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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The Grandma Agneses of the World

WARNING: 

Today I’m writing about The Real O’Neals.  I know.  I can almost hear some cries of indignation over the sound of eyes rolling.  I know it seems like I’ve become your one stop shop for commentary about this ABC sitcom.  I wasn’t going to blog about it anymore (at least for a while) but then I watched last night’s episode and I just can’t get some thoughts out of my head.

So if you’re tired of me blogging about The Real O’Neals, now’s your chance to click out of my blog.  Come back tomorrow and I’ll have something else for you.

Back to our irregularly scheduled blog post.

I don’t know if you’ve ever participated in a live Twitter conversation during a TV show but it’s quite an experience.  When you tweet during The Real O’Neals you not only get to connect with other fans of the show but pretty much the entire cast is there, sitting on the virtual couch, with all of the fans.  They crack jokes with the fans.  They give behind the scenes commentary to the fans.  And, most importantly, they support the fans.  I don’t think there’s been a week that’s gone by that fans haven’t tweeted their gratitude to cast members for validating them or helping them come out.  It’s powerful stuff.

Last night was episode 107 entitled “The Real Grandma.”  In short, Eileen (the terrifying and judgmental, very religious mother, played by Martha Plimpton) is visited by her mother (an even more terrifying, judgmental, and religious mother) played by the incredibly talented Frances Conroy of American Horror Story fame.  Eileen, who has always struggled for her mother’s approval, hides the fact that she and her husband, Pat (Jay R. Ferguson), are divorcing and that Kenny (Noah Galvin) is gay.   This doesn’t go over well with Kenny who eventually defies his mother and comes out to his grandmother by presenting her with a rainbow cake.

Grandma Agnes doesn’t take the news very well and announces to the family that Kenny has ruined cake and rainbows for her forever.  She also declares her intention to stay until “she saves Kenny’s soul.”

Meanwhile Kenny is pressuring his mother to admit to her mother that she’s planning to divorce Pat.  So, in order for Eileen to come out to her mother about the divorce, she plans a good old fashioned corned beef and cabbage dinner.  During the course of the meal, Grandma Agnes says to Kenny, “I know you think I’m a silly old woman and you’ve been mocking me and my beliefs.  But even if you don’t care what I think, you should care about what God thinks….You don’t accept that God doesn’t accept you.  He thinks you’re broken and I do too.”

The screen is then filled with Kenny’s face and you can see the shock and the pain these words have caused.  We hear Kenny doing a voice over, saying “I didn’t think anything grandma said could upset me, but I was wrong.”

My initial reaction was, “Oh, I’ve got to blog this!  This is exactly why I wrote what I wrote yesterday about One Million Moms!”  But, like I said, the ol’ blog has been pretty The Real O’Neals heavy of late and I was reluctant to do it. 

I finished the episode.  It has a spectacular ending.  I won’t give the details beyond saying that Grandma Agnes tries to force the family to go to church that evening.  The family ends up going, without Grandma Agnes and at Kenny’s suggestion.  Hold that thought.

If you’ve read many of the posts on my blog you will have noticed by now a strong theme in what I’ve shared:  Religion, over the centuries, has done horrible things to good people simply because the devotees of the religion subscribe to a superstitious view of the world, are legalistic about thingstheir holy books say without even actually knowingwhat those books say, or simply can’t make room in their worldview for continuous revelation ( the fact that God is still speaking despite the silence of biblical authors, namely through the vehicle of science).  As a result, religion, specifically Christianity (of which I am a practitioner), has killed people, maimed people, caused untold psychological damage to people…all because of something zealous adherents couldn’t understand and innocents can’t change.

When Agnes spoke to Kenny at the dining room table and declared that God could not accept Kenny because he was gay, I could feel the silence in every room in which this show was being watched.  I felt winded.  It may have just been a talented actress delivering a line to an emotive actor on the screen, but it was like a punch to the gut.  Why?  Because I don’t think there’s an LGBT person alive who hasn’t had someone they love or someone who loved them speak to them like this.  At some point in every LGBT person’s life a well-meaning but woefully ignorant loved one expresses this same concern:  God does not love you because you are too broken.

Here’s a newsflash, Grandma Agneses of the world:  In our Christian faith, it is precisely for the broken that Jesus came (Mark 2.17).  And it wasn’t to judge them, but to love them and bring them back into community despite the judgments and preconceived ideas of the righteous, holier-than-thou members of the greater faith community.  In other words, Grandma Agneses, Jesus came to bring the Kennys of the world back into the fold despite your objections.

