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Menstuff® has compiled information and books on Gay, Bi, and Transgender issues. This section is Robert N. Minor's weekly column featured daily on our homepage. Robert is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org or at E-Mail. 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004
Our Lives and Loved Ones Are on
the Line Now
Or have you given up on politics? Have you fallen for right-wing mind-game attempts to suppress your vote by convincing you to embrace ideas such as: "They're all the same." "They're all crooked." "My vote doesn't matter." If any of those things were true, political action committees wouldn't be spending millions to get you to stay home from the polls. They're investing in the idea that your vote really matters. In each current election we hear it's "the most important in our lifetime." But of all targeted groups, LGBTQI+ people should be struck by the fact that the stark contrast of the sides this time brings real, life-determining, relationship-determining, consequences. There are groups of people who occupy and benefit from such a privileged position in life, whether it's heterosexual privilege or class privilege, that they can act above it all and even opt out completely. But voters whom one side wants to crush can't afford to do that. The Republican side in its new MAGA iteration has shown us from the previous administration's actions that it not only doesn't care about LGBTQI+ people but wants to disenfranchise them from any and all rights they now might have. And they're already doing their best to destroy LGBTQI+ lives. It's put in place a Supreme Court that after reversing most established precedents has openly declared it will end marriage equality, the ability to argue that we have privacy rights, and even the right to birth control. It will make "anti-sodomy" laws legal again. That side has spent time and energy attempting to pass bills at state, local, and federal levels to deny information to LGBTQI+ people through schools and libraries. Their goal is to make LGBTQI+ people feel like immoral outcasts. It has fought school boards and city commissions to make sure that LGBTQI+ people are not thought of as anything but deviants, sick, and threats to what it preaches are American cultural values. It has fought in courts again and again to question any progress in the fight for human rights. It's used sectarian religious language, symbols, and arguments to break down the separation of Church and State, pretending that God justifies their bigotry and discrimination and convincing many in right-wing religious traditions that they deserve to be religiously triumphant over anyone that doesn't conform to their dogmas. And now, on top of this, the Heritage Foundation through a team of hundreds of the previous administration's members has actually put in writing with Project 2025 how much further they plan to go to destroy any LGBTQ+ rights among others. All this describes one choice in this election represented at all levels now by the Republican Party. If you think I'm kidding, do a web search. And then there's the other side represented by Democratic candidates. This side too isn't neutral on LGBTQI+ issues. One need only look at the people at the top of their ticket to see that the already well-known yard sign saying "Harris Obviously" is the only hope to stop the anti-LGBTQI+ juggernaut. Not only are the rights of LGBTQ+ people proudly affirmed at every Kamala Harris and Tim Walz rally, but their records are replete with actions that signal their long, strong, and naturally sincere support. As the District Attorney for San Francisco, Kamala Harris helped then-mayor Gavin Newsom circumvent state law against gay marriage. When California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in the state, was thrown out in 2013, then-California Attorney General Harris called clerks in the state herself saying: "You must start the marriages immediately." Shortly thereafter, she officiated the marriage between two of her friends, Kris Perry and Sandy Stier. As California Senator, Harris received a "100 rating" from the Human Rights Campaign and has since spoken out regularly against anti-transgender laws in red states. Then there's the similar long support from Vice Presidential candidate, Tim Walz, that began in 1999 when he sponsored the first Gay-Straight Alliance at Mankato West High School where he was a social science teacher and head football coach. "I had students come to me who were concerned that there was an uptick in some bullying towards our gay and lesbian students, and this is in the mid 90s. They asked if I would be interested in helping start a gay-straight alliance group. My answer was 'Absolutely.'" "I recognized my responsibility in that you have an older, white, straight, married male football coach who's deeply concerned that these students are treated fairly and that there's no bullying. And the idea that my players would be interested in coming to that and learn and to speak, to create a culture in a school that was welcoming, open and understanding was something Gwen [his wife] and I always strove for." His career has been full of such support. Last year, as Minnesota's governor, Walz issued an executive order to safeguard transgender people's ability to receive gender-affirming care and to protect out-of-state patients, their families, and medical providers from being punished by other states for seeking that care. There is no question what the vital, life-changing choice is this time. And this life or death crossroad reminds us of what the sharp-tongued late, great, Texas author, journalist, and activist Molly Ivins said about those who don't want to be involved. "What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols…. Politics is not a picture on a wall or a television sitcom that you can decide you don't much care for." This is clearly the time to grasp that - before it's too late. "Hey, You Kids, Get Off My Lawn"
