Anti-LGBT Politicians? The Power of Christ Compels You!

One of the best known, most often repeated, and frequently lampooned lines in all of cinematic history is from The Exorcist.  I bet you already know it just by the title. 

“The power of Christ compels you.”

It’s the line in the film that the priest uses to exorcise the demon out of head-spinning-pea-soup-spitting Linda Blair.  The idea, of course, being that by invoking the power of Jesus Christ the priests will be able to cast out demons.  They’re modeling behavior the writers of the biblical gospels record of Jesus exorcising demons out of what the Bible calls “people tormented by spirits/demons.” 

Hold onto that thought for a while.

In recent weeks we’ve seen a lot of anti-LGBT legislation being pushed by politically conservative politicians in a variety of states.  As I’ve written before, this has absolutely nothing to do with legitimate issues and everything to do with election year politics.  Because of the supreme court ruling on marriage equality Republican politicians have tried to come up with a new way to demonize LGBT people and dehumanize them for their political ends.  Zeroing in on transgender people, states like Mississippi and North Carolina have passed legislation requiring transgender people to use the public restroom that matches their birth gender.  The idea of course is that those “sick, perverted crossdressers” want to get into the women’s bathroom and ogle your daughter while she uses the facilities.  As I wrote last week, though, there is no evidence of such a thing happening and, in fact, there is a considerable history of Republican politicians behaving in a lewd and perverted manner in public restrooms.

Tennessee is poised to enact a law which allows counselors and therapists the right to openly discriminate against LGBT people on religious grounds.  The problem is, of course, that this is completely unethical.  It is a violation of the American Counseling Association’s Code of Ethics which professionals are obliged to abide by.  But, as I said, Republicans like to make something out of nothing for their political ends. 

All of these bills are cleverly couched in religious language.  It’s what Republicans do to get people to vote for their stuff.  Remember “The Patriot Act?”  Or “Defense of Marriage Act?”  The rhetoric that surrounds these bills becomes quite incendiary.  “Can you believe Senator So-and-So doesn’t support the Patriot Act?  What kind of American is she?”  Or “Can you believe that Representative So-and-So is anti-marriage?  He can’t even put his name to a bill to defend the institution of marriage.  Makes you wonder if he has a mistress on the side or something.”

The worst is when politicians play the God card, trying to convince people that they are actually supporting this law because of their fear the Christianity and Christian principles are under attack.  These are the same people that celebrate the annual “war on Christmas” and bemoan the fact that teachers are no longer allowed to lead prayer time during class time.

Here’s what I know.

About two thousand years ago a guy by the name of Jesus of Nazareth spent about three years confronting the “Republicans” of his day.  These religious leaders were doing what they thought was right based on their understanding of the religious traditions.  They weren’t the bad guys.  (You can read more about them here.)  They truly believed they were being faithful people, abiding by their holy heritage and protecting the people entrusted in their care.  The problem?  They were so focused on enforcing “the Law” that they forgot all about seeing the person at the end of the Law.

In Hebrew, our English word “justice” means more than “punishment.”  In fact, our English word “punishment” comes from a Greek word which means “revenge.”  In Hebrew, in the language of the Old Testament, “justice” was more about ensuring people received what they needed rather than punishing them for suffering through the absence of a needed thing.  For example, justice to the ancient Hebrew people, as explained in the Old Testament, would be to make certain people had food.  If people don’t have food, they would steal food.  In our modern system of justice, the State enters in at the point of theft to punish the victims of society’s failure to provide.  Do you see the difference?  The Hebrew word “justice” is more about giving what is needed than dishing out arbitrary consequences to wrong doers. 

Even 2000 years ago the Jewish people had lost track of this fact.

And so we read about this Jesus guy confronting the leaders, feeding hungry people, healing sick people, hanging out with sinners, and so on.  Why does he do this?  Apart from the physical restoration Jesus offered through his “healing miracles,” Jesus offered a restoration to community.  Each time he reached out to an “outsider” whether they be ill, a non-Jew, a woman—Jesus’ actions were a profound statement against the prevailing mentality of his time.  “No matter what these leaders say the law says or how they weigh you down with their legal interpretations and enforcements, know that God loves you and considers you apart of God’s community.” 

That is the message of Jesus Christ. 

That is precisely what modern Republican politicians ignore.

And it’s not that they ignore this truth because they’re evil people.  They’re trying to be faithful to their religious understanding.  The problem is that when they cite biblical passages from Leviticus or Romans to condemn LGBT people, they do so ignoring the fact that it’s precisely these very same laws Jesus spoke against as he tried to erase manmade boundaries in bringing the kingdom of God into the here and now. 

Galatians 3.28:  “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”  That is to say:  If you are a Christian, a legitimate follower of Jesus, then these distinctions of who’s in and who’s out, who’s worthier than others, etc.—all of these distinctions are meaningless.  This passage can easily be modernized and contemporized by inserting “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, nor gay or straight, for you are all one in Christ.”

Interpreting the Bible, if you are a Christian, begins and ends with Jesus.  If you’re ignoring the message of Christ in favor of the law of Leviticus or the opinions of the author of Romans, then you’re not being true to your calling as a Christian.  You’re a Biblicist.  Christ frees people.  The Gospel frees people from laws that strip people of their humanity and their dignity.  It allows people to be seen and drawn back into community where they belong. 

There’s nothing more dehumanizing than stripping a person of their equal standing in a community because they fail to meet arbitrary or impossible criteria. 

This is where these religious lawmakers in Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas, and so on miss the mark every time.  The point of the law shouldn’t be to dehumanize people—especially if you’re going to invoke your Judeo-Christian heritage.  The point of the law should be to improve people’s conditions and thereby improve the state of the community.  There’s that old saying “To save a life is to save the world.”  I think a Christian analogy to this saying would be “To recognize a life—to actually see a person and hear their story—is to save the world.”

