Conservative beliefs result in more dead gay kids

As reported in Pediatrics Journal  by Dr. Mark L. Hartzenbuehler, gay teens living in conservative, less gay supportive areas are significantly more likely to commit suicide than their straight peers by 20%.  Not just bullied gay kids.  Not just depressed gay kids.  All gay kids.

The article reported that the study methodology was to identify areas less supportive of gays by looking at the incidences of gay-straight alliances in high schools, proportion of same-sex couples, incidence of schools with policies that specifically protect GLBT students, and the proportion of Democrats in the area.

So there you have it.  The beliefs of social conservatives result in more dead kids.  It’s not hyperbole.  Those areas where the dominant party is Republican are often those areas that prove to be inhospitable and even dangerous to gays.  And now, as it turns out, those beliefs, and the Republican party agenda, can be deadly to gay kids.

Social conservative antipathy—hostility, actually—especially shows up in the religious beliefs of social conservatives who use and manipulate religious teachings to validate their cultural biases.  You’ve heard it all before:  church leaders and especially social conservative organizations who are characterized by their anti-science, anti-rational research, fulminating about the evils of homosexuality, about the “radical homosexual agenda” (Focus on the Family), about how homosexuals are “morally disordered” (Cardinal Ratzinger, remember him?), and pouring money into campaigns to amend state constitutions to ban marriage equality for gays (the Mormons, among others).

And the message for gay kids living in these areas?  It’s not just that it is not okay to be gay, it’s the message that there is never any hope, never any acceptance, never anything for them that resembles a normal, productive, happy life.

And so they take their lives.  Precious young lives lost because of ignorance, hate, bias, deliberate malice.  Young lives lost forever.

It makes me angry.  But mostly it makes me sick when I think about gay kids killing themselves.

Gay? It’s a dangerous world

There are times when I despair of some of the anti-gay rhetoric, much of it inspired by religious teachings filtered through cultural biases, that I hear in the United States, some of it right in my home state of Massachusetts.  It also seems that in certain parts of this country, which I’ll call the Bible Belt, people will never by anything other than hostile to the very concept of homosexuality.

Then I think about other cultures.  Here in the United States, two other segments of our population are hugely anti-gay.  One is the African-American culture.  I remember during the debates in the Massachusetts legislature on approving a constitutional amendment for a public vote (defeated), almost universally, African-American clergymen were practically apocalyptic in condemning marriage equality for gays.  From the gay blacks that I have known, the entire culture has a huge antipathy for anything gay.

Even worse is the Latino culture.  Fueled by a culture of machismo,(prominently exhibited or excessive masculinity, according to Wikipedia), anything less than masculine is treated with contempt, even  hatred, or ostracism.   It is not easy to be Latino and gay.

Overseas, however, it’s far worse.  Thanks to evangelical Christians stirring up the pot, some African nations have become so hostile to gays, they are at the point of considering legislation to seek the death penalty for homosexuals.  Not for behavior.  Just for being gay.

Islamic countries are just as bad.  Homosexuality is just plain outlawed in some of them, winked at in others (except in public when it becomes criminal behavior).  Oh, and there are one billion muslims in this world.  Actually, I suspect that in most of the non-European world, homosexuality is despised.

Sometimes we think of the gains that have been made—the characters in TV shows who are not stereotyped or mocked, the characters in the movies, marriage equality in a few states, the growing acceptance of gays in public schools in some regions.  This is all good, but it’s still a dangerous world.  It is NOT okay to be gay if you are black, Latino, oriental, or muslim in the United States.  And it is sure not okay to be gay in most of the rest of the world.  It can even be deadly.

Music & Kids

Today (it’s April 14^th) I’m in Dayton, Ohio for the WGI World Championships for Winter Percussion.  For what?  Take a high school band on the football field, plus the pit crew, which is basically all sorts of percussion non-marchers lined up along the sidelines, and strip out the brass and woodwinds, and what is left is called winter percussion.  Think drum line and pit crew.