Psychologists have studied the why behind it. And at the heart of the phenomenon, they seem to agree, is flawed memory of what younger generations were like in the past, especially one's own. As poet Adrienne Rich, put it: "Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around." This creates divisive and unhelpful generational feuds. So, as one writer confidently predicts: "Today's 'OK boomer' Gen Z will complain about the youth one day." "It's safe to assume this is an immortal aspect of human society: Young people always exist, and older people will always complain about them. Young people, in turn, always say, 'Ugh, old people just don't get it.'" One only need to pay a fleeting attention to social media to hear constant complaints about younger generations who just aren't like the way we oldsters never were. They're based on conservative frames that are often repeated by the most liberal people. And they're wholly lacking in any evidence except oft-repeated personal tales. Even though the actual data contradicts these claims as Alfie Kohen pointed out in The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting, they persist. "Rarely are any real data cited - either about the prevalence of what's being described or the catastrophic effects being alleged. Instead writers tend to rely primarily on snarky anecdotes, belaboring them to give the impression that these carefully chosen examples are representative of the general population, along with quotes from authors who accept and restate the writer's thesis about permissive parents and entitled kids who have never experienced failures. Oddly, though, even as these writers repeat what everyone else is saying, they present themselves as courageous contrarians who are boldly challenging the conventional wisdom." Are things different, generation to generation? Of course. If there's one constant about history, it's characterized by change. And younger generations have been caught up in the older generations' financially beneficial industrial and technological advances for millennia. Recent generations have hardly known a time when there were no smart phones. But you can be sure that the people making money off of investing in and selling all that technology to them are the older generations who might be complaining about it. But all that talk about how young people have got it so much better, just doesn't help. It's plainly destructive. And it feels as if it arises out of unhealed hurt and pain of each older generation that envies the younger ones who actually have different challenges to face in different ways. It's these younger generations who have to experience school intruder and active shooter drills and what they mean. It's these generations that have to cope with older-peoples' blatant ignorance and prejudice about gender identification and LGBTQ people as the right-wing ramps it up. It's these generations that are flooded with so much media, social and otherwise, that it's difficult to sort it out. It's these generations whose minds must sort through all the right-wing hooey pushed on them about vaccinations, drugs, immigration, education, and on and on. It's these generations who've been brought up with the technology that older generations profit from hoping they can find real answers there. It's these generation who hear their elders threaten to take away any social support networks their elders benefit from. It's these generations whose teachers and schools are under a constant well-orchestrated attack by the right-wing while they're told they need an education. Attempting to turn the clock back to some period we now believe was better, is a losing strategy for movements of all kinds. It might be comforting to feel as if the old methods and approaches worked, but to the extent that they worked for progress, they worked because they fit the period they were in. We can learn from the past to the extent that we can learn from anything we choose from back in the day. But everyone will have to face their fears about changes we often don't understand in the way that newer generations in the midst of them do and listen and observe carefully to where we are now. I wish younger generations would learn from the past, of course, listen to what their elders had tried and how they learned from them. But that would also require listening on the part of those elders and honoring how times have changed and how they've changed the thinking of younger generations A group of leaders from around the country of one of the cherished regional institutions for LGBTQ people [I'm purposely trying to keep the institutions vague] was meeting to discuss the future of these institutions in the light of deceasing participation and attendance, as well as competition from other new options. They were all from older generations and had fond and accurate memories of how their institutions buoyed up and energized their LGBTQ communities for decades. One dominant suggestion was: "We need to educate people on why this is still important." But the real question is: Do we? Do these venerable institutions fill a need for those today at this time with their contemporary challenges and with the new ways we experience information, bigotry, and also connection to our fellow humans? One thing is certain: it won't help anyone to join the chorus of critics of the new generations. But elders should have learned through their years of experience the importance of listening to them, taking their concerns seriously, hearing their suggestions, moving them into leadership positions, understanding the energy of youth, encouraging them to participate, recognizing the depth of the challenges they face (often ones our generation created) while not comparing their situations to our day, and never resenting (if we really still think it's true) that given the different challenges and cultures they face that they have it "better" than we did by what are our standards of "better."