But of course to do that, to see people and understand people, you would have to acknowledge that they are people.  Politically conservative politicians aren’t good at this.  After all, “Why waste your time with those people?  They’re ne’er-do-wells living off the system, threatening our way of life.  You just need to look at them to know all about them.”

Today I was listening to This American Life.  It was a podcast of last weekend’s episode.  The first act dealt with a study in which researchers discovered what many of already knew:  To change people’s minds (about marriage equality, LGBT rights, etc.), it takes individuals reaching out and sharing their stories.  In a noncombative, nonconfrontational way, it takes people engaging with others to share how prejudice and intolerance affects them.  It’s empathy that makes the difference. 

There are too many people in our culture, most of whom unfortunately claim that moniker “Christian,” who refuse to listen to others’ stories.  Which is ironic because of how often Jesus listened to people’s stories in the Bible.

This brings us back to The Exorcist. 

The best way to understand the exorcisms we read about in the Bible is not to take them literally.  This was a superstitious, unsophisticated culture in which the presence of demons and the eventually casting out of demons was highly symbolic.  It’s best to think of an exorcism as a metaphysical healing with the goal of allowing the individual to rejoin the community.  Sick people, devil possessed people, blind people, etc.—these people were all seen as sinful and made to live outside of the community—literally outside of town, often in graveyards.  Once healed, they would be allowed to come back into community, to have the support of the community, to be recognized as one of and one with the community.

That is what the power of Christ compels the Christian faithful to do.  It has nothing to do with “religious protection laws” so transgendered people can’t use the bathroom of their actual gender or so therapists who think LGBT people are damned by God don’t have to provide services to LGBT people.  That’s not Christian.  Not in the least.

So, self-professing Christian politicians who are voting for these hate bills and laws of ignorance and intolerance, my advice to you?  Take a long look at the gospels.  I guarantee you’ll see a striking difference between Jesus’ actions and yours. 

No Counseling for You!

I’ve written quite a bit about Minnesota nutcase and member of the State House of Representatives Glenn Gruenhagen.  Mr. Gruenhagen, who has opposed LGBT rights and equality since being elected in 2010, has recently introduced a bill which misuses and misinterprets the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA’s) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-V) to draft a law referring to LGBT people as “mentally ill” and “in need of treatment.”

Today I read an article originally run in the Associated Press and picked up by LGBTQNation about a Tennessee bill giving counselors and therapeutic care givers the right to refuse service to LGBT individuals based on the provider’s religious beliefs.  The bill is on its way to the governor’s desk as we speak. 

You would think that the Republicans could be on the same page with their regressive tactics.  Are LGBT people “sick” and in need of “healing?”  Or should we just deny their humanity and hope they all succumb to depression and anxiety by refusing them treatment?

But, then again, logic isn’t really a character trait most people associate with fear mongering and Republican political tactics.

This is what I can tell you about this Tennessee bill that should encourage you.

First off, if you are a licensed professional counselor in the United States, you must abide by the American Counseling Association’s  (ACA’s) Code of Ethics.  This ethical code adopts that old medical mantra to do no harm.  This paper from 2012 summarizes this ethical mandate:

The ACA Code of Ethics clearly states that counselors encourage client growth and development in ways that foster the interest and welfare of clients, and that the primary responsibility of counselors is to respect the dignity and to promote the welfare of clients (ACA, 2005, p. 4). In fact, it is a fundamental assumption of the ACA Code of

Ethics, as well as other ethical codes within the mental health profession, to “avoid harm to clients . . .and to minimize or to remedy unavoidable or unanticipated harm” (p. 4). In other words, the needs of clients, not counselors, are the priority. Ethical codes and practice regulations exist to assure the welfare of clients, not accommodate the personal beliefs of providers. “Convictions of conscience” clauses imply that self-interest rather than devotion to client welfare can be the counselor’s priority.

The idea behind this, of course, is that simply refusing a client or patient based on an “ookiness” factor (the client is gay, the client is homeless and smells, the client drools when he talks, etc.) completely undermines the client’s dignity and more often than not compounds the very reason the client is seeking therapeutic services (addressing anxiety, identity, self-worth and self-concept, etc.). 

That being said, in order to appropriately treat a client or patient while understanding that a single individual cannot be all things to all people, the ACA Code of Ethics does provide a way out for providers who aren’t comfortable treating a client or patient for whatever reason.  Usually it’s invoked when the provider understands that the client’s needs lie outside of the provider’s capabilities.  In the scope of the current conversation it would amount to the provider doing the referral not because they find the LGBT client morally or religiously repugnant but rather because the provider does not feel competent to provide treatment.  The referral is always done respectfully, pointing to the fact that the current provider is not equipped to meet the client’s needs.  The responsibility, though, is for the current provider to facilitate the connection to the next, more qualified provider, so that the client is not left without care.

Leaving a client or patient without care, whether it’s a medical issue or a psychological issue, is not ethical no matter what your governing body is or what your professional organization’s code of ethics are.  “Do no harm” undergirds nearly all care giving vocations.

And, really, if you were an LGBT person, wouldn’t you want to be referred on to someone who’s more equipped to help you than to sit in an office with a closet homophobe who sees you as condemned because their interpretation of religious text declares you as “abomination?”  The point I’m driving at, however, is that the care provider has a professional responsibility to refer a client without any form of evaluative judgment on the client’s needs or condition that might affect the client’s well-being.

This Tennessee law defies this professional responsibility and gives homophobic individuals the power to do just that.  Imagine being the teenage child of a parent who has dragged you into counseling because you’re gay or lesbian.  You’ve (rightfully) dug in your heals and declared that this is who you are and there is no “cure” for it.  However your parent has brought you to the one therapist in town and, upon the initial consultation, the therapist pulls your parent into the room and says, “I can’t treat your child.  My religious convictions do not accept your child’s choice.” 

