in love, compassion and understanding.
Bill Bradshaw
Bill Bradshaw is emeritus professor of molecular biology at Brigham Young University. With his wife, Marge, he was co-chair of LDS Family Fellowship, a support group for parents of LGBTQ children.
Robert A. Rees
Bob Rees is the author of “Requiem for a Gay Mormon” and co-author of “Supportive Families, Healthy Children: Helping Latter-day Saint Families with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Children.”