I’m excited to be here and I’m excited for the kids, most of whom traveled great distances from coast to coast to be here.  There are five high school groups in my hotel, one from Minnesota (they were practicing outside when I got here, an unexpected treat) and one from Louisiana.  I’ll be cheering for them.

Music is a wonderful activity for kids.  In addition to helping them grow in so many ways – just as football players and basketball players talk about how sports helped them grow – music education has been shown to help students achieve academically as well.  In a remarkable development, Nature Reviews Neuroscience reported last year that music education actually changes the wiring of kids’ brains in positive ways, enhancing speech and language skills, memory and attention.

And yet, sadly, music education is on the decline in the United States, mostly due to tight local budgets.  In my home state, Massachusetts, local aid has been cut in each of the past three years.  Schools have to cut somewhere.

But I am convinced that music education is a core function of our public schools.  There are just two many positives to ignore.  Don’t we want our kids to be challenged and to grow?

So here’s the rub:  If we need to sacrifice for the sake of our children, then that’s what we should do.  Our parents sacrificed, and heaven knows our grandparents sacrificed – a lot – during the depression and World War II.  What can’t we?

 

Opposing views (anti-nausea pill not included)

What some of our more right-wing Christian friends are thinking (taken from the Florida Independent)

“Gay identity does not exist”  says Ryan Sorba at a Liberty University panel last week.  [Oh God!  I don't exist?]

“Gay is a left-wing socio-political construct designed to create grounds for fundamental rights [based on] whimsical capricious desires” (same guy)  [My mom TOLD me I was capricious!  I bet she was thinking whimsical too]

One alternative for the word gay:   “unnatural vice”  [Damn!  I thought it was going to be MIAMI VICE]

One panelist, an “ex-gay”, explained that his homosexuality was the result of looking at Playboy magazines as a boy.  [Are you sure about that?  I thought it was because you sucked off every boy in your eighth grade class]

“Gays in the military present a national threat…”  [Yeah, just like in Israel, and Great Britain, and The Netherlands, and...]

Hypothetical scenario of a child witnessing two Marines kissing:  “Look, mom, those Marines are, uh, making out right there in the food court! I’m not sure I want to be a Marine after all.”  [The poor boy!  Now he wants his mom to buy him GI Joe and GI Jake]

“The homosexual lobby is shamelessly hijacking this bullying issue,” (Robert Knight, exec director of American Civil Rights Union) said. “[They're inserting] a sexual anarchist agenda into public schools under the guise of bullying.   [Could someone please explain "sexual anarchist agenda" so I can make a sarcastic comment about it?]

Clearly, these people never have, and never will, actually get to know a gay person…and find he or she is a person who happens to be gay.  But then again, those who protesteth too  much….

OUR LANGUAGE IS SHIFTING – AGAIN

Writing a novel (And It Was Full of Light!) has helped me to better understand how dynamic our English language is.  “The ballgame?  It was terrific!  Totally awesome.”  “OMG”  “It was the most unique building I ever saw.”

Did you know that the word terrific has gone through a complete flip-flop over the years?  Long ago, it meant something that was capable of inspiring dread or terror.  Now, it most often means something unusually positive, such as, “This was one terrific concert.”  Same with awesome.  Starting in the 1600s and lasting until the 1970s, it meant, to inspire awe.  Now, of course, it means impressive, or very good.

And of course, there is what I call e-chatter, where words are reduced to the bare minimum letters.  There are dozens in common usage today, even by baby boomers, which we use thinking we are being quite cool (quite mistakenly).

But some changes are subtler.  Subtler, for example.  In contemporary usage, one might say, “But some changers are more subtle.”  Adjectives are shifting.  “That’s the most ugly car in history!”  Whatever happened to just plain, old ugliest?  In today’s common usage, adjectives themselves have to be modified to convey their power or degree.  And the word unique:  it means just that.  If something is unique, there is no other thing like it in existence.  There is no most-unique.  But how many times have you heard the adjective unique be modified with more or most?  My theory is that since vocabulary is not studied as rigourously as in previous generations, once powerful English words now have to be modified to convey their power.