How many things can you count as wrong in that statement?  And yet you know it will happen because it does happen and has probably happened to you. 

We need to do better.

But here’s the thing.

For a party of “smaller government,” the Republicans have a habit of shoving their noses in where they don’t belong and then creating a bureaucracy to enforce their opinions.  As I’ve reminded you for the past few weeks it’s common for the Republicans to do this in an election year, to make something out of nothing in order to motivate their base.  There is no actual need for a law like this but what it does is gives the Republicans a talking point that can easily sidestep reason and abandon logic.  And, remember, this isn’t about the truth.  This is about creating truth by repeating a story often enough that people believe it’s truth. 

Though there isn’t an actual need for a law like this we can clearly see why the Republicans would endorse a law like this.  Or a law like the heinous bathroom laws.  Or any law that legalizes discrimination.  Such laws dehumanize people and, when it comes down to it, the Republicans work best when they have a group of people whose rights have been denied but continue to struggle for equality.  The Republicans have always and will always point to that struggle for equality and play on people’s fears with it.

The ACA’s Code of Ethics underscores the dignity and welfare of the individual.  This law and others like it, like one passed in Mississippi not too long ago, completely ignores and even reverses what years of professional research and observation have accomplished.  It’s another case of law makers, who don’t have a clue about what it is they’re actually talking about, pretending that they are doctors or teachers or scientists and know more than the entire profession they are trying to micromanage through the implementation of laws.  Laws, by the way, that are underwritten by special interest groups and financed by lobbyists.  It would be interesting to see what groups are backing this Tennessee law because, I guarantee, it’s not the ACA or any other credible professional organization. 

One last thing.  If you’re an LGBT teen in Tennessee or Mississippi or any of these other states in which politicians are literally playing games with people’s lives, including yours, and you’re not getting the help you need, please talk to someone safe.  I’ll leave contact info for The Trevor Project below.  I worry about all LGBT people facing such hateful resistance to common sense and decency, but I think LGBT teens are at a much higher risk and the world needs you.  Without you, how are we going to change the world?

www.thetrevorproject.org

866-488-7386

TrevorText -  Available on Thursdays and Fridays (4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. ET / 1:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. PT). Text the word “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200. Standard text messaging rates apply.

TrevorChat—Here is a link to chat online with someone from The Trevor Project:  

The North Carolina Temper Tantrum

I’ve somewhat reached a turning point in my opinion about North Carolina’s trans-panic induced hate bill. 

No, I’m by no means coming out in support of such ignorant and juvenile political tactics.  I’m certainly not swayed by any pseudo-religious arguments about “men dressing as women being an abomination” or any fake science put forward by people like Glenn Gruenhagen   I still solidly believe this hate bill, like the ones passed in Mississippi and Tennessee and like the ones being proposed in other states for election year publicity, are significant attacks on the progress we’ve made as a civilized people in the recognition of the humanity of a minority of our population. 

Where I think I’ve turned a corner is in the understanding how the ripple effect of these hate bills is going to play out. 

If you’ve ever watched a child, you’ll understand this analogy.  Suppose the child you’re supervising insists on going into a room you have declared as off limits.  The child totally understands that they do not belong in that room.  BUT…if you watch the child they are going to do everything sneaky to test that boundary.  It might start as a toe casually crossing the threshold or maybe a hand stuck in the room to make sure laser beams won’t slice the child’s body to bits.  The child will push back against the adults’ decision that the space in question is a space not to be disrupted by childish play.

This is exactly what’s going on with these hate bills.  The majority has spoken.  The US Supreme Court has ruled.  Marriage equality is the law of the land.  But as I’ve written before, Republican lawmakers always need to make something out of nothing in order to rally their base during an election year.  They can’t rail against “gay marriage” anymore.  The “repeal Obamacare” mantra has lost its punch.  Heck, even abortion rights seem to have fizzled among the voting public.  But “perverts wanting to use the women’s room so they can rape your daughter” sounds like a solid fantastical claim to get people interested in what you have to say.  And, again like I’ve written, facts no longer mean anything in situations like this.  It’s all about controlling the story. 

It’s children testing a boundary, trying to get into that space that the adults have declared a zone free of childish play. 

But here’s what I see happening. 

·        Paypal has pulled out of a plan to construct a “$20 million research and manufacturing plant in the state, which would include 50 new positions paying an average $76,000 annual salary.”

·        Braeburn Pharmaceuticals has canceled plans to build a research facility in the state.

·        Lionsgate Films and A&E network will no longer be filming in the state until the hate bill is repealed.

·        The NBA is looking at moving the NBA All-Star Game in 2017 to Atlanta, costing the state an estimated $100 million in revenue.

·        20^th Century Fox is not planning to do anymore filming in North Carolina.

·        State Governors are banning state employees from traveling to North Carolina for any reason.  My homestate governor, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, issued his orders affected Metro Transit employees from attending a conference coming up in North Carolina.  Dayton isn’t alone.  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin and Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser have also issued bans on non-essential employee travel to North Carolina.

·        Bruce Springstein canceled his Friday concert in opposition to the hate bill. 

Those are just the notables and just in North Carolina.  Mississippi and Tennessee are facing the same kind of boycotting.  For example, today Bryan Adams canceled his concert in Mississippi because of their discriminatory law.

Of course, Pat McCrory, the governor of North Carolina, has called this a media smear campaign and referred to “The Boss” as a bully.  Like a child not able to take responsibility for his actions, McCrory is lashing out at others who are calling him out on his behavior.

But, see, this is what I find so encouraging about this horrible situation.  Everyone knows what the Republican party has become.  We all knew that sooner or later someone would try something to target the LGBT community again and attempt to force everyone to conform to extreme Republican political understanding of religious views.  They’ve shown us who they are for decades and everyone understood it wasn’t a matter of if but a matter of when.

