I was online early the other morning, perusing a doctors-only Web site I frequent that tends to learn significantly to the right. Imagine my surprise when I found them surprisingly, and overwhelmingly, supportive of gay parenting.
I’ve written before about how some doctors’ groups and medical sites are becoming more liberal. I mentioned that the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine (an arm of the Massachusetts Medical Society) were supportive of universal health care (though they didn’t necessarily come out and say that they favored the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka Obamacare)). I think my field is subtly shifting to the left.
On the medical site that I mentioned above, I’d guess that about 65% or so of the doctors there are conservative, or independent with a conservative bent. There are lots of threads on medical topics: diseases, medications, research and more. And this site has doctors from all specialties.
Often a medical topic gets presented — say, about type II diabetes, for example. We’ll be discussing treatment options, lab testing, genetics or other aspects of the disease. Often someone will post a political comment. Then the thread will get sidetracked with conservatives attacking the ACA, obese people who “don’t take responsibility for themselves,” food stamps (SNAP), Obama, Medicaid or some other political topic that may be tangentially related to diabetes.
A battle often ensues between liberals, conservatives and independents. Usually the conservatives are greater in number. Their tactics run similar to those they employ in the comments of AMERICAblog and other sites: ad hominem attacks, opinions not backed up with valid statistics, attempts to change the topic, and more. It’s amazing how a topic on something like bunions can become politicized. But it happens. I’d give you a link to the site so you could see for yourselves. but I can’t. First off, you need a valid medical license to register to get into the site. And, as a condition of membership, I can’t directly copy and paste or even give direct quotes from things presented there. But I’ll do my best to give you the gist of this one topic.
Gay parents, and their kids, outside the Supreme Court, and across from the US Congress, for the oral arguments on the gay rights cases involving DOMA and Proposition 8 in March, 2013. © John Aravosis 2013
One of the internal medicine doctors asked how other docs felt about same-sex couples raising children. Were they in favor of it or not? And he asked the same question in the form of a poll for the doctors to vote on. Without looking beyond the question, I figured that the responses would be about 70% in the negative. Much like they would be if someone asked a question on same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration or any of the other hot button issue that tends to elicit a negative reaction from conservatives.
