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Polonius wrote:part of me is also curious if the Conservative movement, perhaps not the enthusiastic supporters of gay rights in this country, are just concerned that gathering this information could help LGBT folks, or even by collecting enough data lead to a better understanding of how prevalent they are in society.

Then I wake up and realize that conservatives would never allow such prejudice to cloud their views, and I'm simply living in a paranoid fantasy....

Its enlightening why ther Liberal movement would be ok with this invasion of patients' particularly childrens' personal privacy.

I'm not seeing anything in the article to support the idea that people will, hypothetically, be forced to respond to a question about sexuality in the event that the amendment is passed.

Statistics like this, in order to receive federal IRB certification, always have to include 'no response' options.

Frazzled wrote:

Polonius wrote:part of me is also curious if the Conservative movement, perhaps not the enthusiastic supporters of gay rights in this country, are just concerned that gathering this information could help LGBT folks, or even by collecting enough data lead to a better understanding of how prevalent they are in society.

Then I wake up and realize that conservatives would never allow such prejudice to cloud their views, and I'm simply living in a paranoid fantasy....

Its enlightening why ther Liberal movement would be ok with this invasion of patients' particularly childrens' personal privacy.

Yeah, the law requires providers to ask, not patients to answer.

Although part of me would love to swing through the red states and find out how many of those bible toting red blooded Americans are on the downlow. There is literally no number high enough to shock me.

Albatross wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Polonius wrote:part of me is also curious if the Conservative movement, perhaps not the enthusiastic supporters of gay rights in this country, are just concerned that gathering this information could help LGBT folks, or even by collecting enough data lead to a better understanding of how prevalent they are in society.

Then I wake up and realize that conservatives would never allow such prejudice to cloud their views, and I'm simply living in a paranoid fantasy....

Its enlightening why ther Liberal movement would be ok with this invasion of patients' particularly childrens' personal privacy.

Do it right!

Maybe there's some of that good ol' "Gay guys are more likely to catch AIDs" going down?

Henners91 wrote:Maybe there's some of that good ol' "Gay guys are more likely to catch AIDs" going down?

That's part of it, to be sure. Just being homosexual doesn't' make you more susceptible to AIDS, but there's a high correlation between being a homosexual (or practicing bisexual) male and behaviors that do increase odds of HIV infection: unprotected anal sex with lots of partners.

In particular the Gender ID question is going to only become more of an issue. A female identified biological male isn't just a crossdresser, but a person with a gender distinct from their physical equipment. Health providers could probably use that info to help treat patients.

Frazzled wrote:Again they have no business collecting information, at all. What about freaking client/patient privilege?

By your extremely adventurous definition of client patient privilege, it'd be a breach for a hospital to report on how many knee operations it performed last month. Client patient privilege limits the release of information with the client's name attached, everything else is you being dramatic about something because the Democrats did it.


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Albatross wrote:People like you are bad for conservativism. Listen to the language you use - you are using 'do good' as a pejorative. That's just moronic. As civilised people, we should be TRYING to do good, instead of revelling in how intransigent and small-minded we are. It's like you're proud of your ignorance. When did THAT become the 'American Way'?

Goldwater, more or less.


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Albatross wrote:Um, the UK has both public and private options.

The healthcare debate went on for about six months, and had been moving along on the backburner for ten years for that, arguably longer, and comparisons to UK healthcare were made throughout that. Yet so many people opposed to healthcare reform still have no idea how healthcare works anywhere else. It's amazing, really.

It's also important to keep in mind the difference between information being protected by privacy laws, and by a privilege.

Privileged information is not allowed to be used in court. It cant' be subpoenaed, or testified to, or allowed in even if it's known. Privileges are also not all the same. Attorney/Client is ironclad, Doctor/Patient is very strong (unless it's a therapist), Priest/Pentitent is absolute, and spousal only applies to conversations, not to witnessed events.

Privileges were established under the common law and have been since codified into federal and state Rules of Evidence.

Health information is private, not due to a privilege, but because federal law made it private. So, a doctor's office can't tell people who got what treatment. I'm sure Doctors and other health professionals are all bound to professional ethics rules that prevent them from blabbing, but the long and short of it is that there is a difference between the privacy acts, ethical rules, and evidentiary privileges.

Henners91 wrote:Maybe there's some of that good ol' "Gay guys are more likely to catch AIDs" going down?

Without the collection of this kind of public health statistics it is impossible to know.

Polonius wrote:Yeah, the law requires providers to ask, not patients to answer.

Although part of me would love to swing through the red states and find out how many of those bible toting red blooded Americans are on the downlow. There is literally no number high enough to shock me.

I hope there's an option 'are you a formerly prominent anti-gay campaigner who was caught doing blow off of a rent boy's ass?'

