Monthly Archives: December 2011
Killing the buzz
Filed under homophobia, LGBTQ, psychological research, racism, sexism
No room at the inn
Earlier this month, several gay rights organziations called for the boycott of the Salvation Army’s iconic red kettle drive, and instead to donate money to LGBT-friendly charitable groups. Of course, this isn’t the first time that LGBTQ civil rights organizations have called attention to the “homosexuality-as-sin” philosophy the Salvation Army espouses. It also isn’t the first time that the gay community has urged people, in support of LGBTQ rights and acceptance, to donate their money elsewhere during the holiday season. For any readers who might be unfamiliar with the Salvation Army’s stance on homosexuality, the following passage is an excerpt from the Salvation Army’s position statement on this issue:
“Scripture forbids sexual intimacy between members of the same sex. . . . Likewise, there is no scriptural support for demeaning or mistreating anyone for reason of his or her sexual orientation. The Salvation Army opposes any such abuse. In keeping with these convictions, the services of The Salvation Army are available to all who qualify, without regard to sexual orientation.”
Essentially, by denouncing both homosexuality and mistreatment of others, the Salvation Army takes the position of “hate the sin, but love the sinner. “And because the Salvation Army swaddles their anti-homosexuality stance with some degree of compassion (note the above statements regarding mistreatment), the general public has reacted with some hostility to the red kettle boycott. Take this comment, for example, posted on MSNBC’s website by a self-identified “supporter” of LGBTQ civil rights:
“I support the right of homosexuals to marry and live their lives as they please. . .it hurts no one. But urging people to stop donating to a group that helps people in need, well, that seems stupid to me.”
And this comment, suggesting that the gay community is angrily targeting the “good guys”:
“The Salvation Army isn’t perfect, but it is widely regarded as one of the best-ran charities in the world and has been consistently ranked in the top 5 large charities for efficiency, low administration costs and for providing transparency and accountability for its fundraising efforts.”
And this – a statement that insinuates that, when you’re homeless and starving, sexual orientation doesn’t matter:
“I do hope you are never on the street hungry and broke. You would run to the nearest SA soup kitchen. When you go in, they ask for your name, and if you have a place to live, and if you are working. Then they feed you, give you a place to sleep if you need it. That’s all. No who do you have sex with, what church do you go to, or what political party do you vote for.”
But sexual orientation DOES matter. In 2007, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a report titled “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth: An Epidemic of Homelessness,” a comprehensive review of the available academic research and professional literature on LGBTQ homelessness. According to the report, 26 percent of LGBTQ teens are kicked out of their homes upon coming out (or after being outed by someone else). LGBTQ homeless teens are at significant risk for mental health issues like depression and suicidality, substance abuse, risky sexual behaviors and “survival sex” (sex in exchange for money, drugs, food, clothes, or a place to stay), and victimization (LGBTQ homeless youth are 7 times more likely than their heterosexual peers to be victims of a crime). One in five transgender people need or are at risk of needing homeless shelter assistance. Obviously there are many factors that contribute to homelessness, but numerous studies indicate that homophobia is a significant force that drives LGBTQ youth out onto the streets.
Several studies, a number of which were cited in the Task Force report, indicate that LGBTQs commonly have negative experiences in the shelter system because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. To me, this isn’t surprising, given that we live in a homophobic and heterosexist society. However, the issue is likely compounded by the fact that many homeless services are run by faith-based organizations that oppose LGBTQ civil rights – such as the Salvation Army. Even if the attitude is “love the sinner, hate the sin,” I think it’s fair to say that LGBTQ homeless youth – particularly those who have been traumatized by the homophobia of their families – would rather starve, or sleep on the streets, or prostitute themselves for money or a place to stay, than stay in one of these shelters. They are, in a sense, chilly, inhospitable environments for LGBTQ youth. And this is why gay rights organizations have called for the boycott of the red kettle campaign.