After That Election, Feeling Bad Might Be Good
There's so much disappointment in the fellow Americans who didn't see the candidates the way I did. Maybe it was ignorance, but maybe what I saw that disgusted me about the eventual "winner" actually appealed to them. Maybe his appeal was that he hated the same people his voters hated. Maybe it was denial that no matter what he said, no one could really be that cruel and self-centered. Maybe it showed that old-fashioned racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia are more central to the worldviews of his voters than we imagined. There seems to be enough evidence for any or all of this combining to enable him to scare the living daylights out of people with his party's fear tactics. Maybe it was the failure of so much corporate media to just tell truths that threaten their billionaire owners' bottom lines. To me his words were blatant - there was no guessing as to what he proposed to do and whom he planned to hurt, punish, and erase from our country. Maybe it was some failures of the Democratic Party's approach itself. Maybe it was due to one third of the voters staying home. Maybe it was all of this and more. We can guarantee that media pundits whose speculations were wrong in the past have all kinds of ideas to keep themselves in the news cycle. But I do know that for now I'm personally not in the place to listen to all that chatter. I need to process my own feelings. And besides disappointment in fellow Americans who see no problem voting for someone who says he will take away the rights of anyone not rich, white, straight, and male enough, I've experienced fear, hurt, and confusion over it all. After over thirty years of advocacy, mostly for LGBTQ+ people, I feel a loss I haven't felt before. I'm afraid of what the future holds given all that the incoming guy has said and what he did in his last term. Future generations including that of my grandson could pay a real price. There are times when the scope of the MAGA victory feels overwhelming and raises a hopelessness about the next four years and more as new radically right-wing Supreme Court justices take the bench along with the other judges he'll appoint. It doesn't help me at all when well-meaning people respond with all kinds of "help" that amounts to saying "You shouldn't feel that way" or tell me "Oh, it's not that bad." Trying to save me from understandable feelings might be their way not to face them, but it's also a dismissal of those feelings. So, let's start here with these feelings. Feelings, after all, aren't "good" or "bad" but are meant to be felt. We don't necessarily have to think, act, or decide based on them. First, we need to congratulate ourselves for having those emotions, experiencing them deeply and having difficulty in dismissing them. They are, in fact, telling us that we're truly bothered by injustice, cruelty, prejudice, and inequality. If we merely felt ho-hum about it all or could "get over it" right away, I'd question whether justice, fairness, kindness, humanity, diversity, equality, and concern for our fellow human beings really were our core values. So, don't buy the easy advice about how to feel instead - you should feel the way you do. And you can feel it as long as you have to without guilt before doing any work to move forward. These feelings will change as all feelings do. As comedian and progressive talk show host, Dean Obeidallah advises: "The resistance starts Monday. For some, that might be this Monday. For others, it could be many Mondays from now. But first it's time for self-care to repair and re-charge." Try not to get caught up in useless ways people commonly use to divert them from feeling those feelings by looking for someone or some group to blame, embracing conspiracy theories, or even expending energy seeking the real "why" behind it. That means not only not spending time pointing fingers. It also means not blaming ourselves. The next thing it seems to me is for each if us, when we're ready, to seek community. Over 65 million voted with us. Then, continue doing the work for human rights with many of the same strategies we've used before. Our problem is not that these strategies don't work - it's that they aren't often or widely enough used. Politicians are so focused on winning the next election that their tactics aren't suitable for those who pressure those politicians to do the right thing. It's not our job to compromise our values but to remind politicians what matters to us. As American historian Howard Zinn warned: "When a social movement adopts the compromises of legislators, it has forgotten its role, which is to push and challenge the politicians, not fall in meekly behind them. We who protest...are not politicians. We are citizens. Whatever politicians may do, let them first feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not for what is winnable, in a shamefully timorous Congress." We haven't changed no matter what changes in the powers that be. We'll adapt, but our message and messaging should continue with the same clarity and conviction. Our disappointed and scary feelings now are actually telling us to do so. Today it looks dark, but there's also a long game. And our choice isn't just hope but to continue to affirm who we really are, what we value, and their importance. Navigating These Family