Because there's places where that would be a statistically significant population.

I've heard from "people that would know" that claim it's easier to get homosexual sex at a Texas truck stop than a San Francisco bathhouse. That's probably hyperbole, but it does explain the biggest mystery to me: why social conservatives get so riled up about queer issues. At least racism had an economic and political upside, but homophobia really seems to come from a more personal place.

Polonius wrote:Federal law is what makes medical records confidential, not the common law or evidentiary privilege. The government created the confidence, it can take it away.

Scary stuff right there. This whole notion of "The goverment giveth and the government taketh away" is far too prevalent today. This is also at odds with the views of the founders of our country, who simply recognized that God had granted men the right to life, liberty, property and privacy. They merely acknowledge that right.

Polonius wrote:If the government pays for something, it can do whatever it want. It always has been able to do that.

More of this government worship?!? I beg your pardon but the Fed has NOT always been able to do that. It's only relatively recently that the Fed has started wiping it's ass with the privacy and rights of the citizens.

Polonius wrote:
And while you may disagree, there is actually a bit more to running American democracy than having you read the constitution and tell us what you think. At this point the accumulated jurisprudence actually means something (don't forget that common law is also a founding principle of our country). So, sure, you can think whatever you want. It doesn't mean it has any relation to the actual legal reality.

Eh... last time I checked we lived in a Republic. Y'know, that thing that protects the rights of the few against the will of the masses by restrictions of law?

I see a new constitutional scholar has entered the ring.

Ok, first, how is the government asking for information a violation of privacy? Requiring it would be. Sharing it with names attached would be. Collecting it for statistical purposes while anonymous doesn't violate any form of privacy.

Secondly, the governmental laws that made medical records private actually violated rights: the right to share people's private matters with others. There is no general right to privacy in the constitution, and the constitution (aside from the 13th amendment) never speaks against public action. Medical privacy laws actually created rights for people: the right to have privacy in medical matters, even from non-governmental sources.

As an act of Congress, HIPPA can be overturned by congress. That doesn't mean government can go rooting through your medical records without cause, but it would mean that the billing specialist could tell everybody how got surgery without violating federal law.

I dont' think it's government worship to acknowledge the enumerated powers of congress. It also has had the ability to tax and spend as it saw fit. Unlike it's legislative power (which was originally narrow), the spending power was always "for the general welfare," which means whatever they want. If they want to spend money with conditions, that's A-Ok by the founders.

And yes, the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, while the first major violations of constitutional rights, is relatively recent.

I'm not even sure what your last point means, other than to say that you're angry about something. I do expect to see you and Frazz at the next ACLU meeting defending the rights of minorities, however.

There is a mechanism for the protection of rights. We have it, and it's called jurisprudence. This is why wearing a black armband is considered speech, and RVs are considered cars and not homes under the 4th amendment. There are a lot of questions, and we have a lot of answers. I think that in general the rights of the few are pretty staunchly defended in the country.

The Green Git wrote:Eh... last time I checked we lived in a Republic. Y'know, that thing that protects the rights of the few against the will of the masses by restrictions of law?

Umm, 'Republic' just means you don't have a king. People keep imagining these magical other properties onto the term, but that's basically what it is.

You probably mean 'constitutional representative democracy'.

Honestly Seb, virtually nobody in the US has any idea how their government actually works. They focus on slogans and talking points over underpinnings and realities.

Polonius wrote:Honestly Seb, virtually nobody in the US has any idea how their government actually works. They focus on slogans and talking points over underpinnings and realities.

This thread is an odd one. I mean, it isn't as though the US doesn't have plenty of real problems to worry about... but here's people inventing this whole issue over an option to answer a tick box question, and they're framing it as though it was the cornerstone of their liberty. It's just weird.

If I were a paranoid person with little respect for the right wing, I would assume it's simply a combination of Democrats doing something, anything, and the potential to help and/or legitimize queer citizens.

But that can't possibly be it, could it?

Polonius wrote:I've heard from "people that would know" that claim it's easier to get homosexual sex at a Texas truck stop than a San Francisco bathhouse. That's probably hyperbole, but it does explain the biggest mystery to me: why social conservatives get so riled up about queer issues. At least racism had an economic and political upside, but homophobia really seems to come from a more personal place.

