[Emu]

It's not that I can't argue against "independant" sources, it's that I won't. Your sources are openly, obviously and heavily biased in your favor. They use misleading statistics in order to portray a picture that's not there. They link correlation with causation, which is wrong. As with the alcoholism, they don't compare the rate of alcoholism among homosexuals to the rate of alcoholism among heterosexuals. (Unless I missed it, but I'll go look again.)

Edit: Okay, yes, it did. However, now that I look at it again, I see another problem.

The study compares hetero and homosexuals as if they're two isolated populations of equal amounts of people. That's simply not true. If I remember correctly, only about 5% of the population of any given country is honest-to-God homosexual. If you take a population of say (to keep it simple) 1,000 people, and 5% of them are gay, how many people does that leave? 50. (I'm gonna continue to use round numbers to keep it simple, and since I suck at math.) Allowing 50% of those 50 to be alcoholics, that means 25 people are alcoholics and gay.

Now, the study also says that 5% of heterosexual women are alcoholics (that's WOMEN ALONE, as compared to the disconcertingly high number of alcoholic men, which is conveniently not mentioned), that leaves 5% of 950, or about 48 people. The number of alcoholic heterosexual women is actually HIGHER than the number of alcoholic homosexuals, men and women together. But look at that! 50% of homosexuals are alcoholics, but only 5% of heterosexual WOMEN ALONE!

And that's only the part you quoted. I'd like to point out that you conveniently ignore the disclaimer just below the statistic you quoted:

It is important not to assume that homosexuality causes drug or alcohol abuse. When gay men, lesbians and bisexuals internalize society's homophobic attitudes and beliefs, the results can be devastating. Society’s hatred becomes self-hatred. As a minority group, gay men, lesbians and bisexuals are victims of systemic and ongoing oppression. It can lead to feelings of alienation, despair, low self-esteem, self-destructive behaviour and substance abuse. Some gay men, lesbians and bisexuals resort to substance abuse as a means to numb the feelings of being different, to relieve emotional pain or to reduce inhibitions about their sexual feelings.

Substance abuse often begins in early adolescence when youth first begin to struggle with their sexual orientation. When surrounded by messages telling you that you are wrong and sick for who you are, eventually you may begin to believe it. Having to hide your identity and deal with homophobic comments and attitudes — often made by unknowing family and friends — can have a profound effect on you. Lesbians and gay men are also 7 times more likely to be the victims of crimes than the average citizen. In response to this overwhelming oppression and homophobia, many lesbian, gays and bisexuals use and alcohol and drugs to cope.

There, it's nice and big so you can read it.

Edit II: Elsewhere on the McGill site you referenced, it says about 10% of the population is estimated to be gay, which seems kind of a liberal estimate to me, but even allowing that the number of gay alcoholics in our imaginary population begins rivalling that of heterosexual women alcoholics alone, which, I'll remind you, doesn't include men, in which the population of alcoholics is considerably greater than that of heterosexual women. Hey, you could argue with those statistics that being male causes alcoholism.