And then there are the pronunciation shifts.  “of-ten.”  Didn’t it used to be pronounced without the “t’?  Or “com PARE a ble” instead of “COM par a ble”.

The point is, the English language shifts constantly.  It always has.  It shifted when is was Old English, it shifted when it was Middle English, and it is shifting today.  What purists sniff as the decline of the language by the lower, less-educated classes in the 1800s is today’s acceptable English.  Today’s decay, at least to the purists, is tomorrow’s standard.

We can, and should, teach proper English and vocabulary.  But preventing shifts in our mother tongue is like trying to prevent the tide from coming in.

 

STILL WAITING FOR ADULTERERS TO BE STONED TO DEATH

So here’s the scene:  Supporters of cruel, hateful, ignorant biases against gays often rely on Biblical injunctions as justifications for their beliefs and convictions.  Leviticus is frequently mentioned.  Bill Fortenberry’s blog said that every one of the Bible’s fifteen references to homosexuality “is negative.”  For example, on Genesis 19 1-14 (Sodom and Gommorah),  “Homosexuality is the only sin mentioned in these verses.”

Wow, maybe I should just slit my wrists!  Over the centuries people who misunderstood or misinterpreted the Bible have done terrible things. “The Bible has been misused to defend bloody crusades and tragic inquisitions; to support slavery, apartheid, and segregation; to persecute Jews and other non-Christian people of faith…to condemn interracial marriage; to execute women as witches…Shakespeare said it this way: “Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose,” says Rev. Mel White of Soulforce.

Sodahead.com:  Homosexuality is taboo in Judaism because homosexuality was once connected with a form of foreign worship practice.  When Leviticus says “do not lie with a man as with a woman – it [is] abomination.” what it was really referring to, according to the late Rev Peter Gomes, was distinguishing what the Israelites did from everyone else (the unclean).  And besides, there is no mention of homosexuals in the Bible.  What was mentioned was behavior.

I could go on and on, but you can read the literature as well as I can.  Here’s my point:  Leviticus also says that adulterers should be stoned to death.  It’s black and white.  No wiggle room, folks.  Stoned to death. Got it?  Leviticus also calls for the death penalty for a lot of transgressions that today are acceptable sexual behavior.  And football, too (you know, you really aren’t supposed to handle the skin of a dead pig).

So why, I wonder, aren’t conservative Christians pounding on the doors of state legislatures across the country demanding that laws be instituted making adultery a criminal offense punishable by stoning?  Not the electric chair or drugs; it has to be stoning.  No wiggle room here, remember?  And why do they use mis-translations or their humanly-fallible understanding of God’s Word to deny basic civil liberties of people who might be different?  The United States of America is NOT the Israelites and all the unclean others.  Our civil consitutional protections are supposed to be for ALL citizens, free from the demands of any one religion.

I can tell you why.  Just like using the Bible to support slavery and the crusades and all those other horrible things, people read the Bible through the distorted lenses of their own biases and beliefs.  And gays are on the receiving end of their ignorant bullshit.

 

 

 

It DOES get better!

Last year radio commentator and social activist Dan Savage started a YouTube sensation called It Gets Better. Remember last fall ?  Tyler Clementi was just one young gay who took his own life in 2010.  Dan’s video, now with thousands more on the YouTube channel as well as a website, is a message of hope from gay guys who made it out of horrible teen years.  They survived physical, verbal and emotional abuse; eviction from the only homes they’ve ever known; bullying and worse at school; beatings; and derision by teachers and apathy by school officials.

Now they are so alive!  And flourishing, and fulfilling their lives with the promise that’s taken away when kids think they are in a trap with no way out.  Too many – one is too many – take their lives, a waste that makes me cry, a tragedy that makes me cry out for a better world where gay kids can simply be kids who happen to be gay.  It’s not a condition, it’s not a disease, it’s not some immoral abnormality, it’s just the way it is.  And one more time:  NO ONE CHOOSES TO BE GAY!

