Without an explanation for the lower life expectancy of lesbians, the findings would suggest to me that the study is seriously flawed. Off the top of my head, I would hypothesize that the error is due to generational differences in 'coming out' and (more specifically) having one's obituary placed in the 'gay press'..
Public acknowledgment of homosexuality is a relatively new phenomenon, so in other words the 'out' homosexuals skew younger than the actual median age of all homosexuals, and therefore the identifiable obituaries from the 'gay press' skew younger than the true median age of death as well.
That's my guess.
But if there is an explanation for the lower lesbian life expectancy found by this study, I'd be interested to see it!
And, it would invalidate my conjecture above, at least on that basis.
You could be right. I have a hard time seeing it, though, since other studies support Dr. Cameron, one of which is the CDC (per the article). Plus, the study is published in the refereed scientific journal Psychological Reports.
Using obituaries as a way to figure out life expectancy doesn't sound too accurate to me. First of all, obituaries are self-selecting. Furthermore, you only get the obituaries of people who are willing to say that they are gay. What about the obituaries of gay people who don't identify themselves as homosexual in the obituaries?
I'd be curious to see how accurate obituaries would be at predicting the life expectancy of the population as a whole.