Month: March 2009

Bullying and the scars

My webmaster, Paul, passed along a link to a poignant story of a dad about his adopted Korean daughter. She was a victim of bullying and has some scars to show for it.
Here is the beginning…

Bullying defies stereotypes. Bullies come in all shapes and sizes, from good homes and broken homes, and can be rich or poor. Bullying is not just a metropolitan phenomenon. Bullying can occur in even the smallest rural town. And those who have been bullied struggle with a sense of identity. I Left My Heart focuses on the struggles my family dealt with as a result of bullying in a small Nebraska community.
I hope you will share this article with someone. I doubt I will ever do a more important story. For change to take place it has to occur where our children are. Our schools need to become more sensitive to how much damage bullies can really do and that even someone they might consider as an unlikely candidate to bully may well be among the worst at emotionally or physically bullying someone.
Bullying leaves terrible scars and the healing process can be slow. Though my family found a way to help my daughter heal, she still suffers from what a therapist calls post-traumatic stress. And I still suffer from being unable to protect my daughter.
MY HEART
Labor Day, 1981. “She’s a good baby. She’s a smart baby,” the Korean adoption escort told us as she brought Hyun Soo In, now Amanda Soo Ann Meyer, off the Northwest Airlines plane. Wife Jane’s “labor pains” were over. Amanda cooed and fit perfectly in Jane’s arms. Kindergarten son Matt walked through the terminal carrying a teddy bear bigger than the tiny girl he just met, smiled a perfect smile, and announced to everyone “that’s my baby sister.”
Weeks after Amanda arrived, a bout with Salmonella brought a stay in Omaha’s Children’s Hospital. A much healthier Amanda came home, and she grew and flourished. Snap shots from those years show her crawling and walking, and opening presents at family gatherings. She loved story books and Sesame Street. Amanda was a healthy and happy little girl. The pre-school years were an idyll compared to what awaited us.
Precocious Amanda started school in 1986. She displayed a God-given talent with words, hated math, loved music, and did not care for sports. Amanda was a typical American girl who just happened to be born in Korea. Her grade school days were carefree, but then she entered North Bend Central Junior High School.
Our soldiers receive months of training preparing for war in Iraq. Amanda received no training for her tour of duty. What training could have prepared her for slurs, even physical threats, merely because she looked different than 99% of the students in that school? Nobody escapes adolescence heartache-free, but Amanda’s life was heartbreak after heartbreak. How could children be so cruel? Junior high was open season on Amanda, and scores of students had a license to taunt. Where were the teachers? Can’t they see a girl sobbing in the hallways?

Read the rest here…

Uganda's strange ex-gay conference

I decided to post about this after reading an article about an upcoming (this weekend) conference in Uganda on homosexuality. The article begins:

Parents to train on how to handle homosexuality issues
Family Life Network and other stakeholders in Uganda have organized a three-day seminar to provide what they termed as reliable and up to date information so that people can know how to protect themselves, their children, families from homosexuality.

Reliable and up-to-date information? I doubt it given line-up of presenters (Scott Lively, Don Schmierer and Caleb Brundidge). I have little awareness of Mr. Lively’s work but Mr. Schmeirer and Mr. Brundidge I know more about.
It is ironic that Mr. Schmierer is speaking at a conference for parents. He recently spoke on Family Life Radio which prompted several parents to contact me – not with good feelings, I might add. Some parents who have been through the reparative therapy gauntlet are weary of programming they seek for spiritual support providing misleading information which serves to demoralize them. An portion of Mr. Schmierer’s book, An Ounce of Prevention was provided to parents to help them pick out their pre-gay child.

Signs That an Adolescent May Be Struggling with Gender Issues
Don Schmierer
None of these are clear-cut indications of homosexual tendencies. However, if several of them are evident, the young person may be struggling with gender issues.
1. A sensitive child being forced to feel different because of mocking or downgrading by peers or family
2. A young boy who hangs out with girls exclusively; history of playing with girls instead of boys prior to puberty
3. Effeminate behavior/appearance in boys or extreme macho behavior; mannish style and “butch” posturing in girls (not to be confused with simply being athletic)
4. Unnatural friendship that is compulsive, secretive, or inseparable developing between siblings, cousins, relatives, or neighbors—especially in merged families or foster families
5. Exaggerated rejection by same sex parent
6. Fatherless home or emotionally unavailable father
7. Dominant mother
8. Youngest male child
9. Young girls with much older female “best friend” in a relationship that excludes others of the girl’s own age
10. Anger—often manifested in sarcasm, cynicism, or withdrawal
11. Frail, deformed, deaf, or otherwise “outcast”; physical appearance not socially acceptable; “slow”
12. Comments, “I must be gay,” or “I guess I’m bisexual.”
13. Loner, preoccupied with self
14. Boys may avoid fights/physical altercations

I don’t know where to start with this list. More to the point, I don’t know what a parent would do with a list like this. Take number 3: “Ok, son, time to tone down the machismo, you might be gay.” or “Son, how about being a little more macho, you might be gay.” I am trying to imagine how this list will go over in Uganda.
Mr. Brundidge, I featured here in the post just prior to this one. He divides his time between fringe groups – Extreme Prophetic and the International Healing Foundation. Here is another YouTube video of Mr. Brundidge when he was a pupil of Mr. Cohen. At least, it appears he was still a client in this video. With Mr. Cohen, you can be a client and staffer so maybe he was both. Embedding is disabled so you have to watch to about a minute into the video to see Mr. Brundidge and then again at 18:31. I wonder if he will demonstrate the tennis raquet technique in Uganda.
BrundidgeRaquet
Overall, I am surprised that an Exodus board member would go to a conference like this in a country where criminalization of homosexuality is still an issue. My impression is that Exodus had no position on such things or if there was a position it was that homosexuality should not be considered a crime. For a change, I agree with Exgaywatch that it sends the wrong message for these people to go where the agenda is not simply congruence with religious teaching but also on state intervention in private behavior.
PS – Here is an article describing some of the attitudes in Uganda. This conference will be aiding and abetting this kind of thinking, I fear.