Tragic as those suicides were, Tyler Clementi brought unparalleled attention to the plight of gay kids.  And with all that publicity, and efforts like the It Gets Better campaign, maybe things will get better.  Then you read stories in the news about school districts run by cro-magnon, right-wing moralizers who continue to send messages to gay kids that they are not like (meaning, not as good as) “normal” kids.

If your school district doesn’t have a gay-straight alliance or clear anti-bullying policies that really work, please get involved.  If you have a story similar to those on the YouTube channel, tell it!  What I hope is that just like my novel, And It Was Full of Light!, your message will be a beacon of hope for just one gay kid who decides not to pull the trigger.

 

WRONG-HEADED THINKING BY GAYS

Not for the first time, I’ve run into opinions by certain gays and lesbians opposing efforts of gays to secure marriage equality (which everyone calls “gay marriage,” a term I detest), and opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in the military.  And why would any gay person possibly have these beliefs?

It goes like this:  First, marriage is a heterosexual institution which gays should reject.  Second, no one, certainly gays, should be in the military in the first place.

My opinion:  this type of thinking is breathtakingly wrong-headed.  It’s selfish, narrow-minded, and narcissistic.  These radicals just can’t imagine that tens of thousands of gay Americans have thirsted for marriage equality, and where available, have taken advantage of it by the thousands.  Marriage, that is, the civil institution, is a vast complex of laws which provides protections for legally wed couples, such as hospital visitation rights, tax advantages, estate protections.  It is especially important to protect the children of married parents.  To deny these protections to people to want them is absurd.

As for the military, I personally have met gay men who want to serve their country by pursuing careers in the military – openly and proudly as gay Americans.  It is so deeply hurtful to individuals to have to lie about and conceal their true selves.  It is hurtful to the military, according to the superintendent of West Point, because the basic premise of the military is honor, and when people have to lie, the honor of the entire institution is harmed.  Is it too much to imagine that some gay Americans thirst to serve openly in the military?

Talk about wrong-headed, counter-productive and selfish thinking!  I have nothing but contempt for these viewpoints.

 

A lesson from another revolution

Letter in today’s Boston Globe:

REGARDING YOUR March 30 editorial “Obama’s forthright defense of a necessarily limited war’’: I agree that we should have an interest in helping a people overthrow a tyrant when our “interests and values’’ are threatened.We are here as an independent nation partly because France lent us support when our cause hung in the balance.Yes, France had much self-interest in opposing its longtime British enemy. But at Yorktown in 1781, General George Washington was aided by French troops and by the French fleet, which trapped the British on the Yorktown peninsula. Our victory at Yorktown, helped by a foreign power, was decisive to overthrowing a tyrant and making the Declaration of Independence more than a daring piece of paper.

Robert Littlefield

Provincetown

 

PEOPLE SHOULDN’T VOTE ON THE CIVIL LIBERTIES OF A MINORITY

By a 40 – 10 vote, the Indiana Senate voted to ban “gay marriage.”  But this bill is far worse than that.  Not only did they vote to ban civil unions, they also decided that any contractual arrangement between two consenting adults of the same sex that approximates marriage will be banned.

This is, once again, our bigoted, hateful, spiteful, self-righteous right-wing Christian minority trying to make their vision of the world the vision for the entire state, regardless of their creed, their race, their beliefs.  And lest you forget…Christian fundamentalists don’t have beliefs.  They are RIGHT.

The Indiana legislature has to vote on this once again in 2013, and if it passes a second time, it goes to the people of Indiana in 2014 for a popular vote on extending the civil liberty called marriage equality to a group of it’s citizens.  Can you imagine the amount of money that will pour into that state from the Mormon Church, Southern Baptists, and the right-wing fundamentalist organizations such as Focus on the Family?

And so, one more time, to repeat something that our founding fathers knew all to well but our self-righteous Christian moralizers who were asleep in high school civics don’t seem to give a flying crap about:  PEOPLE SHOULD NOT VOTE ON THE CIVIL LIBERTIES OF A MINORITY