“And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn“(Luke 2:7). People who belong to historically marginalized groups know exactly what this feels like. In our culture, where homophobia, biphobia, transphobia, and heterosexism are in the water we drink and in the air we breathe, LGBTQs often feel like there’s no room at the inn. In my opinion, that’s a very powerful reality to reflect upon during this Christmas season. And it’s the change we can collectively work towards – a culture that embraces all people. A culture in which, when oppression comes knocking at the door, the “No Vacancy” sign starts flashing.
Merry Christmas, and peace on earth to all.
Filed under homophobia, human rights, LGBTQ, LGBTQ youth, transgender, transphobia, Uncategorized, violence
Legalize gay!
Last Tuesday, Hillary Rodham Clinton (yes, I’m talking about Hillary again) made a groundbreaking speech on behalf of LGBTQ human rights that caused reverberations around the world. Never before has such a high-level government official delivered such a bold and powerful statement calling for the unabashed support of the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people. Clinton kicked off her speech with a brief history lesson:
“At three o’clock in the morning on December 10th, 1948, after nearly two years of drafting and one last long night of debate, the president of the UN General Assembly called for a vote on the final text. Forty-eight nations voted in favor; eight abstained; none dissented. And the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. It proclaims a simple, powerful idea: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
She continued by linking gay rights to human rights with this statement:
“Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human.”
Later, she poses a direct challenge to anti-LGBT cultural and religious values practiced throughout the world:
“. . . [W]e came to learn that no practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us. And this holds true for inflicting violence on LGBT people, criminalizing their status or behavior, expelling them from their families and communities, or tacitly or explicitly accepting their killing.”
And, towards the end of her speech, Clinton issues an impassioned call to end passive discrimination and oppression:
“The LGBTQ community needs allies. Conversely, when we see denials and abuses of human rights and fail to act, that sends the message to those deniers and abusers that they won’t suffer any consequences for their actions, and so they carry on. But when we do act, we send a powerful moral message.”
I’d say that this was an historic moment in modern world history.
But I’d actually like to focus on one specific part of her speech that I thought was particularly notable (which I haven’t really seen discussed anywhere else – and I’ve been paying attention, believe me). The statements that caught my attention were these: “But progress comes from changes in laws. In many places, including my own country, legal protections have preceded, not followed, broader recognition of rights. Laws have a teaching effect. Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination. Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. And practically speaking, it is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.” Whether Clinton is well-versed in theory and research in social psychology, or whether she has especially astute powers of observation, is a question that’s up for grabs. However, what I find notable is that her words echo almost exactly the ideas of Gordon Allport, psychologist and author of the classic 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice. Her comments also reflect the findings of cognitive-developmental theorist Lawrence Kohlberg, famous for his research on moral development. Both of these scholars concur that laws shape our moral compass – not the other way around.
Allport makes a distinction between stateways (legislation, court rulings, and other public policy efforts) and folkways (culturally-driven attitudes, beliefs, and worldviews), suggesting that social and cultural norms are most powerfully affected by stateways. When we pass laws, we create a new norm. And as a rule, people tend to shy away from non-normative behavior. In fact, our collective human desire for law and order is reflected in Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. According to Kohlberg’s research, most people tend to rely on an “authority and social order maintaning orienatation” (as opposed to some universal set of ethical principles) when making moral judgments. In other words, people use laws, rather than an internal set of guiding principles, to make decisions about weighty moral issues. So if we want people to support LGBT human rights, we need laws and policies – both domestically and internationally – that guide that support.
Of course, there are laws, and there are laws. What happens when governmental law conflicts with Biblical law? Frankly, I think this conflict is at the heart of the same-sex marriage debate. In fact, Hillary Clinton’s own evolving attitudes regarding same-sex marriage probably reflect this dissonance. Ideally, Biblical law and laws passed by government entities would support reflect one another – but obviously that’s not always the case. It’s an issue I explore in my book, Backdrop, in some detail, and I’d like to explore it further in a future blog post. Stay tuned.
To watch (or read the text of) Hillary Clinton’s speech, delivered December 6, 2011, go to http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/watch-hillary-clintons-amazing-speech-on-lgbt-rights-full-text-and-video/politics/2011/12/06/31329.
