The excellent Harvard School of Public Health Means Matter Project has found that means (ex: gun, hanging, pills, carbon monoxide, bridge jumps, etc.) along with seriousness of intent are the most important factors in whether a suicide is completed or not. About one in three gay youth attempt suicide and the rate is thought to be quite a bit higher (as high as 84%) for transgender or gender non-conforming (GNC) young people.

Adolescents are impulsive by nature and consequently many of their suicide attempts are not pre-meditated but in fact unplanned and related to same day crises. If a young person has access to a gun in the home, he or she is twice as likely to complete the suicide (source: Speakforthem.org). An NVISS study on the Characteristics of Victims of Suicide showed that of completed firearm suicides of youth under 17, 82% used a firearm belonging to a family member, usually a parent.

In the past fifteen years of clinical practice, every single lesbian, gay, bisexual and particularly transgender person with whom I’ve worked (with maybe no more than one or two exceptions) has reported feeling suicidal at some point during their adolescence. Some made attempts. Some did not. There are complicated, multi-variable reasons why some LGBT teens with horrific circumstances manage to survive and even thrive while others take their own lives. However, access to guns ensures that more LGBT young people will die. Many of those suicides will be impulsive and maybe the young person would have been stopped if he or she selected a less lethal method.

When I worked in residential treatment, I got a call that a fourteen year old lesbian client was trying to hang herself in her dorm. I ran over there in time to see her sitting on the bathtub moments after a staff member had removed the noose from around her neck. If she’d had access to a gun she’d be dead. No doubt in my mind. No time to get to her. No time to intervene. Instead, in the months that followed, she got the help she needed around her depression and support around affirming her sexual orientation.

We cannot continue to look to a corrupt Congress to protect our young people. It is our job as community members, clinicians, parents, teachers and simply compassionate human beings to circumvent an ineffective legislative process and make our own plan.

Here are a few suggestions on things we can do right now:

1. If you have kids, get guns out of your house. If you refuse to relinquish your guns, follow the guidelines set-forth by the Means Matter Project to decrease the likelihood children will have access (It has been shown that hiding guns typically doesn’t work).

2. Put pressure on friends and neighbors to get rid of guns. Do you ever ask the parent of your child’s friend if they have guns in the house before allowing your child to go there? This should become part of our parlance in the same breath as “Do you leave the kids unsupervised? Do you allow your kids to drink? What time do you imagine they’ll go to bed?” Perhaps gun ownership will go the way of the cigarette. It was once cool and now it’s looked down upon.

3. Work with local law enforcement and local businesses to sponsor “Turn in Your Gun” days. Some towns have offered cash for guns or businesses can also offer free or discounted meals or merchandise.

4. Lobby your school board to ensure that teacher’s have a basic understanding of what to look for in depressed students. Teachers have more contact with our young people than almost anyone and they can certainly help identify young people who may be at risk.

5. Work with schools to continue to create climates for LGBT students (and students that are outsiders) that are affirming and safe in order to decrease the sense of isolation and hopelessness that accompanies suicidality.

6. Be that adult that a young person can talk to. Studies show that having one trusted adult is a protective factor for at-risk kids.

7. It goes without saying to vote each and every one of these Senators out of office.

So what went wrong in the town of Steubenville?  How do we understand why so many young people stood by and did nothing while a young woman was raped? Why did the football coach protect the perpetrators knowing they had committed this rape? Why were parents so quick to vilify the victim and jump to defend the teenage perpetrators?

It’s easy to look at the sexual assaults in Steubenville, Ohio and at Penn State University and draw a simple conclusion – it’s all about football. But to understand what really happened in both communities, you need to know very little about football and its culture. We’ve seen similar cover ups: the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America, and what they really have in common is they are all insular communities. Each entity acts like a family, they stand up for each other, they create a sense of belonging, and when sexual abuse occurred, they closed ranks and behaved just like nuclear families.

There is no silver bullet for preventing or responding to sexual abuse. However, the mental health community does know quite a bit about what happens when sexual abuse fractures families. We can use what we know to understand Steubenville, to heal and to prevent future episodes from occurring.

I have worked with countless numbers of young women who have been abused by their fathers, stepfathers, mothers’ boyfriends or male peers. In the vast majority of cases, this is how the story typically unfolds: The abuse or assault is ignored, even despite obvious and repeated signs it is occurring. When the abuse comes to light, often it is the child that is blamed.  It is she that is lying or it is she that is blamed for seducing the man or boy. In cases of incest, the daughter may be seen as the mother’s competition and the mother becomes enraged at the daughter for having stolen her man.