And this is what’s so incredibly sad about the Grandma Agneses of the world and the One Million Moms of the world and the Focuses on the Family of the world and all of the North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee politicians of the world who have absolutely no idea what their Christian faith is all about.  It breaks my heart to see what these people do to innocent people in the crosshairs of their judgment but it breaks my heart more to know how far from the center of the Christian faith these people are.

This is why I wrote what I wrote yesterday about the OneMillion Moms organization.  Anything that doesn’t fit into their narrow view of what is right, moral, and acceptable to God is an affront to God and by extension them.  The problem is that the theology of these groups is ill-formed at best, handed down and institutionalized for hundreds of years.  The world has obviously changed and our understanding of the human condition has developed.  They simply can’t deal with the reality of the world we live in.  It’s easier for them to kick and scream and flail against change in an effort to make the world to conform to their expectations.  And, of course, the world pushes back, saying, “No, it’s time for you to change your expectations of the world.”  And upon hearing that, these arch-conservative, para-religious activist groups cry out that they are being victims of religious oppression. 

Disagreement is not oppression.  If you want to see real religious oppression, real religious persecution, I suggest visiting extremist countries where people are actually killed for their beliefs.  My stomach turned a long time ago when I heard about a little boy, about ten years old, who was a Christian.  When his master found out, he was driven out into the desert, his feet nailed to a board, and he was left there to die.  That is what I remember when I hear the likes of Kim Davis, Mike Huckabee, One Million Moms, Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, Ted Cruz and all the others whine about their sense of religious persecution because they can’t seem to bully people with fear of divine judgment anymore.

So you remember that thought I told you to hang onto?  When I said that the O’Neal family ended up going to church anyway even without Grandma Agnes and her pressure?  It was Kenny’s suggestion.  “I’d still like to go to church.” he says.  I think this is what ultimately tipped the balance and brought me to the computer to write this entry, dear reader.  You see, throughout this ordeal of coming out and despite Grandma Agnes’ declaration of God’s judgment, Kenny still feels that connection to his faith. 

Too many LGBT people have been driven away from their faith because of the Grandma Agneses of the world.  In their view it’s the LGBT people who have left the church, probably because “they just can’t endure the reminder of how broken they are.”  In reality, it’s the church that has left the LGBT people.  Even if I subscribed to the view that being gay was somehow sinful (which I don’t and I can explain why in another post if anyone wants to know—just ask), where did the authors of the four biblical Gospels always show Jesus?  Not in the fancy synagogues hanging with the Grandma Agneses of his time.  He was always with the people that the Grandma Agnes crowd deemed to sinful to hang around.  So, Christians, if you’re going to say you follow Christ (which you do when you claim the title), maybe you should spend time with the people you think are sinners and love them as Jesus did instead of sitting astride your high horse looking down on the broken you think God can’t accept.

When a woman suffers verbal and emotional abuse from her husband and leaves, most of us say, “We support you!  No one should have to endure that!”  When LGBT people suffer verbal and emotional abuse from the Church and leave, most people don’t make the connection.

We need to make that connection.  If not in a religious sense and context (because, again, I recognize the plurality of belief and no belief that exist in the world), then just in a decent human being sense and context. 

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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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Life Lessons from Dungeons and Dragons

Last Friday I wrote about the challenge I have in writing LGBT antagonists.  On the one hand I said that I like to write fiction with which the readers can identify.  It’s unfortunately extremely easy for LGBT readers to identify with LGBT characters whose stories show a struggle with the “traditional” mentality of the non-LGBT majority.  IN my writing the LGBT character/community is the hero going up against institutionalized ignorance and homophobia in families, religious communities, schools, and politics.

On the other hand I confess that there is a danger in always setting up a story with this formula.  Even though I still believe that this particular formula makes it easy for LGBT people to see themselves in the story and identify with the characters because they share a common struggle, I also have to acknowledge that the world isn’t as black and white as we sometimes make it out to be.  Not all non-LGBT people and institutions are bad guys (obviously) and not all LGBT people are heroes. 

I’ve been chewing on this idea since I posted that 500 word essay last week.  I’ve come to the conclusion that, though I’m obviously well intentioned, I’m feeding the beast that is one of our society’s most challenging problems:  Oversimplification leading to polarization.