But the adults in the room aren’t having it.  And like a tantrum-throwing child demanding everything be done their way, North Carolina politicians are getting put in the biggest time out imaginable.  Plans to hang out with the cool kids like Paypal and Braeburn and Lionsgate—all canceled.  Allowance—revoked to the tune of millions of dollars.  Even going out to a concert is out of the question until these people—these children—improve their behavior and fix what they broke.

And this is what has me so relieved and so excited!  The adults in the room are putting their feet down and declaring, “This behavior is not acceptable.”

We knew they would pull something, try to undo all the progress hard won.  In the back of my mind I always stressed about what the response would be.  Is it going to be another protracted battle?  Are people even going to notice or care?  Are people experiencing “compassion fatigue” when it comes to the saga of LGBT rights?  But what I’m seeing is quite the opposite—people do care and they aren’t going to put up with it.  In fact, the NAACP announced two days ago its plans to orchestrate a massive sit in at the North Carolina legislature if the hate bill isn’t repealed. 

This encourages me on so many levels but fundamentally it encourages me because it validates my belief that people are, when it gets down to it, fundamentally good.  When we have the likes of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham saying all this hateful nonsense it’s a relief to see reasonable reactions to capricious activities.  I mean, in an election year in which we seem to be experiencing the death of common sense, it’s good to know not everyone has abandoned morality and good judgement. 

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A Legitimate Bathroom Concern

I love doing research.  Knowledge is my drug of choice and I just can’t get enough of it.  So when I see something on social media or catch something in the news, odds are I’m going to be hitting the internet or pulling out one of the many textbooks or resource books I have lining the walls of my office. 

So when all of these so called “bathroom laws” starting popping up and I became more and more aware of Republican lawmakers trying to take advantage of people’s fear and ignorance to create the latest crisis-for-votes, I began pulling together facts.

Now that marriage equality is the law of the land, Republican law makers have been looking for the next non-issue to make huge to draw out their base.  This is what they’ve always done.  Every election year we are overwhelmed by abortion talk, gay talk, gun talk, and God talk.  “Liberals want to kill your unborn babies!”  “Gay marriage is going to undue civilization as we know it!”  “Obama’s coming for your guns!”  “We have to get back to biblical principles and be one nation under God again!”

This year, because of the Supreme Court’s ruling, one of their hot button issues has been taken away from them.  Apparently, in place of their opposition to marriage equality, Republican politicians are using the lives of transgender people as their cannon fodder. 

By now you’ll have heard about North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee.  Other states are trying to do the same including Kansas where…

… transgender students are apparently such a threat to their peers that these lawmakers believe anyone who has to be in a restroom for them should have grounds for a suit. If a student encounters someone “of the opposite sex,” they have a private cause of action against the school. The aggrieved student is entitled to $2,500 for every time they saw someone transgender in the restroom, plus “monetary damages for all psychological, emotional and physical harm suffered as a result of a violation of this section.”

So being the responsible and intelligent person I am, I began looking into this.  I mean, after all, if there’s a real issue, a real concern here, I want to make sure I’m supporting the right side.  It’s too easy to let things like institutionalized superstition and emotional religiosity get in the way of facts and, thus, doing the right thing.

Do you know what I found?  There have been absolutely zero incidents of transgender people assaulting non-transgender people in public bathrooms.  In fact, lawmakers sponsoring these bills have been asked repeatedly by journalists, including Mic, for statistics to support their case against bathroom accommodations for transgender people but can’t seem to provide any.

On the other side of the issue there are states that have passed laws providing suitable accommodations to transgender individuals.  Do you know what they report?  Absolutely no problems.  Across the board.  No assaults.  No rapes.  No questionable activity

Zero incidents of transgender people preying on children.  No incidents of “cross dressing men” raping women in the ladies’ restroom.  No accumulation of data to support these legislative movements apart from the lawmakers’ personal conviction that transgender people are “confused” and “are intent on confusing the rest of society.” 

But, as I said, I like facts.  I like numbers.  And there were some facts and numbers rolling around in my head.  So…I did some more research and discovered:

Zero incidents of trans people assaulting restroom patrons.

Three incidents of Republican lawmakers being arrested for attempting to assault restroom patrons.

Jon Hinson:  In 1981, this Mississippi congressman was arrested for engaging in oral sex in the House of Representatives bathroom with a Library of Congress clerk.

Larry Craig:  The Idaho Republican was famously arrested in 2007 for lewd conduct in a men’s room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Bob Allen:  That same year, Florida state Representative Bob Allen was arrested after allegedly agreeing to pay $20 to perform oral sex on an undercover police officer in the men’s room of a public park.

You can read more here.

So the score, again, is:

            Questionable Conduct by Transgender People in Public Bathrooms:  ZERO

            Questionable Conduct by Republican Politicians in Public Bathrooms:  THREE

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little creeped out by this.  I think some sensible legislator who has the best interest of the public in mind needs to introduce legislation to ban Republicans from public restrooms.  I just don’t think it’s safe for our children to be subjected to these sex crazed fiends intent on victimizing innocent people while they’re trying to pee.  The numbers are there to support the action.  This isn’t anecdotal evidence shared at the corner bar but hardcore, empirical evidence. 

I think we would all be able to pee a little safer if something could be done about Republican lawmakers being able to use public restrooms.  

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Anti-LGBT Rhetoric in Politics

Repeat after me:  Correlation is not causation. 

This is a fact the people who do not understand how to interpret research and statistics often ignore as they attempt to legitimize their bigotry, prejudice, and hate by citing intelligent sounding and reasonably conducted research.

And I’m tired of it.