There are unspoken rules in families where sexual abuse occurs and they require all members to play along:

1) Pretend it’s not happening;

2) Do not speak of it outside the family; and

3) Whoever tells the truth will be scapegoated and most likely excommunicated.

The underlying message to not only the victim but also to all members of the family is, “If you break the rules, you end up alone.”

These same rules apply to groups and communities that have been invaded by sexual assault. They shut down and try to protect themselves. So why do people behave this way? From a psychological perspective, here are a few reasons why:

Cognitive dissonance. We cannot hold two competing thoughts at the same time.  For example, “Trent Mays is a hometown hero.” And “Trent Mays is a rapist.” They just don’t go together and so to find a way for them to fit we have to change one of the thoughts, substituting instead of  “Trent Mays is a rapist” with “The young woman was asking for it.”  Example 2: The two competing thoughts of “I am a Penn State football fan” and “Penn State covers up sexual abuse of children.” The thought “Penn State covers up sexual abuse” gets replaced with “Joe Paterno wasn’t involved.” In other words, people lie to themselves in order to reduce their own discomfort.

The normalcy effect. In crisis, many people want to carry on as if nothing out of the ordinary is occurring. If you’ve ever taken a big fall and tried to hop up and walk away, you know what that’s like. If you’ve wondered why people stay in their homes despite evacuation orders, this is one reason. When faced with a trauma, our body shuts down in order to protect itself from overwhelming emotions. What will it mean for me if my husband/son/best friend is a perpetrator? How will I deal with that reality and how will it affect my life? How will it affect my emotional and perhaps financial security? What kind of parent or coach must I be? As our nervous system becomes flooded with anxiety, our primary defense of denial kicks in. Our bodies go to great lengths not to deal with feelings that threaten our survival.

The bystander effect. Are all the young people who witnessed the rape and did nothing “bad” people? We would all like to believe that if we were placed in a similar situation, we would have stood up and protected the victim, but the extensive research in the areas of social psychology suggests that just isn’t so. The bystander effect occurs when we do not intervene in an emergency when others are present. The more people around the less likely we are to help because we assume someone else is doing it.  There is also tremendous pressure to conform to a group norm: it becomes more difficult to act when you see others pretending that nothing horrible is happening.

There are three very simple things we can do to protect victims:

1. Assume the responsibility to call for help is yours. Assume no one else will.

2. Pay attention to your instincts. Women in particular are socialized not to make a scene, but in hindsight report that they intuitively knew something was wrong. And most importantly,

3) Whenever someone reports an incident of sexual abuse to you, believe them. Despite media hype of false accusations, it is actually very rare for someone to fabricate a rape or molest accusation. No matter how shocking or unfeasible it seems to you, try to listen and respond with support rather than minimization or denial.

The response that trusted adults and bystanders have to a child’s sexual trauma can seriously mitigate or reduce his or her suffering in years to come. Not being protected is a secondary trauma that the victim must bear as well. The best thing that happened to this young woman in Steubenville is that her parents believed her and took action.

Preventing further crimes like Steubenville from happening requires a multi-tiered approach that addresses male privilege, the reverence of the sports star, and the rape culture in which we live, but we also must understand the dynamics of sexual abuse and how they apply not only to nuclear families but communities as a whole.

Laura Booker, LCSW, is a psychotherapist in NYC and the author of queeringthemind.com

Sex (Photo credit: James Hopkirk)

We are an infidelity obsessed culture. Our media is saturated with it, politicians’ careers ruined by it, and self-help authors and talk show hosts play on our fears of it. Earlier last month I attended a talk here in NYC by therapist Esther Perel on Infidelity: From Trauma to Transformation. Perel, the author of the excellent book about keeping relationships passionate, Mating in Captivity, presented a model on addressing infidelity in (straight) monogamous relationships. (Here’s her TED Talk this past Valentine’s Day) Certainly there is a lot to be curious about as to why people have affairs, what function an affair serves both for the individual having the affair and for the relationship itself.

I can’t help but wonder whether rather than “treating” infidelity and demonizing the infidel if we instead need to focus on addressing the underlying foundation of monogamy. Interestingly, contrary to popular belief, infidelity is not necessarily a product of a bad or problematic relationship. Many affairs happen in relationships where the degree of satisfaction is fairly high and become unhappy only after the disclosure, where the lying and deceit that typically accompany it tend to cause more damage than the sexual infraction itself. Although we will never have completely accurate statistics, it is estimated than anywhere between 30-50% of marriages have at least one episode of extra-marital sex. So either we have a lot of bad and immoral people who need help or we need to more closely examine the construct of monogamy and increase our understanding of the human experience.