Filed under homophobia, human rights, LGBTQ, Uncategorized
Getting to Zero
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the first reports from Los Angeles of gay men dying of pneumonia, cancer, and other strange opportunistic infections. One year later, Tom Brokaw and Robert Bazell of NBC News reported on a “mysterious, newly-discovered disease” that afflicts mainly “homosexual men” – a disease which quickly came to be identified as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), caused by the human immunodeficency virus (HIV). Now, HIV and AIDS are part of our common everyday nomenclature, but back in 1981, news reports containing those enigmatic initials evoked incredible fear in the public – with good reason. The death toll over the past thirty years has been staggering – more than 25 million people worldwide have died from the disease, 600,000 in the United States. In the early years, most died because no treatments were available. In 1987, approval of the anti-retroviral drug AZT offered the first ray of hope for people with AIDS (PWAs), representing a major breakthrough in the treatment of AIDS. Now, with the development of several classes of drugs that block the virus, “combination therapy” is now the medical treatment of choice – allowing HIV-positive people and PWAs to live fairly long, fulfilling lives. As the old advertisement says, we’ve come a long way, baby.
Yet according to statistics from the Center for Disease Control, HIV and AIDS are still significant public health issues. Worldwide, about 34 million people are HIV-positive, 1.2 million of whom are in the U.S. And in the U.S., one in five people with HIV have no idea that they’re infected with the virus – potentially creating a risk for further transmission. We may have made significant strides regarding treatment of HIV/AIDS, but our efforts at prevention – even with the surge of safer-sex workshops that were conducted during the 1990s – are pathetic at best.
In her November 8 address, borrowing from the phrase “combination treatment,” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed her goal of an “AIDS Free Generation” by outlining a three-pronged “combination prevention” strategy. First, given that one in seven new HIV infections occurs when a mother passes the virus on to her child, preventing mother-to-child transmission would have a significant impact, particularly among poor people and in underdeveloped countries. The second prong of her strategy involves voluntary medical male circumcision, a low-cost procedure that, according to controlled clinical trials, reduces the risk of female to male transmission by more than 60 percent. Lastly, using anti-retroviral treatment for people living with HIV can reduce the risk of transmission up to 96 percent. Using these three strategies, according to Clinton, “we will be on the path to an AIDS-free generation.”
With all due respect to our Secretary of State, I’d like to suggest two more potentially powerful prevention strategies. According to the Centers for Disease Control, sexually transmitted diseases and infections are on the rise. By age 35, 50 percent of the U.S. population will have some type of STD/STI. Half of new STDs occur in adolescents and young adults. And increasingly, middle- and high-school students aren’t receiving comprehensive sex and relationship education – in one of my classes, a student told me that the extent of safer-sex education she received was this: “Use a condom.” More chilling is the fact that, because treatments for HIV and AIDS have improved so dramatically over the last decade, young people don’t typically consider it to be a serious health issue – and as a result, they are engaging in riskier sexual behaviors. If we can provide our young people with accurate sex education, they will be better equipped to make healthy choices for themselves.
The second prevention strategy I’d like to suggest involves elimiation of stigma, prejudice, and discrimination. The World Health Organization cites stigma as the main reason why people don’t get tested, why they don’t disclose their HIV status, and why they fail to take (or don’t have access to) anti-retroviral drugs. According to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, “Stigma remains the single most important barrier to public action. It is a main reason why too many people are afraid to see a doctor to determine whether they have the disease, or to seek treatment if so. It helps make AIDS the silent killer, because people fear the social disgrace of speaking about it, or taking easily available precautions. Stigma is a chief reason why the AIDS epidemic continues to devastate societies around the world.” If we don’t address stigma – homophobia as well as disease-related stigma – there is no way we’ll ever see an “AIDS Free Generation.” In the words of ACT-UP, Silence = Death.
World AIDS Day was this past Thursday, December 11, and the theme this year was “Getting to Zero.” Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.
Filed under HIV/AIDS, homophobia, LGBTQ