Is marriage the key to gay men living longer? According to a new Danish study, the answer is a definite yes.
Published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, the study reportedly examined 6.5 million adults from 1982 to 2011. As the Los Angeles Times points out, the mortality rate for married gay men plummeted during the course of the study, now hovering slightly lower than the rate observed for unmarried or divorced heterosexual men.
"Among men in Denmark, it is more dangerous to be unmarried or divorced than to be married to another man," study researcher Martin Frisch of the Statens Serum Institute in Copenhagen and the Center for Sexology Research of Aalborg University is quoted by Live Science as saying.
On the flip side, the study also found that lesbians had experienced the opposite effect, and were actually at an increased risk for mortality, most notably from suicide and cancer.
Denmark became the first country in the world to recognize civil partnerships for same-sex couples in 1989, while its same-sex marriage legislation was approved in 2012, according to the BBC.
In a press release, Frisch added, "It is a novel observation that being married was not always protective. Among persons living alone and persons living in same-sex cohabitation, those who were married to a member of the opposite sex had noticeably higher mortality than unmarried and same-sex married persons."
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