Monogamy is a valid choice for some people but straight couples I’ve seen don’t typically question or examine whether monogamy is the right choice for them or not. They just assume it. Why do we still gravitate toward monogamy and what are the inherent difficulties we encounter by doing so?. For some people monogamy is like trying to put a round peg in a square hole. It just doesn’t fit. So if you’re going to choose monogamy,  it warrants examining what that choice actually means and where it comes from.

THE HISTORY OF MONOGAMY IN LESS THAN 1000 WORDS

When most people get into new relationships they tend to default into monogamy. Rarely are there discussions about “why monogamy?” or what purpose will monogamy serve and is this the right choice for us. In Western cultures, we have come to think of monogamy as natural or the norm, when in fact that historically has not been the case. What is “natural” is often only a product of the time. In Kyle Harper’s Ted Talk on The History of Monogamy, he notes that somewhere between 73-93% of the world’s societies have been polygamous, and of those societies that are monogamous, they have only become so in the last 200 years. He describes why societies that descend from the Romans tend to be monogamous and how the move from hunter/gatherer societies to the agricultural revolution in about 8000B.C. also spurred this shift. In short, as people relied on their land to sustain themselves, men in particular had to be cautious about the number of people they could feed based on the land that they owned. It served them to limit the number of wives and children they had to support.

WHEN PEOPLE DIDN’T KNOW THAT SEX MADE BABIES

In the book Sex at Dawn, authors Ryan and Jetha note that it was only as the agricultural revolution took so did the notion of property. Whereas previously in hunter gatherer societies there had been no real incentive to move away from a model of sharing, men could now own the land , own food, own shelter and “own” sexuality (i.e. women’s sexuality became men’s property). It was only then that people began to realize that the act of sex lead to pregnancy and men became invested in leaving their land to their own biological off-spring. In order to do so, a man had to know which children were his. The biological evidence about the whether there is an evolutionary imperative to be monogamous is controversial, but as soon as there is a societal norm that supports accumulation of wealth and property (by men alone), then men become invested in keeping women monogamous.

WHAT TO LEARN FROM LGBTQ FOLK

When it comes to examining whether monogamy is the right choice for a couple, it would serve people to take a note from the LGBTQ community. One of the best things about being queer in the last few decades is that queers have had unique freedom. Living on the margins means we are less constricted by conventional narratives. LGBTQ people have been free to define our own relationships, who we want to love, who we want to have sex with and how. The gay men’s bathhouse movement, especially prior to AIDS, is the most obvious example of men who proclaimed their sexuality in opposition to the dominant heterosexual monogamous norm.

The heteronormative narrative of boy meets girl, they fall in love, gets married, have kids and stay together forever is in fact the overwhelming dominant script to which Americans are exposed. Americans, seemingly more so than their European counterparts, fall for it hook, line and sinker. There is pressure for straight people to appear “normal” and to play their part. Out LGBTQ people have already gone through the process of accepting their sexuality and reflecting on its complexity. Through a coming out process and forging relationships with same-sex partners or multiple partners, they have already come to terms with a sexuality that is perhaps different from the way we are told it is supposed to be. When people live on the margins of heteronormativity, there is a tremendous paradox in that although they experience personal and institutional oppression, they are also freer to write their own stories and question the monogamous dyad as the ideal. Many couples I see default into monogamy because that’s what we are taught is normal and natural without examining the choice they are making.

EXISTENTIALISM AND MONOGAMY

Existential psychotherapists write about the four givens that are part of the universal human experience: 1) The knowledge that we inevitably die and we die alone; 2) The need to create meaning in a world which there is no obvious meaning; 3) The desire for freedom vs. the desire for structure and security; and 4) the desire for connection when we are isolated within ourselves. Perhaps monogamy is a means of managing the anxiety that accompanies some of these realities.

1.Death

“Til death do us part” is an integral part of  the construction of the western marital narrative, perhaps as a means of assuaging the anxiety that arises when we think of our own death. Do we comfort ourselves with the illusion that we ultimately will not be alone? There is relief in imagining that our loved one can accompany us out of this world and into the next when actually there is only so far a loved one can walk with us. We must all face the inevitability that we will make that journey alone.

2. Meaning

Marriage helps create meaning, but not because marriage is necessarily a “natural phenomena” but because society imbues the institution with meaning and status. Marriage gives us a road already travelled that is socially sanctioned that helps organize and give shape to our life. It is part of the human experience to question “What am I doing here? What is my purpose? How can I have meaning in my life?” We must do something with our time here and for many people the notion of marriage and family, which are highly valued in our culture, may relieve people from some of the struggle about what to do with the time they have here. Pretend you live in a world where for some reason monogamy and child-rearing are not options. How would you create your life? What kinds of emotional and sexual relationships would you choose to have? How would you grapple with the great fact that ultimately no one knows why we are here or what we are supposed to do with this life time?

