Substance Abuse and Homosexuality

     I have always been wondering about the differential treatment substance abusers and homosexuals receive: the former would be advised to get rid of their habits and the latter will be celebrated (mostly by the gay community and SOME psychotherapists). You may ask why this is considered to be a differential treatment. Well, I have got some points here:

1. Both can harm one's health.
-Well, there is no doubt about substance abuse threatening our health. In fact, due to receptive anal sex, gay and bisexual men are about 15 times more likely to get anal cancer. Anal sex is also a very effective way to spread AIDS and many other sexually transmitted diseases. Also, Homosexuals are more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to abuse alchohols or has mental illnesses.

2. Both are to a certain extent, genetic.
-Just do a bit googling and you will find evidence for what I have said.

3. Both are changeable.
-same as the above

     How exactly do substance abuse and homosexuality differs from each other such that they deserve such differential treatment?

Counter Argument [Edited]

     Recently, I have received a counter-argument against this article, whose content was posted on another blog. This counter-argument goes as follow:

-- It is homosexual people's unhealthy habits that has caused their health problems, therefore what should be treated is these behaviors, rather than homosexuality itself.

     Ah really?

     There have been various research showing that homosexuality is inherently connected to unhealthy behaviors. For example, there are studies indicating that homosexuals are more likely to have mental health problems and be suicidal even in countries in which homophobia is remarkably low. Some of them even suggested that homosexuals are more likely to have such problems even when homophobia experienced is controlled for. All these implies that social factors cannot explain all mental health problems among homosexuals. Therefore, there are reasons to suggest that unhealthiness is intrinsically associated with homosexuality, although it may not be a direct causes of these problems.

     I believe this is a good reasons to treat homosexuality as a mental disorder. As we can see, MANY mental disorders including depression, conduct disorder, anti-social personality disorder don't directly lead to health problems but instead cause the sufferers to act in unhealthy manners. If this counter-argument stands, then we shouldn't treat these problems as mental disorder either, and this will lead to VERY disastrous result.

See: http://www.narth.com/docs/whitehead.html