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Del. Bob Marshall"s statements about homosexuals havegenerated plenty of controversy this spring. Marshall, one of four candidates running in Tuesday"s GOPprimary for the U.S. Senate, made national news May 15 when he leda successful movement in the House of Delegates to reject thejudicial nomination of a gay prosecutor. Among other things,Marshall argued that Tracy Thorne-Begland could not be trusted onthe bench to uphold Virginia"s ban on same-sex marriage. Two days later, during an interview on CNN, Marshall againquestioned Thorne-Begland"s ability to render fair judgments,saying, "Sodomy is not a civil right." And during a campaign swing in Charlottesville on May 24, areporter asked Marshall whether gay sex should be protected by theconstitution. "The court says it is in certain limited circumstances, butyou know what that behavior does? It cuts your life expectancy byabout 20 years," Marshall said. Is Marshall right that the lifespan of gays is, on average, twodecades shorter than heterosexuals? We asked him to provide proof. Marshall, who represents Prince William County, sent us an emailciting a study published in June 1997 in the International Journal ofEpidemiology. The report, conducted by researchers at the BritishColumbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, examined how HIVaffected the mortality of gay and bisexual men in Vancouver from1987 to 1992. The study found that life expectancy at age 20 among gay andbisexual men in Vancouver was 8 to 21 years shorter than that ofall men in the Canadian city. The researchers also said theirconclusion probably underestimated the life expectancy deficitamong gay and bisexual men because AIDS cases were underreported. But that"s not the end of the story. The report"s authors, in 2001, took exception toconservatives who used their study to condemn the lifestyle of gayand bisexual men. The researchers said circumstances had changedsince their study ended in the early 1990s. "If we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancyof gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved," theauthors wrote. "Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically inthis population since 1996." The researchers, however, did not conduct a new study on the lifeexpectancy for gay and bisexual men. We spoke to Julio Montaner, a co-author of the study and directorof the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/AIDs. He saidMarshall"s statement is a "gross misrepresentation"of the research. "To use my report to support the notion that gay and bisexualsex is somehow the reason why people die early is misusing thedata," Montaner said. Montaner noted that his group"s original report was conductedat a time when the HIV epidemic was poorly controlled andtreatments were ineffective. Since then, there have have been greatstrides in treating the disease and preventing its spread, Montanersaid. In British Columbia, annual diagnoses of new infections havedropped from 900 in the mid-1990s to 300 in recent years, he said.Deaths from HIV also have fallen sharply, he said. In the United States, figures from the Centers for Disease Controlshow that the rate of HIV deaths per 100,000 people peaked at 36.3deaths in 1995 and fell to 2.7 in 2010, the latest year data isavailable. Gay and bisexual men remain the group most heavily affected by HIV,according to the CDC. Although they represent 2 percent of the U.S.population, gay and bisexual men accounted for 61 percent of newHIV infections in 2009. Marshall, in his email, listed sent abstracts of other studiessaying homosexuals have high rates of suicide attempts and certaintypes of cancer. Two of the studies cite high number of deathsamong gay men from HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. "With significant investment in medical resources, homosexualsare living longer than in previous years with their compromisedhealth status, but nevertheless still shorter lives than comparablemarried heterosexuals who don"t eat up medical resources tothe same extent," Marshall wrote. None of the other research Marshall listed proves his point thathomosexual behavior today cuts life expectancy by 20 years. Marshall, for example, cited a study by the American Journal of Public Health that examined themortality of men and women in same-sex marriages in Denmark from1989 to 2004. It found that death rates among those couples was athird higher than the general population, despite a significantdrop among men in same-sex couples. Even so, the report, publishedin 2009, criticized other published claims that homosexuals have alife expectancy that"s more than 20 years shorter thanheterosexuals. "Although further research is needed, the claims ofdrastically increased overall mortality in gay men and lesbiansappear unjustified," the report said. We sought U.S. data on how how life expectancy of homosexualscompared to the rest of the population. But the CDC, which compilesstatistics on longevity, doesn"t keep figures based on sexualorientation. Laura Durso -- a public policy fellow at the Williams Institute atUCLA, which researches issues facing lesbian, gay, bisexual andtransgendered (LGBT) people -- said few national population-basedsurveys in the U.S. inquire ask about sexual orientation. Thatmakes it difficult to compare the life expectancies of homosexualsto heterosexuals, she said. Still, Durso said, reports have shown that LGBT populations faceincreased certain health risks. LGBT youths in particular have beenshown to have a higher rate of suicide, she said. Gay men appear tobe at higher risk for anal cancer while lesbians appear to be athigher risk of breast cancer, she said. Our Ruling Bob Marshall said homosexual behavior cuts a person"s lifeexpectancy by about 20 years. The research Marshall cites to support his claim is two decades oldand was conducted near the height of the HIV epidemic. One of theauthors said there have been tremendous advances in HIV treatmentover the last 20 years and that Marshall"s statement is a"gross misrepresentation" of the research. The U.S. death rate from HIV was nine times higher in 1990 than itwas in 2010, the latest year for the data. Marshall cites a number of other studies that show homosexuals facecertain health risks. But none of them focused on the lifeexpectancy of homosexuals, and they certainly didn't conclude thatgays die about 20 years earlier than heterosexuals. We rate Marshall"s claim False. 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