3. Security.

Security, or the illusion of security, is one of the primary function that marriage serves. Marriage makes us feel like we are ok. In entering into a marriage, people hope for the dream: that they will be loved, taken care of, and that they will not be injured or hurt by betrayals. I have worked with so many unmarried couples who talk about the security that they hope marriage will give them. The notion of life-long commitment assuage their fears of abandonment, of being alone. They often look at me in shock when I offer that marriage alone will not solve your fears of being left, your need to be unconditionally loved or your sense of not being an adequate person/partner.

Certainly good monogamy can bring a great sense of security and there is tremendous gratification and contentment in a deepening long-term intimacy. However, when we choose monogamy we need to be aware of what we give up. Security and freedom and autonomy are on opposite poles of the same continuum. When we choose the security of a monogamous relationship we relinquish the excitement and adventure that come with seeking out new relationships and sexual experiences. We are a culture that tends to value security, perhaps partially because since the industrial revolution we tend to be disconnected from extended families and larger communities. Increasingly we have internalized the idea that our partner is supposed to be all things to us (best friend, lover, worker, confidant, activity companion, child caregiver, intellectual sparring partner, etc.) So we have tremendous anxiety about losing that one person or knowing what do we do with the needs that our partner can’t meet (because no one can meet every need another person has).

The need for freedom and why some women cheat

When coupling with someone, it is worth understanding that yes, of course security is important and comforting, but to know that with that choice we are giving up or suppressing a fundamental human need. We are giving up freedom, taking risks, autonomy, the thrill of being seen and known by someone new. In Ester Perel’s talk, she named several variables that increase the likelihood that a heterosexual woman will cheat. I thought this was fascinating.1) Across the world, once women have access to a car, the rates of infidelity start to climb, which I interpret as once women have access to freedom, they start to take it. 2) A woman is most likely to have an affair when her youngest child is three years old. Again, once women are less trapped by the demands of child care, they seek something else. I joked with Ester that it was probably the first time they felt able to take a shower and be presentable enough for sex. And of course, it has been well documented that women’s rates of infidelity positively correlate with financial independence. As dependency lessens, women are more likely to pursue their desire for autonomy and freedom. Couples have to discuss how they will balance these competing human needs. Certainly there are other ways to address the need for freedom, autonomy, and desire than to have an affair or be non-monogamous, but those needs are there and you can guarantee they will find their ways to the surface.

4. The desire for connection

As marriage becomes a more egalitarian affair in the United States, it has become a place for people to place their hopes about being fully known by another person. Partners speak of being married to their best friend and in couples therapy, there is an emphasis on knowing and understanding one another. Embedded in our current culture is an emphasis on honesty, disclosure and transparency, as if we can fully ever know another person. Couples therapy focuses on hearing and understanding the other person’s experience. As human beings, we long for a sense of connection and being fully known by others but yet we are limited. We can never completely know what it’s like to be another, what they feel, what they think. The communication of self is limited by our language and by our physical bodies. We cannot transcend another person and facing that reality may leave us with an intense sense of loneliness.

COMPULSORY MONOGAMY

In 1980 Adrienne Rich wrote that women were subject to the lie of compulsory heterosexuality. Today I wonder if people, and women in particular, are subject to compulsory monogamy. Certainly, monogamy is a valid and good choice for many people. Here I am only suggesting that we make conscious choice about how we live and how we construct our emotional and sexual relationships. Just as the polyamorous person gets the question, “so why did you choose polyamory?,” it will serve people who want monogamous relationships to be curious about their choices, to know the historical roots of monogamy, and to face both the benefits and pitfalls of monogamy with open eyes.

PFLAG (Photo credit: jiadoldol)

I just wanted to take a moment to honor and remember Jeanne Manford, the founder of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). She died today at the age of 92. Jeanne became involved in the gay rights movement in 1972 after her son Morty was beaten for his involvement in a Gay Rights Alliance demonstration. At a time when having a gay or lesbian child was denied and not discussed, she wrote a letter to the New York Post (not the friendliest audience) stating, “I have a homosexual son and I love him.” She stood in the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade (the precursor to NYC LGBT Pride Parade) with a placard that said “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support of our Children”. Shortly thereafter, the first POG meeting (at that time it was just called Parents of Gays) met at Metropolitan Community Church in NYC.

