GMHC Celebrates SCOTUS Ruling, Good for Public Health

GMHC celebrates the U.S. Supreme Court 5-4 ruling stating that marriage is a fundamental right in which LGBT Americans must share.

"Today, all LGBT Americans will be allowed to marry who they love," said GMHC CEO Kelsey Louie. "Today's victory was made possible by the foundation built by early AIDS activists. They taught us how to stand up to our government and demand to be treated with dignity and today the Supreme Court affirmed our right to dignity and to marry who we love."

A study from two researchers at Emory University, published in 2009, documents how attitudes on homosexuality, including bans on marriage between same sex couples, are linked to sexual activity and rates of HIV transmission and show that marriage bans do not serve public health but instead increase infection rates.

In this first study of the impact of social tolerance levels toward gays in the United States on the HIV transmission rate, the researchers estimated that a constitutional ban on gay marriage raises the rate by four cases per 100,000 people.

"We found the effects of tolerance for gays on HIV to be statistically significant and robust -- they hold up under a range of empirical models," said Hugo Mialon, an assistant professor of economics.

"Laws on gay marriage are in flux and under debate," added Andrew Francis, also an assistant professor of economics. "It's a hot issue, and we are hoping that policymakers will take our findings into account."

The study used data from the General Social Survey (GSS), which has tracked the attitudes of Americans during the past four decades. The economists calculated that a rise in tolerance from the 1970s to the 1990s reduced HIV cases by one per 100,000 people, and that laws against same-sex marriage boosted cases by 4 per 100,000.

"Intolerance is deadly," Mialon said. "Bans on gay marriage codify intolerance, causing more gay people to shift to underground sexual behaviors that carry more risk."

Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) is the nation's leading provider of HIV/AIDS care, prevention services and advocacy, serving nearly 9,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in New York City, the epidemic's largest U.S. epicenter. As the world's first HIV and AIDS service organization GMHC is an expert in providing services that every person affected by the epidemic deserves. GMHC is on the front lines caring for people who are both HIV negative and positive, including: testing, nutrition, legal, mental health and education services.

GMHC also advocates for stronger public policies at the local, state and federal level with the goal of ending AIDS as an epidemic in New York State by 2020. Most recently, GMHC and other HIV/AIDS organizations successfully persuaded the federal government to recommend widespread use of PrEP, a new daily treatment that is over 90% effective in preventing HIV infection. For more information, visit www.gmhc.org.