Holidays They're usually laden with consumer goods that buy perfect gatherings along with national myths to "explain" why we're supposed to be joyful about it all. Yet, the reality is that many are "celebrating" with depression and disappointment. Even suicide rates increase this time of year. I wonder how many people actually experience the joy they expect, rather than find these to be anniversaries of exhausting, dysfunctional family pasts. It's no wonder that streaming movies such as National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, Home for the Holiday, or even the Home Alone series now constitute holiday traditions. Maybe most of us long for pasts that today's nostalgia has us believing were ideal even though they might never have fit the picture we carry around inside. As children, we didn't hear anyone talk openly about the family dynamics that were really taking place back then under all the mistletoe and tinsel. Still, we'd like the people on whom we used to have to depend for childhood love and nurture to somehow provide those feelings now. And if we're LGBTQ+, we'd like our families to love and embrace us, our identities, and those we love. We might use the same excuses given by abused people everywhere for hanging in there with family members now emboldened by MAGA: They don't really mean it. They really do love me. They said they were sorry and would do better next time. They need me. I can fix things if I just try harder. I'm not sure I can survive without these people who brought me up? They're the only family I've got. I owe them so much. I don't want to hurt them. We could feel that we desperately need to fix our families, and that we could if we'd do it just right or long enough. We could even feel as if we must change them in order for us to live happy lives. We might not even be living our lives for ourselves as human beings with the right to do so but trying to do whatever it takes to get their love. It's as if we feel the family dysfunctions we never chose are our fault or because of our identities. We take on the responsibility for their homophobia, transphobia, and other bigoted views. Culturally, we're awash in rhetoric about the
indispensability of the family of origin even if preserving
it creates psychologically and physically sick members. We
believe it's so crucial that it may take the death of its
children before anyone asks about a family's health. Far
more children die in homes in the U.S. than are killed in
our schools. "Out" or Not on Coming Out Day, You're
Still Okay On that list of dates is LGBTQ History Month every October as distinct from Pride Month in June. Founded in 1994 by a Missouri high-school teacher to highlight the role models and contributions of LGBTGQI+ people in, well, history, it's since been adopted worldwide. October was chosen to coincide with National Coming Out Day on October 11th, the anniversary of the Second March on Washington for LGBTQ rights in 1987. That day was founded to celebrate positively the "coming out" of LGBTQ people publicly and rooted in the then feminist and gay liberation movements' well-known affirmation that "the personal is political." I wish people could come out of their closets on this or any day because our society was healthy enough about sex, sexuality, sexual orientation, and gender realities to accept LGBTQ+ people or even those uncertain or confused about where they might fit. I also wish everyone believed that it's also okay not to know for sure, but a lot of us seem to feel safer when people fit into definitive, less ambiguous categories. And there often doesn't seem to be a category - or much patience - for the confused and uncertain. Even those who have come out can be suspicious about "what's really going on" with people who just might not know yet, or who are "experimenting." I suspect, too, that if our society as a whole were healthier, we could accept that there are a lot more of these people than anyone wants to admit and the uncertain and unsure could safely say they are. The confused and uncertain too, then, need to "come out." If anything, National Coming Out Day should be a time for us to give people a break. LGBTQ+ people have had enough guilt piled on them by society for millennia anyway without adding another layer themselves because someone hasn't declared where they'll land as members of the club. There's a diversity of circumstances when "coming out" is proposed for anyone. These are not just excuses but realities for the LGBTQ+ person - family, occupational, religious, geographical, and financial. And the last of those is one that American classism
tries to ignore. It's generally easier to be out in middle
and upper-class circumstances than in working class
environments. And it's easier for those who don't have their
fortunes on the line to scapegoat LGBTQ+ working class
people rather than to confront the effects of the
all-pervasive structure of class in our society from which
the uppers might benefit. Don’t Fall for Any