I still tear up every time the PFLAG contingent walks in a pride parade. I cry and clap and holler. It doesn’t matter if it’s a big contingent of a hundred family members and allies walking down 5th Avenue in New York City or the group of five Hawaiian moms I saw in the very small Kauai parade (which was really more like a picnic), Like Jeanne, these parents get it. They get that there is no substitute for a parent’s love and acceptance. Period. I am so grateful for every parent that has found his or her way through the social stigma and religious indoctrination in order to love his or her child. It leaves us with a world where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people can feel connected, can feel loved, and don’t have to lose their families in order to be themselves

Caitlyn Ryan of the Family Acceptance Project has empirically documented what we intuitively know: that family acceptance of LGBT youth protects against suicide, depression, and substance abuse, and is correlated with better health and self-esteem. In other words, family acceptance is a good thing and paramount to a LGBT person’s sense of self and well-being. Family acceptance may also help to mitigate the other detrimental effects of living in a homophobic culture. There is no way of knowing how many lives PFLAG has saved or how many families avoided estrangement. PFLAG gives parents a place to come together and struggle with their fears, their homophobia, ultimately with a goal of supporting and loving their children. Jeanne Manford leaves a powerful legacy – not just in starting PFLAG – but in being the kind of parent that every parent can aspire to follow.

Rep. Jackie Speier introduces Stop Harming Our Kids Resolution on Capitol Hill.

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER FILES SUIT ON BEHALF OF FOUR GAY MEN

Last Tuesday, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed suit on behalf of four young gay men against a Jersey City, NJ based organization called Jews Offering New Alternatives to Healing (JONAH), a group that provides conversion therapy to gay men looking to become straight. At a press conference following the unprecedented filing of such a suit, two of the plaintiffs Michael Ferguson, a 30-year-old Mormon from Salt Lake City, and Chaim Levin, a 25-year-old Brooklyn native who grew up in a Jewish Orthodox home, provided heart-wrenching statements about the torment and abuse they endured at the hands of these so-called therapists and life coaches.  The story has received international attention, and I had the honor of providing a statement on behalf of these young men, giving voice to the consensus among the clinical community that conversion therapy is harmful and dangerous, and providers of such ineffective and harmful “treatment” need to be held accountable.  Hopefully this lawsuit will be a step in shutting down the conversion therapy industry as a whole. My statement to the press was as follows:

Good morning. My name is Laura Booker and I am a licensed clinical social worker with over fifteen years of clinical experience.  I have worked with clients who underwent conversion therapy and have seen its devastating effects first-hand, particularly on those who experience it at a young age. I am here to represent the accepted medical consensus that conversion therapy is not in the best interests of patients.

 Every major mental health association in this country, (including the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and National Association of Social Workers) views homosexuality as a normal variation of human sexuality.  Because homosexuality is no longer viewed as a pathology or mental disorder, there is no need for a cure, any more than a perfectly good working leg needs surgery. Each of the associations I just mentioned has put out policy statements dissuading professionals and consumers from pursuing any treatment purported to change sexual orientation. Unfortunately,  some practitioners, licensed and unlicensed, continue to promise sexual orientation change to vulnerable clients and their families.

 Empirical research has failed to show that conversion therapy is effective.  A 2009 APA Task Force reviewed all the relevant literature on sexual orientation change and found all of the empirical studies since the early 80s to have serious methodological flaws.  Any supportive findings of lasting change have generally been dismissed by the academic community as poor and misleading research.

 Not only is conversion therapy ineffective, but also has the potential to cause serious and life-threatening harm to those who are exposed to it.  It is my clinical experience that people who have undergone conversion therapy are much more likely to suffer from depression, including suicidality, chronic anxiety, sexual dysfunction (inhibited sexual response), and shame. These clients, if they are lucky enough to realize the harm, must then spend countless hours in affirmative therapy in order to accept their identity and cope with the trauma they experienced in trying to change their sexual orientation.

Because conversion therapy is in large part based on the premise that homosexuality is a result of parental failure, it can cause tremendous guilt and shame for parents who feel they are to blame for something that is perfectly natural. It can cause significant discord in parent-child relationships that were otherwise close.   For a small minority who self-report a short-term decrease in same-sex attraction, this repression of one’s sexuality results in disconnection, shame and lack of authentic, gratifying relationships with others.  