In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is complaining to Sirius Black about the new teacher, Professor Umbridge.  He clearly believes Umbridge could be a Death Eater, the bad guys who support He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  In response Sirius observes, “…the world isn’t split into good people and Death Eaters.  We’ve all got both light and dark inside us.  What matters is the part we choose to act on.  That’s who we really are.”  I think this also becomes part of the answer to the recurring question of, “If all the bad guys come from Slytherin, why not just kick them out?”  Because it’s not that simple. Look at Snape, one of the best literary characters of all time. 

What stings a little as I come to terms with this oversight on my part is this.  You would think that someone with a background in counseling and psychology, who is a fierce advocate for the appreciation of any individual’s story rather than summarily dismissing or categorizing the individual based on my limited understanding of their story—you would think I would know better.  You would think that I would be more aware of the “shades of gray” when it comes to individual morality and personality types.  To truly understand an individual’s motivation we need to hear their story and, after hearing their story, we will very rarely ever find that the individual does what they do because they describe themselves as “evil.”

Here’s a great example.  Last night the season six finale of The Walking Dead aired and it shocked fans.  I mean, Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Always let your audience suffer as long as possible.”  Well, The Walking Dead takes Mr. Hitchcock’s advice to the next level.  Last night we were introduced to the new antagonist, a guy by the name of Negan, and by the end of the episode all we know is that Negan has killed one of our heroes.  We don’t know who.  All we know is that we now hate Negan. 

After new episodes of The Walking Dead, there’s always a show in which actors, creators, and fans sit down and process what they’ve just seen.  It really is a massive group therapy session.  Last night was the creator of the show, a producer, and the guy who plays Negan along with someone who might be our dead character (because we won’t know who died until the new season airs later this year).  As the audience in the studio and at home was processing the loss of a character and their hatred of Negan, I think it was the creator of the show that said, “Look, if we would have started from day one with Negan instead of Rick (our main hero) and followed his story instead of Rick’s story, you would understand Negan’s motivations better and sympathize with Negan and think it’s Rick who’s the out of control psychopath.”  This assessment was spot-on.  The audience’s estimation of the “evilness” of Negan rests solely on the fact that we know Rick’s story and not Negan’s.  Negan’s not “evil.”  Negan is trying his best to establish order in chaos.  And it’s obviously working because no one has taken him out yet.  You see?

In our post 9/11/01 world it’s a difficult truth to accept because we have been so conditioned by politicians and the media to paint with a broad brush when we use the word “terrorist.”  However, this is another perfect example of the fact that people are not motivated by “evil.”  One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter.  Over Easter weekend there was a terrorist attack in Pakistan.  It’s easy to dismiss the perpetrators of the act as “evil” but it doesn’t solve the problem.  I’m not an apologist for heinous activity, but I do know that if we took the time to understand why people keep blowing themselves up in their effort to blow up as many other people as possible, we’d be further along to ending this so-called war on terror.  Certainly much further than using “advanced interrogation techniques.” 

And the thing is, when it comes to my writing, I’ve written stuff that is more nuanced when it comes to morality and ethics.  I’ve just never done it my LGBT young adult stuff.  I suppose that’s because, going back to my first assertion, I want to write things that readers can easily see themselves in.  I’ve said it before:  I try to write the kind of story that I really wish I could have read when I was growing up. 

So, setting aside real life for a while (which is what writing is all about for me), let me briefly explain how I normally develop characters.

It’s a process, character development, and it’s usually never done.  I joked a few weeks ago that in my current book the characters weren’t cooperating.  Sometimes it’s like, “You think you know me?  Well, just because you’re the one at the computer coming up with this crap doesn’t mean you know what I’m going to say and do.”  And it’s true!  Sometimes I’ll be clipping along in a story and BAM!  I’m completely sidelined by a comment or a reaction from a character.  When I start the story I obviously sketch out histories and goals and motivations; these end up being parameters for the character.  For example, in These are the Days, Caleb is extremely motivated to be honest about everything.  It’s one of the things he values the most.  So when it comes to dating Tyler, who hasn’t come out yet and is actually “in a relationship” with one of Caleb’s female friends, it causes Caleb a considerable amount of stress.  It would never be in Caleb’s character to turn a blind eye to something he thought was deceitful.  Honesty is a boundary Caleb won’t cross.  So, I set the boundaries but as I get to know the characters in the first and second and all the way through to the final drafts, they characters themselves fill in the space between the boundaries.  It’s how I work.

In planning those boundaries, I go back to something really simple.  It’s about the only thing I ever learned by heart from my attempts at playing Dungeons and Dragons.  Character alignment. 