I wish I had the links here, but chances are the "people that would know" aren't indulging in hyperbole. I recently read some interesting pop-science article about the sexual habits of women/girls as it related to body-type. It turned out that overweight white girls and skinny black girls both engaged in less sexual activity overall, but more risky activity when they did get laid. The authors went on to hypothesize that because these body types weren't considered attractive in their respective communities, they had motivation to put out more. And let's face it, sex with random strangers at a truck stop in Texas sounds both incredibly risky and like it's probably book-ending a dry-spell, whereas Joe at the front desk of the bath-house has probably reminded you that they're running yet another AIDS preventation seminar, and that if you don't have any condoms then you can grab a handleful from the fishbowl on the front desk kept there to try and discourage bare-backing. In other words the dudes you find a truck stops will be the desperate sex-starved closeted types who'll fark you no questions asked, whereas the most of the dudes at the bath-house will be regulars who know each other (yes, pun intended) and will be pickier about things like dress sense, looks, and hygiene.

I'm pretty sure that any form or questionnaire I ever filled out gave me the option to not answer any of the demographic questions if I didn't want to. I guess it kind of makes sense if you think they're going to compile statistics about diseases and health issues that are more prevalent in the gay community.

I'm not sure what the big deal is here.

From someone who deals with this on a daily basis it is incredibly relevant.

The Gay community has a lot higher chance of contracting AIDS, therefor if you know that a person is gay and the are promiscuous you might want to educate them a little more.

It is actually medically relevant what your preference is...

ShivanAngel wrote:From someone who deals with this on a daily basis it is incredibly relevant.

The Gay community has a lot higher chance of contracting AIDS, therefor if you know that a person is gay and the are promiscuous you might want to educate them a little more.

It is actually medically relevant what your preference is...

Accusation of homophobia in 5... 4... 3... 2...





I agree with you, but boy do some people get pissy when you bring that up.

lol im a registered nurse, Im not allowed to have phobias, or be squeemish...

I think the problem is that someone ticking "I'm gay" on a form is not going to stop them from catching STI's, nor is it going to mean that if they come in to the doctors with some unrelated problem they are automatically checked for them (which is relatively discriminatory in of itself) without significant change to the health system any more than checking "African American" will mean you get a diabetes test every time you go to the doctors.

Be great if it did, but all it is is box ticking (quite literally in this case). Yet another piece of information the government doesn't need.

Do gays want to be treated equally? Do they want to be acknowledged as legit and not deviant or underground? Then they should want to be recognized. I see this as a step towards equality personally, almost a validation. Sure it could be abused, but so can knowledge regardless of whether it's been written on a form or not. Example, a bad cop will abuse laws regardless of what laws exist and a good one will not.

Well, unless the government is interested in tracking health trends across demographics.

We know that african americans are more likely to suffer certain conditions because of extensive sampling of demographic medical data. AIDS was famously initially called GRID (Gay Related Immuno Deficiency) because a doctor connected the symptoms with sexuality.

The point is, anonymous data can be useful for tracking trends across demographic groups. It can also be used to see what kind of care each group is receiving.


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Cannerus_The_Unbearable wrote:Do gays want to be treated equally? Do they want to be acknowledged as legit and not deviant or underground? Then they should want to be recognized. I see this as a step towards equality personally, almost a validation. Sure it could be abused, but so can knowledge regardless of whether it's been written on a form or not. Example, a bad cop will abuse laws regardless of what laws exist and a good one will not.

Personally, I think this is the crux of the matter. It's less an invasion of privacy than it is an acknowledgment by the government that LGBT individuals exist.

A nice compromise might be if you check "yes" on the box that asks if you're sexually active, then you have a box to clarify in. That way no "invasion of privacy," but still gives the info doctors might need.

Actually, the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases is higher with the population known as MSM or "Men who have sex with men" (cue jokes about the mainstream media..). Not all of these men identify as "Gay". I think one could reasonably say that "Gay" is a type of "MSM", as in the men who are open about their desire to have sex with other men, and only want to have sex with other men. Not all men who have sex with other men only want to have sex with men; some of them also like to have sex with women. Not all men who have sex with other men will admit to it, even some of those that only want to have sex with other men.

Between the bisexual guys and the closest cases, we have one avenue of disease transmission into the 'straight' population, who already have their own promiscuous sub-communities (themselves larger than the 1-3% of the non-straight community) such as intravenous drug users* and swingers.

Take the whole "gays are going to have more unprotected anal sex", which by and by is probably true if we compare rates in both the heterosexual populations and homo/bisexual populations. If we compare raw numbers, however, unprotected sex (anal, vaginal, and even oral - go syphilis!) amongst heterosexual populations is more prevalent. It's like Warhammer: Gays may fail those saves at a higher rate, but there's simply more straight people rolling dice.

*Include crack and meth users in this group for the purposes of drug use alone constituting a major risk factor.

So is everyone still upset over a bill that wasn't even passed (just went out of committee) to ask a question that isn't required to be answered of people using government funded services? The title of the thread is extraordinarily misleading but and I can't help but wonder if that wasn't intentional.

Ahtman:

Of course it's intentional. Trolling is what Frazzled does when he's not being a moderator.