 Conversion therapists tell clients “If you just try hard enough, you can change.” Consequently  those who “fail” to change their basic sexual identity may experience self-loathing, low self-esteem and a deep sense of failure to themselves, their families and communities. The techniques used by conversion therapists range from absurd to extremely abusive and dangerous. These counselors abuse their positions of authority to push clients to re-enact early life traumas, thereby re-traumatizing them.  This is simply against the ethical rules of any psychological profession. Conversion therapy is an assault on the core nature of oneself, which can lead complete sense of alienation and erosion of the psyche. No responsible therapist would treat a patient in this manner. 

STOP HARMING OUR KIDS RESOLUTION

Efforts to hold conversion therapists accountable gained momentum throughout the week. On Wednesday morning on Capitol Hill Rep. Jackie Speier (CA-D), introduced a resolution called Stop Harming our Kids with the intent also to hold conversion therapists accountable for ineffective and harmful practices with minors. Representatives for Southern Poverty Law Center, including myself, along with two young men who had been subject to years of conversion therapy spoke in support of the resolution.  Jerry Spencer, a 23 year old gay man from Texas, spoke of four years of conversion therapy and the heartbreak he experienced as a fifteen year old after not being allowed to attend the funeral of his first boyfriend who died of cancer. Speier appeared very passionate about the issue and the responsibility of the states to protect minors from harm.  She called to task by name several providers, including Michelle Bachmann’s husband, who have profited through these snake oil enterprises, some of whom unbelievably even receive reimbursement from Medicaid or Tricaid.

WHAT THE CALIFORNIA LAW MEANS AND DOESN’T MEAN

Speir’s resolution follows Governor Jerry Brown’s signing into law SB 1172 this last September. The law prohibits licensed mental health practitioners in California from providing conversion therapy to minors. The language of the law strikes a fine balance, recognizing that the state has a responsibility to protect minors from harm, in the same way that minors are not allowed to drink or smoke while not eroding their autonomy in making decisions about things such as reproductive rights without parental consent. The distinction being that conversion therapy is harmful so the state needs to intervene where access to birth control and abortion are not.

Because the law impacts only minors, adults can still pursue conversion therapy which seems to preserve the notion of self-determination.  Adults do all kinds of things that may be perceived as harmful so the state stops short of banning the practice all together.  The California law falls short of regulating non-licensed people who provide conversion therapy. Any non-licensed person, including those within religious institutions, can still hang up a shingle and claim to be able to help someone change his or her sexual orientation.  However, the brilliance of the SPLC strategy to sue under the consumer fraud statutes is that the suit will set the first precedent  that advertising that sexual orientation is changeable is an actionable offense, regardless of one’s licensure status.

The conservative Pacific Justice issue has filed suit in federal court aiming to block SB 1172 claiming that the bill violates free speech rights of therapists and privacy rights of patients.

An open letter to straight allies of the LGBT community:

Hello there, straight allies. Here I am again, asking for your help in making sure that LGBT people in our country are treated with fairness and respect. So here it is: Please take your boys out of Boy Scouts. It really is time. I know the Boy Scouts are fun, educational and do cool stuff, but the time has come to hold the Boy Scouts of America responsible for their decisions. Deactivating your son means that you are standing up for equality, letting your son and the BSA know that discriminating against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people is not acceptable and you won’t have your son be a part of an organization that blatantly and unapologetically says it is.  Deactivation also means a substantial loss in revenue for the BSA and at this point that may be the only thing that gets their attention.

Despite internal and external pressure to change their antiquated policy, this last July, Boy Scouts of America reaffirmed its policy banning gay members and scout leaders. A statement that means, “Yes, we, in this year of 2012, are once again asserting our belief that LGBT people are not welcome. That they are immoral and it is acceptable to throw them out of community.” Last week, after twelve years spent completing the requirements to attain the Boy Scouts highest honor the prestigious Eagle Scout award, Ryan Andersen was thrown out of Scouts and denied the award because he is gay. Although Ryan’s mother has activated an on-line petition through change.org to fight the Boy Scouts decision, I predict these 22,000 signatures will fall on deaf ears at the Boy Scouts of America.  Imagine if Ryan were your son or your son’s friend. How would you explain this to him? What would it feel like to be excommunicated from a group you had been a part of for the better part of your childhood?

The good news is we are finally starting to see some isolated incidents of push back around the country. In Northern California, ten staff members at a Boy Scout camp resigned in support of a 22 year old Eagle Scout leader who was fired for being gay.

This letter from Chris and Lauren Glaros of Ohio made the rounds on facebook this summer, skillfully explaining their decision to withdraw their seven year old son from Boy Scouts. A Board Member of the Ohio Valley River Council of the Boy Scouts resigned in April after Jennifer Tyrell, the leader of her son’s troop was ousted for being gay.

