Year: 2010

A relatively new tabloid in Uganda has taken a bad situation and made it worse. The Rolling Stone (no relation to the US music magazine) has a cover story with pictures. Here is the cover supplied by a reader:

It is hard to see but the subcaption says: Hang Them.

GayUganda and Boxturtlebulletin has more…

The link for the statement is here…

U.S. Department of Education

Office of Communications & Outreach, Press Office

400 Maryland Ave., S.W.

Washington, D.C. 20202

FOR RELEASE

Oct. 1, 2010

Contact: Press Office

(202) 401-1576 or [email protected]

STATEMENT BY U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION ARNE DUNCAN

On the Recent Deaths of Two Young Men

       U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today released the following statement:

       “This week, we sadly lost two young men who took their own lives for one unacceptable reason: they were being bullied and harassed because they were openly gay or believed to be gay. These unnecessary tragedies come on the heels of at least three other young people taking their own lives because the trauma of being bullied and harassed for their actual or perceived sexual orientation was too much to bear.

       “This is a moment where every one of us – parents, teachers,

students, elected officials, and all people of conscience – needs to stand up and speak out against intolerance in all its forms. Whether it’s students harassing other students because of ethnicity, disability or religion; or an adult, public official harassing the President of the University of Michigan student body because he is gay, it is time we as a country said enough. No more. This must stop.”

###

A group called Parents Advocacy Committee for Educational Rights (PACER) has hosted a National Bullying Prevention week for the past four years. This year they are observing this week as usual but have also expanded the event through the month of October. 

At the link above, many activities and ideas are provided for classroom teachers and youth leaders. I signed the pledge and encourage you to do so and pass the link along.

CNN is focusing on bullying this week, starting with a segment on bullying featuring and appearance with Kevin Jennings  and Kirk Smalley this morning. The page for all of their coverage is here.

The New York Times had an article yesterday on the topic of GLB suicides related to bullying.

I plan to post frequently this week on the topic and hope we can continue to work through issues which divide to get a societal consensus on how to address the problems.

About this time four years ago, I was debating about whether to attend the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) conference. I was scheduled to talk about the Sexual Identity Therapy framework. However, I decided not to go (and Scientific Advisory Board member, David Blakeslee, resigned from NARTH) after a controversy broke out over an article on the NARTH website by Gerald Schoenewolf, titled Gay Rights and Political Correctness: A Brief History.  

In essence, Schoenewolf argued that civil rights movements simplified complex issues, one of which was slavery. He wrote:

With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America. It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa. But if one even begins to say these things one is quickly shouted down as though one were a complete madman.

Schoenewolf attributed the civil rights movement to Marxism and then made a leap to the modern feminist and gay civil rights movements. NARTH was pretty slow to react and then defensive when they did. Schoenewolf’s article was eventually removed, without a significant rationale or apology from NARTH. The LA Times and other outlets covered the events and fallout. 

This year, Gerald Schoenewolf returns to the NARTH schedule with a talk sure to delight the home crowd – The Suppression of Psychoanalysis in the Treatment of Homosexuality. This sounds like a lament that psychoanalysts  are now discouraged from considering homosexuality to be a treatable condition. Ironically, the first suppressor of psychoanalysis in the treatment of homosexuality was Freud. In 1935, Freud corresponded with the mother of a homosexual man who had written him looking for psychoanalytic help for her gay son. While he said a few things to hearten the Reparatives, he was not ebullient about the prospects for analysis (Click link for a scan of the letter).

Dear Mrs. X (April 9, 1935)

I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. I am most impressed by the fact that you do not mention this term yourself in your information about him. May I question you, why do you avoid it? Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function produced by certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest among them (Plato, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.). It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime, and cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read the books of Havelock Ellis.

By asking me if I can help, you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way, we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies which are present in every homosexual, in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of the treatment cannot be predicted.

What analysis can do for your son runs in a different line. If he is unhappy, neurotic, torn by conflicts, inhibited in his social life, analysis may bring him harmony, peace of mind, full efficiency, whether he remains a homosexual or gets changed. If you make up your mind that he should have analysis with me (I don’t expect you will!!) he has to come over to Vienna. I have no intention of leaving here. However, don’t neglect to give me your answer.

Sincerely yours with kind wishes,

Freud

P.S. I did not find it difficult to read your handwriting. Hope you will not find my writing and my English a harder task.

Source:

Freud, Sigmund, “Letter to an American mother”, American Journal of Psychiatry, 107 (1951): p. 787.

Sounds like he was suppressing her expectations for psychoanalysis. While we might quarrel with points of Freud’s statements here, his words are not a ringing endorsement for the treatment of homosexuality in the manner proposed by reparative therapists.

Quibbling over campaign tactics?

Watch this if you can stomach it. It’s extraordinary. Cooper nailed the guy with the definition of cyberbullying. If you look at Chris Armstrong Watch, a creepy website Shirvell runs, you might agree with Cooper on his analysis of the state of Michigan definition of cyberbullying. With all the caps and hyperbole, it kind of reminds me of another website. Um, it has slipped my mind, oh wait, I had it… Oh I lost it. Could it be? Oh well, I just can’t remember it right now…

Christian citizen?! Please help us…

Shirvell, who is an Assistant Attorney General with the State of Michigan, was critiqued by his boss, Mike Cox, on AC360 tonight. If cyberbullying isn’t in play here, how about harassment?

UPDATE: This is not the first time Mr. Shirvell has gotten bothered over gay. Here is a 2005 article in the University of Michigan paper where he is interviewed due to his outrage over a rainbow flag sticker at a pizza shop.

This 2008 piece in the Michigan Messenger claims that Shirvell was Mike Cox’s campaign manager during the 2006 election as Attorney General. That might help explain why AG Cox is reluctant to investigate Shirvell’s activities outside of Chris Armstrong’s dorm and college activities.