Here’s the classic example in the LGBT community.  I’ve talked about this before.  It’s no secret that the prevalence of depression and rates of suicide and suicidal ideation is higher in the LGBT community than the non-LGBT community.  Law makers and religious leaders are quick to draw attention to this.  They capitalize on this correlation (relationship or connection between two or more things) and make the heinously inaccurate statement that this means that depression and suicide are caused by an LGBT identity.  Legitimate research (that is, research that does not enter into a study with a preconceived notion of what the outcome will be based on things like religious convictions) has found that the majority of incidents of depression/suicide within the LGBT community are not due to the LGBT identity.  These feelings and tragedies are environmentally based due to fear of rejection or reprisal by people in the environment as well as fear of judgment by divine forces and family members.  What this legitimate research tells us is that, upon coming out (or transitioning in the case of trans individuals), and the establishment of a solid support system based on authentic ownership of the individual’s identity, suicide and depression rate plummet dramatically.

But, of course, politicians and religious leaders don’t go into all of that.  They simply pull out numbers from studies and run with them in order to frighten people or to appear educated.  I mean, look at what’s going on in North Carolina, Mississippi, and Tennessee.   Look at Minnesota’s Glenn Gruenhagen who continues to introduce hate-based legislation by pretending he’s actually informed and compassionate. 

And it’s not just in the United States.  Conservatives the world over play this game—a game in which they win political standing and the truth loses relevance. 

Today I learned of a German politician by the name of Katrin Ebner-Steiner who is a member of one of Germany’s conservative political parties.  Ms Ebner-Steiner believes that children with same-sex parents are more likely to be criminals and that teaching children about LGBT rights will set Germany back 60 years.  She states:

“The traditional family image offers children the most protection against ideological confusion, against drugs and criminality,…Only the traditional family image guarantees healthy interpersonal bonds, is meaningful and encourages entrenchment with the home land….Only the traditional family image can reunite our partially splintered society.”

Despite the fact that this is a German politician promoting her vision of German politics, the announcement of her beliefs made me very angry.  This article may be about Germany but politicians in the United States do the exact same thing every day. 

Would you like to know the truth behind the statistics?  They are troubling.  The problem is that because marriage equality is a new thing and same-sex couples with children tended to cover their relationship in fear of potential consequences, particularly in more conservative regions of the country, a lot of data are not available on the subject.  Heck, it wasn’t until this past month that same-sex couples were finally able to adopt in all fifty states.

So, without significant research at hand, this is what I can share with you and then I will draw some pretty solid conclusions based on the data.

A 2010 study done at Queen Mary University in London, using data from Sweden, found that, in their data, there was no predictive relationship between the criminality of adoptive parents and adopted children.  The children of parents demonstrated a criminal tendency that could not be recognized or grounded in the adoptive family.  What this means is that the adoptive parents had no criminal records, were often middle to upper class professionals, and yet their adoptive children developed anti-social tendencies that led them to criminal activity.

What’s the alternative to same-sex parenting of adopted children?  The foster care system.  It’s not like non-LGBT couples are stepping up to take in these kids. 

This article from the online journal STIR draws attention to the following statistics:

·        200,000 children are currently in stranger (non-relative) foster homes

·        On average a foster child will spend 23 months in foster care.

·        During that 23 months, 20% of children will experience 10 or more placements, dramatically affecting their ability to attach to caregivers and trust adults.

·        In 2012, nearly 36,000 foster children had been waiting more than three years to return home or to be adopted, and 24,000 had been waiting more than five years.

·        Kids in foster care are 12% more likely to be prescribed psychotropic meds (This number surprises me and deserves further investigation at another time—it’s easier to medicate a child than help the child work through the trust and anger issues the system has produced in the child.)

·        Foster children experience PTSD at twice the rate as Iraq War Veterans.

·        As the children age out of foster care

o   Despite an increased need for health services, particularly mental health services, 33% of adults out of the foster system lacked insurance

o   By the age of 25, 81 percent of all male foster care alumni had been arrested once, and 35 percent had been incarcerated.

And from the same study, here’s some of the most shocking information.  Adults who had been in foster care as children suffered worse prognoses than their peers in almost all domains (foster care/general population):

·        PTSD: 25% / 4.5%

·        Depression: 24.3% / 10.6%

·        Anxiety: 43% / 5.1%

·        Addiction/alcoholism: 11.1% / 2.5%

·        Males convicted of a crime: 60% / 10%

·        Homeless for more than one day: 22% / 2%.

Every expert agrees that the foster care system in the United States is in crisis.  This recent study offered by the ACLU observes:

Right now there is a critical shortage of adoptive and foster parents in the United States. As a result, many children have no permanent homes, while others are forced to survive in an endless series of substandard foster homes. It is estimated that there are 500,000 children in foster care nationally, and 100,000 need to be adopted.  But last year there were qualified adoptive parents available for only 20,000 of these children. Many of these children have historically been viewed as "unadoptable" because they are not healthy white infants. Instead, they are often minority children and/or adolescents, many with significant health problems.

But here’s the thing.  Adoption doesn’t magically make these issues disappear.  Grief, anger, trauma, multiple placements, multiple schools, trust issues….all of these things combine in even the youngest of adoptive children and continue to build during certain periods of development, particularly the teenage years when identity is such a crucial area of exploration for children.  Common sense tells us that if you start with a shaky foundation, no matter what you build, it’s not going to be solid.   With late-placed adoptions, of which same-sex couple adoptions count as highest in available data, these early experiences, both in the birth home and in the system, continue to be worked out in the adoptive family.  The adoptive family mitigates some of the earlier damage but trauma doesn’t just go away with love and hugs.  It often takes a lifetime to recover. 

By the way, that ACLU study offers some very good facts about same-sex adoptive parents.