As an out queer person, I am not eligible to be a troop leader. To do so, I would have to lie, go back in the closet and risk the possibility of being discovered and essentially fired (from a volunteer position at that!). I would never be willing to do that because of what it would communicate not only to my son but to the other children. I want my son to be proud of ALL of who he is – whether he is straight, gay, somewhere in between, whether he likes music, art or sports, whether he is shy or outgoing. But most of all I want to teach him about  loving kindness and compassion. I want to teach him that all boys – all people – have inherent value and dignity and it is NEVER appropriate to exclude someone because of sexual orientation, race, gender or ability – among other core aspects of one’s identity and experience.

I don’t question that Boy Scouts can be a valuable experience but more important than what the Boy Scouts offer is teaching our children that we are all lovable and acceptable.  As we nurture our boys, don’t we want them to question the kind of man they want to be in the world? Don’t we want them to have the experience of being fully accepted for who they are?  My son is white, middle-class, gender-conforming and my early guess is that he is likely straight (or straight-ish). I want to raise a man who enters this world with compassion, understanding the experience of those less fortunate than himself.

So why do liberal people allow their sons to participate in boy scouts:  My guess is that many straight allies want to look the other way on “the boy scout issue” because they want their boys to enjoy the nice things the boy scouts have to offer.

Fighting for civil rights has always entailed personal sacrifice. Just as white people were necessary to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, straight people are necessary in the fight for equality for LGBT people and the end of institutionalized discrimination. Right now it may feel “easier” to just let your son participate but when you let your son participate this is what is implicit in that participation.

1. That being gay is bad and if you are gay you will be thrown out. Statistics suggest that there is at least one gay/bisexual boy in every troop. That child will learn – if not now then later – that who he is not acceptable. If he knows he is gay already, he will live in fear EVERYDAY of being found out. And that is not an exaggeration. It is the chronic  sense of inadequacy and rejection that is the basis for so many suicide attempts by LGBT people. And even if your son is straight do you want him being part of an organization which tells him that gay boys are different and don’t deserve to participate.

2. Gay friends in the community are not fit to be leaders of the troop. (Imagine trying to explain to your son why the gay father of your son’s best friend can’t be a troop leader. Or if you know me personally, I’d like you to look me in the eye and explain to me why it’s ok for your son to participate in a group that deems my “lifestyle” too immoral to permit me to lead your son.)

3. Gay people are immoral and not safe to be around children (the BSA literature actually cites the “moral” problem with homosexuality, and the exclusion of particularly gay male leaders was historically based in the horrible stereotype that at best gay men are not adequate models of “masculinity” and at worst are sexual predators).

4. And mostly importantly, that it is ok to look the other way when discrimination doesn’t affect you directly.  The civil rights movement needed white people just like the gay rights movement needs straight people.  Would you let your son participate in a club that didn’t allow African-Americans or didn’t allow people who had been adopted, for example. Truthfully it doesn’t seem that much to ask that you find an alternative activity for your son so that the discrimination of LGBT people does not continue to be systemically enforced.

I’m sure your son will be disappointed not to belong to Boy Scouts. My son will be disappointed and perhaps he won’t understand until he’s older. I will tell him that I understand his feelings but we want him to be part of an organization that is inclusive and actually carries out the values they set forth (see the Glaros letter for a good discussion of this) and until the Boy Scouts decide to do this we are going to find another organization.

To borrow a line from the marriage equality movement, wouldn’t you rather be on the right side of history? When your children are grown wouldn’t you like them be able to see that you had a set of values and beliefs that you abided by even though there was a personal cost.

This week the Boy Scouts released files documenting the cover up of decades of sexual abuse.  In coming weeks I think we will come to see that this cover up is of the same likes as Penn State if not the Catholic Church.  The leaders of BSA cared more about maintaining the reputation of its leaders than protecting children.  Maintaining status, reputation and power were clearly the main objectives. So if you don’t want to pull your sons to help end discrimination against LGBT people, you may want to pull them from an organization that allowed boys to be abused FOR DECADES without holding the adult perpetrators responsibility.

Continued institutionalized discrimination is devastating for young LGBT people. The cost to their mental health is tremendous. I am asking you as your neighbor, your friend and an LGBT person to take a stand against the Boy Scouts of America and withdraw your children until their policies are amended. When scouts and leaders take action and withdraw their financial support, maybe the BSA will begin to listen.

