Gay Men: Homophobia And Health Care

We as gay men deserve the best that health care professionals can give us and if we feel that homophobia is involved in our patient/health care provider relationships we need to make a change. Our mental and physical health is too important for us to shortchange ourselves by staying with health care practitioners who do not have our best interests at heart because we will be receiving substandard care.

Here are a few facts from recent surveys that can show us that homophobia in the U.S. health care system is not just in our minds. The American Association of Physicians for Human Rights in a survey taken of its own members in 1994 reported the following:

• 67% answered that they knew gay men, lesbians and bisexuals who had either received substandard care or even been denied care because of sexual orientation.
• 52% had literally witnessed their health care colleagues giving reduced care or even denying care to gay men, lesbians and bisexual patients based on their sexual orientation.
• 88% had actually heard their colleagues make disparaging remarks about gay men, lesbians or bisexual patients.

The American Medical Association in a survey conducted in 1991 reported that:

• 35% of general practitioners and internists would feel nervous around gay people.
• 35% felt that homosexuality is a threat to many of our basic social institutions.

With over one-third of internists and general practitioners feeling uncomfortable with us and having at least a subliminal need to protect what they perceive as the status quo ("it's us against them"), can we expect to receive even the minimum standard of health care from "over one-third of internists and general practitioners" in this country that would be free of their personal distastes, prejudices and hidden hostility? Of course not. Their own homophobia would influence the quality of health care they provide.

Members of the San Diego County Medical Society in a 1986 survey of their members found that:

• 30% would not admit a highly qualified gay applicant to medical school.
• 40% would stop referring patients to a fellow colleague if they discovered that colleague was gay.

In the four-year medical schools in the U.S. the average time during those entire four years devoted to the subject of homosexuality was 3 hours and 26 minutes -- this for a group that makes up nearly 10% of the U.S. population. It seems that far from being a priority, we are an embarrassment.

Gay patients have reported negative reactions from providers of health care including moralizing, disgust and breaches of confidence.

This is the opposite kind of experience and relationship we need to have with our health care providers. We need to be open and honest when we interact with professionals in the health care system and be able not only to discuss general health problems but sexual practices as well which can put us at different risks for health problems than say the sexual practices of heterosexual patients. This is certainly not to say that we cannot receive quality and compassionate care from heterosexual women and men -- we can. But we have to make certain that they have knowledge about the health issues facing gay men or at least can refer us to appropriate health care providers who are not homophobic.

In the last decade we have shown that as a group we have some new political and economic clout -- let's use it. We are consumers in the health care system. Let's not buy something that's no good for us.