Anti-LGBTQI+ Psychological Malarkey Then you’re not alone. All the major psychological, counseling, psychiatric, educational, and medical professional organizations have been for years. That’s because science progresses as it learns more, gains new information, and continues to question its previous assumptions. When doctors gets more information from their patients’ further tests, they change their diagnoses to fit those new facts. That’s how any social or hard science differs from people who cling desperately to religious beliefs that might by objective measures not even work for their own health. It’s no wonder that it took the Roman Catholic Church 350 years to admit it was wrong in condemning Galileo for determining that the earth orbits around the sun. Even though religions usually eventually change their views if cultural forces demand it long enough, at every time religious views were, or today are, asserted by powerful authorities, they’re considered unchangeable dogmas and often enforced violently against dissenters. Think of America’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, being formed in 1845 to defend slavery and apologizing for it 150 years later. In the same way we enter the new year with a Speaker of the US House of Representatives who believes that his idea of psychological science and a lot of his sectarian brand of religion can “convert,” LGBTQI+ people to his chosen version of a straight lifestyle. His wife even profits from the idea, one that’s been a lucrative gig for many if they could promote it. Just as prejudice has hidden itself behind religious claims for millennia, here we see it using psychological mumbo-jumbo and quack theories as if they’re more than that to attempt the brainwashing of LGBTQ+ people into straightness. And, taking advantage of the guilt installed by much of our culture and played upon by right-wing religion’s obsession with LGBTQI+ people and their sex-lives, what the real science says doesn’t matter to them. They reject it because it doesn’t fit their needs It was clear a half-century ago that, I repeat, all the professional psychological, psychiatric, medical, and educational organizations had begun to question what these “conversion” pushers are still saying. In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association after an extensive review of scientific literature and consultation with experts in the field removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders - and quickly all the others followed. As the research continued, all these professional organizations not only said that ethical professionals don’t condemn those of non-straight sexual orientations and non-gender rigid people or try to “convert” them, but they required professionals to lead in the fight to remove any stigma and to lead in ensuring their full acceptance and inclusion legally as well as psychologically. And over the years they’ve all only strengthened their statements. For example, back in their 1988 statement: “The American Counseling Association opposes portrayals of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and adults as mentally ill due to their sexual orientation; and supports the dissemination of accurate information about sexual orientation, mental health, and appropriate interventions in order to counteract bias that is based on ignorance or unfounded beliefs about same-gender sexual orientation.” And in 2019: “The American Psychiatric Association opposes discrimination against transgender people and calls for their civil rights to be protected.” And also in 2019 from the American Medical Association and 15 other professional associations: “Our organizations, which represent nearly 600,000 physicians and medical students, oppose any laws and regulations that discriminate against transgender and gender-diverse individuals or interfere in the confidential relationship between a patient and their physician.” So, it’s been settled. It’s not controversial to ethical professionals. To add to this, all these organizations have also come out against anything called a “conversion therapy” or “reparative therapy” that’s meant to change LGBTQI+ people. They say frankly that it’s not therapy at all. On the contrary, the ethical thing for professionals to do, they all say, is not just to support LGBTQI+ people against such brainwashing but to advocate against it. As the American Psychological Association puts it to its membership: “It is important to challenge stigma and to take active steps toward supporting LGBTQ+ people. Here are some ways that you can help:
What this all means, first, is that when a so-called counselor, psychologist, psychiatrist, therapist, or other claimant to psychological expertise does not advocate for LGBTQI+ affirmation, as their professional associations require, they are professionally unethical. And there is no doubt about that in the minds of their associations. It means, the arguments are over, the case is closed. It means that we should not even be considering what any dissenters have to say. It means we should never ever repeat the use of the word “therapy” after words like “reparative” and “conversion” or any sexual orientation change or gender identity change efforts that amount to the attempted brainwashing of LGBTQI+ people. And all of this information is online and much of it settled for decades. So, it’s our job to call deviations from these professional standards what they are – not just alternative theories but professionally unethical bigotry that no longer needs debating. The anti-LGBTQI+ “scientific” gobbledygook that disguises their prejudices is nothing more, and nothing less, than that. © 2024 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, is author of When Religion Is an Addiction; Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human; and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society. Contact him at www.FairnessProject.org
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