We Respond To Register Letters

On Dec. 6, the Register published a letter from Robert Spencer, who warned that homosexual marriages would raise health insurance rates. "Since homosexuals bring disproportionately more costly diseases upon themselves by destroying their autoimmune systems," he wrote, "all of us would have to pay higher premiums." While a National Center for Health Statistics report suggests health costs are, indeed, skyrocketing—from $696 billion in 1990 to $1.4 trillion in 2001—it places most of the blame on a health system that caters to Americans who continue to smoke, sit around on their asses and eat like death-penalty cases at their last meals. Fully 65 percent of Americans are overweight, 31 percent obese, and 11 percent wear nothing but stretch pants—leading to increased incidents of disease and forecasts of a coming diabetes epidemic. Plus, old people just refuse to die. In fact, Spencer seems to be making the case for gay marriage: people in monogamous relationships—whether hetero, homo or clergy—are far less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior than sexually active singles (i.e., good-looking people).