I like this image because it gives fictional examples as well as real life examples as it describes one of the nine basic alignments as seen through Dungeons and Dragons.  There are other ways of doing this, identifying character traits, beliefs, and motivations which ultimately lead to the character’s position on the “good vs. evil” spectrum.  You can even go so far as to tap into psychological theories like Bowen’s Family System’s Theory to understand the fictional people you’re creating or even the very real people in your life—not so that you can pigeon hole them but so that you know how to both approach them and protect yourself.  Basically, so you know to get along with them. 

I think the most important thing to remember, though, is that charts like this are objective.  Hitler wouldn’t describe himself as “evil.”  Gandhi wouldn’t describe himself as “good.”  These are external estimations applied to an individual.  Again, if you really want to understand a person’s morality, you need to talk to them and listen to their story. 

Here’s another way to look at it.  When you study ethics, you will learn that an individual who behaves in what appears to be the most unethical way may actually be a very ethical person.  Ethics is the branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong.  Going back to Hitler, most of the world would agree that he was immoral or even amoral, his actions unethical.  To Hitler, he had systematized and was obviously able to defend his beliefs and actions, thus creating them, in his mind and in the minds of his followers, as perfectly ethical.  It goes back to the same truth:  In order to understand a person, you have to hear their story.  We don’t do this anymore in our world.  It’s just easier to dismiss people with whom we disagree or who we need to be enemies as “evil.” 

And that brings me back to where I started.  Maybe by setting up my young adult fiction according to the simplified formula of “hero vs. anti-hero” I’m contributing to a mentality that is crippling our society.  It makes for nice, clean story telling that doesn’t drag out with loads of exposition to reveal internal dialogues and motives.  There’s a challenge here I need to explore more.  It’s something I’ve done in other writing but it is a more complex way of writing.

But maybe that’s the ultimate lesson in this.  Maybe I’m underestimating the intelligence of my readers. 

The bottom line is this:  It’s easy to say, particularly in our present election cycle, that this candidate or that party is the physical embodiment of evil.  I may not always agree with certain politicians, religious leaders, high profile actors, etc., but I don’t think any of them are “evil.”  I might think of them as uninformed and ignorant, their ideas and positions as aberrant and abhorrent, and their policies as regressive but I don’t think any of them are actually evil.  This means I have to take the time to understand them, why they say the things they say and why they do the things they do. 

I’m pretty sure I’m a better person for the effort.  

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500 Word Friday: Gay Bad Guys?

I was just looking at some writing prompts.  I subscribe to a number of writing blogs on tumblr and a few of them occasionally list writing prompts.  I haven't ever really used a writing prompt; I find more than enough content to write about on a daily basis for the blog just by scanning social media.

When I saw this writing prompt, though, it made me stop and think.  The prompt?  “It’s perfectly fine to make your antagonist gay.”  In other words, bad guys can be gay, too.

At first I thought that this was a legitimate point.  Statistically speaking a segment of the world’s most villainous leaders have been LGBT.  Why wouldn’t I consider making a character who “kicks  puppies and steals candy from children and is the most despicable person on the face of the earth and is gay?”  Then I realized the sad truth.  When I write LGBT fiction I always make characters who happen to be gay and are heroes because the world vilifies LGBT people enough on its own.  For me, at least right now in my writing journey, I want to write characters with whom LGBT people identify  and that means characters struggling to come out or characters who are LGBT and being vilified by segments of the community in which they live.

Last night I was made aware of a member of the Minnesota State House of Representatives by the name of Glenn Gruenhagen.  I blogged about him last night. In his ignorance and in an attempt to sound informed, Mr. Gruenhagen has introduced legislation he claims is based on the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual in an attempt to legally label LGBT people as “mentally ill” and “in need of treatment.”  With people like this trying to continually and consistently victimize and vilify the LGBT community, why would I ever consider writing a character that is an antagonist when members of the LGBT community, particularly youth, know who the real villains  in the real world are.

That being said, I wonder if I’m not being disingenuous by rejecting the idea out of hand and making all of my antagonists non-LGBT.  I mean, I’m acutely aware of how segments of the LGBT community emphasize a false dichotomy.  It’s not always us (LGBT) against them (non-LGBT),  The world isn’t black and white.  I think we need to be careful about who we consistently define as antagonists.  After all, there are degrees of “bad.”

I don’t know.  As I finish my current book, I’ve already begun scribbling down ideas for the next one and pulling out some research and old short stories.  I might have to think more about this idea, though.

What do you think?  Does the world need to be introduced to some bad guys/gals who happen to be gay?

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