Married Heterosexual Couples Healthier than Gay Couples

A study that appears in the journal of Health and Social Behavior states that same-sex couples that live together have worse health when compared to married heterosexual couples.

This study, conducted at the Michigan State University, may have certain implications for the gay marriage debate.

The study shows that married people are healthier than their unmarried counterparts. It doesn't directly deal with the potential health hazards of same-sex marriage, but the researcher states that allowing the same sex couple to legally wed could improve their health.

"Legalizing same-sex marriage," Hui Liu, a sociologist and the lead investigator, said in a press statement "could provide the benefits associated with marriage - such as partner health-insurance benefits and increased social and psychological support - which may directly and indirectly influence the health of people in same-sex unions."

In order to prove the hypothesis, Liu and her colleagues analyzed the self-reported health of 700,000 participants that that were part of a National Health interview in 1997-2009. Of these, nearly 3,330 men and women were same-sex cohabiters.

They noticed that poorer health reports came from the same-sex cohabiters as compared to the heterosexual married couples of same socioeconomic status.

The researcher predicts that this difference exists due to the lack of social, psychological and institutional resources that come with legal marriage. Apart from this, gay couples face high levels of stress triggered by homophobia and discrimination.

They even found out the difference in the racial groups and noticed that white and black lesbian women living together had poorer health than their heterosexual counterparts. On the other hand, black lesbian women living together had poorer health than the unmarried black women. Same was the case with white lesbian women.