Doctor Benjamin Siegel, a school of pediatrics professor, co-authored a report in the American Academy of Pediatrics, in which he:

·        Argues convincingly against the notion that children/adoptive children of same-sex couples are disadvantaged

·        Cites a national longitudinal study of Lesbian led families (a longitudinal study being a study that is done over an extended period of time).  This study began in 1986.  When researches recently “checked in” with the families they found: 

their children indicated that they had high levels of social, school/academic, and total competence and fewer social problems, rule-breaking, and aggressive and externalizing behavior compared with their age-matched counterparts,…The self-reported quality of life of the adolescents in this sample was similar to that reported by a comparable sample of adolescents with heterosexual parents.

·        Soundly confronts the work of sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, of whom I’ve previously written.  Dr. Siegel easily discredits Regnerus’ findings.  Regnerus is often cited as an authority by conservative activist groups like the Family Research Council, which is famously anti-LGBT.

So, here’s the bottomline.  We don’t have conclusive research.  If certain politicians and religious leaders would stop frightening the LGBT community with their attempts at legalizing discrimination and systematic oppression of LGBT people, perhaps we could engage in more detailed research without adding to the fear and anxiety of the same-sex couples we need to interview.  People aren’t going to volunteer for studies like this and be honest in their self-reporting if they’re constantly afraid of undue scrutiny and retribution. 

But what this data does tell us?  The system is failing.  So, politicians and religious leaders who want to take away a child’s opportunity to be loved in a stable environment?  If you really want to make a difference, do it before the child experiences trauma and disruption.  I’m talking about addressing things like poverty, health care, mental healthcare, and addiction before a child can be affected by these things and victimized by a system that claims it cares for their welfare but clearly didn’t care enough to give their hurting parents what they needed.  There is no scapegoating this out to the LGBT community, politicians.  This is on you.  If you weren’t so busy defunding programs and attacking the poor and the victimized, study after study (some of which I’ve cited here) tell us that children would never have to be taken from their homes in the first place.

The other thing we know?  The thing that anyone who has ever taken a class in psychology or sociology can tell  you?  There are far too many variables involved in these studies for anyone to ever make a statement about correlation and causation.  

Stop treating people like they’re too stupid to know what you’re doing with your numbers. 

Stop pretending we don’t know how you’re twisting (if not simply inventing) facts.

Are you listening Glenn Gruenhagen? 

How about you Governor McCrory?

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Get Real, One Million Moms

I am so tired of reading news releases like this.

The group, One Million Moms, has been attacking the television comedy The Real O’Neals since before the show even aired its pilot episode.  The social activists, on their website, loudly declare:

"The Real O'Neals" mocks Christianity and insults Catholicism. 1MM recognizes this show ridicules people of faith, and Christians across America are offended by it.

You can read more about the group’s most recent attack and attempt to bombard sponsors of the show by clicking here. 

Here’s the thing that certain people don’t understand:  Just because you don’t agree with a thing and just because you find it offensive doesn’t mean everyone needs to agree with you and find the thing offensive.  I know this might come as a surprise to some members of the Church considering you’re still operating under the faulty impression that the Church is the center of the universe, but it’s not.  It hasn’t been since the collapse of colonialism and the end of Christendom.  Which, by the way, as a Christian, I find to be a most happy circumstance because now the majority of people connected to the Church are connected because they feel called to be and not because someone with power and authority is forcing them to be.

It’s the same thing as this article about the Benham brothers in North Carolina claiming that

““the newest fruit of the vine of Sodom is the sexual revolution — and it’s poisoning our land. It has nearly taken over everything and is forcing itself on everyone.”

Again, this might shock some people, but a minority group struggling for equality has been labeled as “the end of civilization as we know it” since the very beginning.  Giving women the vote was going to destroy our country.  Civil rights was going to destroy our country.  Freeing slaves was going to destroy our country.  Letting the Irish into the United States was going to destroy our country.

Do you know what’s going to destroy the United States?  Ignorance.  And it seems that anti-LGBT groups have a surplus of ignorance.

Look at the press release from One Million Moms listing the complaints over The Real O’Neals.

·        Brothers view p-rn on laptop. Gay p-rn made to appear normal and acceptable. Comments between brothers and between father and sons show no form of guilt in watching p-rn. Jokes and other references such as p-rnado and p-rnward are made.

·        Gay character and his brother observe that "10 percent of the population is gay," and suggest that most of those who object to gay p-rn are h-mophobic. In reality, The Centers for Disease Control reports that 1.6 percent of the population is h-mos-xual. That is a far cry from 10 percent, but since a big part of the show's agenda is to normalize h-mos-xuality along with other sins, it makes sense for the show to lie.

·        Student at Catholic school holds up middle finger, which is pixelated.

·        The daughter skips church, doubts God, disrespects priest as she verbally backs him into a corner, and he (the head of their church) fails at answering her questions.

·        ABC network refers to this highly dysfunctional family as "the perfect Irish-Catholic family."

·        Foul language (purposely uses every word imaginable).

·        One of the show's producers is anti-Christian b-got Dan Savage, and the show is said to be loosely based on his life.

I watched this episode (found here on Hulu) and thought it was one of the best.  I recognize that’s just my opinion.  So let’s look at 1MM’s points and direct them to some facts.

1.     According to a survey conducted in Canada (and remember a survey is self-report and will always skew conservative in its results as people doing the self-report will never be completely honest—especially a survey of kids), 40% of boys between grades 4 and 11 frequently look at porn online.  Now, I’m not going to argue the pro’s and con’s of the porn industry.  I have an opinion and I can share that opinion elsewhere.  It’s enough to say that this is the REALITY of the world we are living in being reflected back to us on our television screens.  Gone are the days of Donna Reed wearing pearls and cleaning the house and cooking dinner with a smile on her face and a song in heart while women at home knew a completely different story.  Television—the best television and the most compelling television—holds life up in front of us to be ironic, comedic, or to make a statement.  I would like to think in this scene The Real O’Neals is doing all three. 

