since being gay can decrease your lifespan by 20+ years, that alone could account for a good chunk of the life span difference here. I assume most gays are not religious.
What would be the response if a consensual Christian practice - lets say the Lord's supper - was shown to be responsible for 81% of new HIV cases aged 13 and older among men - - despite only representing approximately 4% of the male population - and 92% of new HIV among youth, and (historically) a greatly increased incidence of other infectious diseases and premature death, and despite decades of attempting to tame it into being "safe," then it would be treated as the plague.
God made man and women distinctively different yet uniquely compatible and complementary, and only joined them together in marriage - as the Lord Jesus Himself specified (Mt. 19:4–6) - and Scripture only condemns homosexual relations wherever they are manifestly dealt with.
Yet there is still room at the cross for all who will come to God in repentance and faith, and trust in the Divine Son of God sent by the Father, the risen Lord Jesus, to save them on His account, by His sinless shed blood, and thus be baptized and live for Him. Acts 10:36-47
Good comments on this thread—one of the major flaws with all “social science” is that they confuse correlation with causation—with no practical way to separate them.
Folks with healthy life practices have a whole list of characteristics—and there is no practical way to tease out which of those characteristics is the most important.
One example—non-Christians are more likely to live in large cities where there is more pollution.