And, seriously, if you can’t even be adult enough to write the word “porn” or “homophobic” or even “bigot” without leaving out a letter, maybe you shouldn’t be allowed access to the internet.

2.     I actually agree with 1MM on their point regarding “10% of the world’s population is gay.”  1MM cites this report from the Centers forDisease Control that uses data collected in a separate study in 2013.  This report does indicate that 1.6% of the respondents to the survey identified as gay.  The problem is, of course, two-fold:  The report relies on self-report data from a survey taken of adults ages 18 and over, the majority of which are from a time in which they could not be LGBT and were forced into a non-LGBT lifestyle (something I’m most familiar with).  The second problem is that the report is using collateral data from a completely different study.  What this means is that the method of collection for the data leading to the CDC report was not designed to procure accurate data for a report of this nature.

A more appropriate report, doing what it was designed to do and reporting a much more accurate picture of the LGBT demographic, would be this one.  Again, self-report is problematic but it is the only way we can determine these things.  But this survey reports that 52% of school kids between the ages of 13 and 20 identify as LGBT. 

Or here’s another report I used in this post on suicide in the LGBT community.  The study was conducted by the National School Climate Survey in 2013 and of the 8,000 students surveyed randomly, 60% identified as LGBT.  The survey then moves forward to highlight the struggles that LGBT people face because groups like 1MM want to ignore the REALITY that LGBT people exist, are normal, and have every right to see LGBT people on TV whether 1MM’s think its “decent” or not.

3.     OMG!  A student in a Catholic school flipped the bird and the nuns didn’t come running with their rulers!

4.     I want to take a minute and talk about “doubting God.”  EVERYONE doubts God.  The opposite of faith is not doubt.  The opposite of faith is certainty.  Faith is belief in what is unseen.  Certainty is created by empirical evidence. 

This is again the problem with Christians who don’t know what it actually is they’re reading.  One of the Greek words translated as “doubt” is diakrinō but doubt (as in “disbelief”) is not what the word means.  It means to oppose.  So in Matthew 21.21 when Jesus says, “Jesus answered them, “Truly I tell you, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only will you do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ it will be done.” The word “doubt” there?  Yeah, that means “oppose” or “make a distinction against.”

Doubt gets a bad rep from Bible thumping Christians.  If you’re not doubting your faith, you’re not growing your faith.  If you’re so certain your faith is right, then your faith is stagnant and you’re not growing.  You’ve got a system, not a faith.

5.     “The perfect Irish family?”  Yeah, I don’t think 1MM knows how comedy works. 

6.     Foul language “purposefully uses every word imaginable?”  I don’t know.  I can imagine quite a few that haven’t been said on the show.  A lot of them people can hear at 1MM rallies outside of Planned Parenthood clinics. 

So, here it is in a nutshell, One Million Moms and Benham Brothers and anyone else who thinks that a majority group can be oppressed by a minority group in its fight for equality:  You can have your ill-informed, ill-formed opinions but the rest of the world is not required to adopt your line of thinking no matter how “God-inspired” you think your opinion is.

Are you listening, Kim Davis?  Or is the hypocrisy in your life too loud?

Feel free to hold onto your outdated, outmoded, consistently proven as implausible and inaccurate convictions in order to combat the tides of change that are about to overtake you.  But remember, One Million Moms, if your name is any indication of your true numbers and each of you is the mother of say two children (on average), that’s two million kids.  That means, according to the survey I cited about, 1,040,000 of your kids are LGBT.  You are NOT doing them any favors with your rhetoric and your campaign to remove a role model—albeit a comedic one—from their lives.

Seriously.  It’s time to get real. 

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The Truth Behind Anti-LGBT Research

Last week I was introduced to MN State Representative Glenn Gruenhagen.  I immediately shared what I learned about Mr. Gruenhagen with all of you, paying particular attention to his anti-LGBT stance and his attempts at legalizing discrimination by pretending to care for the mental health of LGBT people through a misrepresentation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). 

I have spent considerable time since researching Mr. Gruenhagen and his colleagues.  I’ve reviewed his website and have been in contact with a few media outlets who shared with me their experiences and findings with regard to Mr. Gruenhagen. 

Before I continue I want to point out the obvious.  I know the vast majority of my readers don’t live in Minnesota.  Heck, I know a lot of you don’t even live in the United States.  The reason why I’ve decided to devote attention to Mr. Gruenhagen’s attempts is because his tactics are universal.  Face it, a fear-monger only has one play:  Be afraid of those people.  The only thing that ever changes from fear-monger to fear-monger is who the those people are.   Mr. Gruenhagen has a few different those peoples to choose from; I’m simply going to focus on the LGBT community because of his recently introduced bill and the heinous actions of politicians in North Carolina.  This is becoming a theme again for this election cycle:  Be afraid of the gays because they’re going to corrupt you with their illness!

You would think that we could start moving past this considering recently court rulings but some people simply cannot abide progress or inevitable judgments that permit that progress. 

So according to Mr. Gruenhagen’s website, designed to get him elected every two years, there exist…

over 2500 studies in the social sciences that confirm the economic and social benefits of traditional marriage, for both men and women. Studies also confirm that children especially benefit in numerous ways when raised by a mom and dad.

It was a bibliography of these studies I had requested from Mr. Gruenhagen.  My request was ignored.  So, though I can’t speak directly to these individual studies, their methodologies and institutions of origin, I can speak to what I know and what I know is this:  Absolutely no legitimate institution of research or higher learning within the educated, academic psychological and psychiatric community within the United States (and perhaps the greater western world) would have published such a study within the past two decades for the simple reason that it defies the science behind identity and sexuality.  What this means is that, if these 2500+ studies Mr. Gruenhagen is talking about actually exist they were authored by pseudo-scientific organizations that are more religion than science, institutions like the Family Research Council.

The interesting thing about the Family Research Council, however, is that they actually don’t do any research.  If you review their list of so called experts you won’t find a single psychiatrist or psychologist in the bunch.  What you will find, however, is a bunch of marketing gurus and lawyers.  If you review their literature on topics like “marriage” and “sexuality,” you’ll find a few briefs that support their political position some policy publications promoting that position, and a number of op-eds advocating for that position.  There’s a gaping hole in the area of actually providing research that support their position and here’s why:

It doesn’t exist.

At least authentic, scientific research conducted morally, ethically, and appropriately away from underlying bias does exist.  It hasn’t existed since the 1970’s when the scientific community, namely the American Psychiatric Association (APA), removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973.  In their determination the APA indicated that support for the traditional mentality that an LGBT sexuality was reflective of disorder, disturbance, or any similar pathology.  In short there is nothing to be addressed here; take your medieval ideas of prayer and healing elsewhere.  Science does not support it.

But as anyone with a Republican uncle knows after the topic of global climate change comes up at Thanksgiving Dinner, some people just can’t integrate actual science into their belief system.  Typically in such cases we see one of two reactions: 

1.     That’s just liberal nonsense trying to figure out how to run people’s lives and tax the bejesus out of them by using made up facts that happen to support the views of their campaign donors.

2.     But I read on the Family Research Council’s website and heard on Focus on the Family or saw on The Seven Hundred Club that that’s not even true.  It’s just part of the liberal gay agenda to let perverts near our children.

Reaction number one ignores scientific evidence.  Reaction number two counter scientific evidence with religious based pseudo-science. 

Why do you I say it’s religious based pseudo-science?  Look at the institutions that produce these so called studies.  How many of them are connected to current or former televangelists?  How many of them are connected to institutional denominations running ad campaigns in neighboring states to beat marriage equality? 

Here’s the other source for anti-LGBT propaganda:  Other scientific disciplines.   For example, two sociologists who have become champions of the conservative anti-LGBT campaign are Dr. Mark Regnerus, a sociologist from the University of Texas, Austin, and Father Donald Sullins, a Roman Catholic Priest and Sociology Professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

Just to be clear, let me offer simple definitions of the disciplines we’re discussing here.

Sociology is the study of social behavior or society, including its origins, development, organization, networks, and institutions. It is a social science that uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order, disorder, and change.

Psychology is the study of behavior and mind, embracing all aspects of human experience. It is an academic discipline and an applied science which seeks to understand individuals and groups by establishing general principles and researching specific cases.

Psychiatry is devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study and treatment of mental disorders. These include various abnormalities that are affective, behavioral, cognitive and perceptual.

Do you see the difference here?  Whereas psychology and psychiatry focus on the inward processes of health and well-being and the behaviors that may stem from the internal, sociology focuses on the outward behaviors of society.  So when an individual looks at a sociology study that may seem to indicate that children in the home of two non-LGBT parents are more successful than children in the home of two LGBT parents, the factors that contribute to this success lie outside of the individual and within society itself.  We are no longer talking about mental health and identity.  We are now talking about the ability of an individual to matriculate into society without prejudice.  Contrary to the opinions of Dr. Regnerus and Father Sullins, there are far too many variables in such research to make conclusive arguments.  Which, of course, they should know since they are sociologists whose job is to remark on the behavior of society and not identify the development of individual identity and how to influence it. 

If sociology discovers that social behavior and society struggle with the integration of LGBT individuals with regard to respect and equality and even fundamental human rights, their discovery does not indicate something faulty or defective with the LGBT mind and/or development.  That is not their area of expertise.  If the psychiatric community, in 1973, determined there is nothing detrimental to the quality of life of an LGBT person when that LGBT person embraces their identity, a sociologist cannot come back, fifty years later, and declare that the whole field of psychiatry is wrong because our study of society shows society can’t deal with LGBT people.

It should be noted as well that these two scholars along with their work have been soundly criticized by their colleagues. 

So why am I sharing this with you?  I mean, it’s not like you’re ever going to have a conversation with that uncle at Thanksgiving Dinner and convince him that science is real and that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it.  Ours is not a society in which we have conversations that lead to change anymore.  Ours is a society in which we don’t have conversations, we no longer seek to learn as much as to teach, to be changed as much as to change. 

The first reason I share this with you is so that you know that when someone like Glenn Gruenhagen, an elected official of the State of Minnesota, stands up and tries to convince you of certain facts based on 2500+ studies that he’s apparently unwilling to share—you need to know where those facts came from and how they are interpreted.  People like Mr. Gruenhagen have anchored their arguments in a body of work but the body of work is as accurate and appropriate as the user’s manual from an old VHS player.  I could make a sound argument for forcing women into subservient roles, too, but it would mean taking the Bible out of context and relying on archaic research and cherry picked contemporary studies.  Not unlike Mr. Gruenhagen and his colleagues have done with LGBT equality. 

The second reason is more difficult than the first.  Armed with the knowledge that homophobes like Glenn Gruenhagen use bad science and no science to bolster their argument means that the people who fight for LGBT equality need to be equipped with actual facts and research for when they find themselves in a position to have legitimate conversation.  Google advocacy and support groups and learn truth to combat misinformation and ignorance.

The third reason is:  I don’t want you to feel bullied by law makers, teachers, or parents when they throw this pseudo-science at you while you struggle with your identify.  Do not let anyone ever tell you that because you identify as LGBT or question whether you identify as LGBT that you are somehow inferior or sick or that you need to change to integrate better with society.  You are a gift to this world—absolutely everything about you.  Don’t let others zero in on one thing that in the grand scheme of things is just one part of who you are and let them destroy you because of it. Again, the problem isn’t within you.  The problem is with how society might see you and that never going to change until society gets to know you.

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