Although there are no official statistics about the number of people entering into alternative relationships, anecdotally it appears as though there is increasing interest and cultural awareness of polyamorous relationships (see TLC’s Sister Wives or HBO’s Big Love). Polyamorous which means “many loves,” can take a number of different forms but typically includes a person having more than one significant emotional and/or sexual connection. The theory behind polyamory is that we are capable of loving connections with more than one person at a time and that we cannot expect one partner to meet all of our need either emotionally or sexually. We have an infinite capacity for love and a connection with one person does not necessarily diminish that with another. Some polyamorous people have primary partners as well as other people with whom they date or have sex with. Other folks opt for non-hierarchial arrangements where relationships are not placed in order of importance.

Increasingly in my clinical practice I see more people opting out of the traditional structure of monogamous partnership or marriage. Although gay men have been said to own the market on open relationships, I am seeing people all across the gender and sexual orientation spectrum that are choosing polyamory or open marriage/partnership as viable alternatives. They identify as variably as cis-gendered men and women, trans, gender queer, straight, gay, bisexual, queer and heteroflexible and range in age. And some young queer people in New York City even cite a pressure within the community currently to be non-monogamous.

So when an individual or couple comes into my office and describes their relationships and what they want for themselves, my job is to help them figure out, “How can we make this work?” As I’ve moved through exploration of relationship possibilities, and challenges people encounter in creating the lives they want, I have been thinking about why one person (or a couple, triad, and so on..) can make poly relationships work and why others can’t.

When I tell people about my work, they are usually fascinated by the possibility of living differently. Often their eyes light up at the potential of not having to repress their needs or desires for something different sexually or emotionally. They typically say, “Is that possible? Can it really work? Don’t people get jealous and insecure?” and inevitably, “How do I go about getting my wife/husband/ boyfriend/girlfriend/ partner/date/sweetheart to get on board with this idea?”

Let me just say this upfront: non-monogamy takes a lot of emotional work. When you sign up to be in a relationship with more than one person or are in a relationship with someone who is in a relationship with other people as well, I can guarantee it’s going to take up a lot of time and energy. And like monogamous relationships, poly relationships can range from tremendously gratifying to devastating.

So in a very over simplified form of what I’ve learned, here are

5 THINGS THAT MAKE POLYAMOROUS RELATIONSHIPS WORK:

1. All people involved have to really want it. Entering into a polyamorous relationship is no light undertaking. All partners have to be invested in the process and the experience. With regards to primary relationships, when both people are committed to the idea that the maintenance and care of multiple relationships is desirable, the primary relationship has a much better chance of thriving. When one person agrees because of reasons like a) she worries her significant other will leave her if she doesn’t , b) she is trying to make the other person happy or c) she thinks the partner will eventually change and become monogamous, it typically results in resentment and hurt. Now that said, some couples go through a trial period, where they are essentially “trying on” polyamory with an agreement that they will decide if it’s the right construct for their relationship. Conversely, sometimes partners may enter into a poly relationship willingly only to discover that one of them would prefer to be monogamous. Being in a poly relationship requires ongoing conversation and acknowledgement that feelings are fluid and changeable.

2. Accept that difficult feelings will come up. Individuals succeed in poly relationships when they accept that dealing with feelings like jealousy, insecurity, fear, hurt and anger may be part of the process. How the person or couple deals with these feelings is more significant than their presence alone. When jealousy or hurt feelings come up, it may be helpful just to feel them and know that they will pass. It may also be helpful to ask for reassurance from your partner and to make sure that the relationship between the two of you is being nurtured and tended to adequately. New relationships can be very exciting so it’s a time to be particularly cognizant that the older relationship still needs special attention and looking after.

3. Communicate beyond your wildest imagination. I could write a whole book on this point alone. If you’re a poor communicator, I urge you now to retreat to monogamy. It will still be difficult, but not as difficult as being poly. If you don’t like to process A LOT, don’t go down this road. When you are navigating multiple relationships well, you are talking all the time. You have to negotiate everything. The bible of how-to-do poly relationships, The Ethical Slut, as well as Tristin Taormino’s new book Opening Up, have great questions couples can use as conversation starters to envision and negotiate the kind of relationship they want to have. For example, Sally may say to her girlfriend Rebecca, “Well I want you to be my primary partner but I want to have sex with men as well.” It sounds relatively simple at face-value (or maybe not) but what does that mean really? For example: What does it mean to each of them to be “primary?” What value do they place on emotional fidelity and commitment to the relationship in the long-term? What kind of sex can they have with other people? Maybe oral sex is fine but penetrative sex isn’t. Where and when will it take place? At sex parties, only out-of-town, in their apartment? How will they navigate safer sex? Does Sally want to sleep with strangers, people with whom she has minimal attachment, friends, ex-partners, etc. Each detail requires a negotiation and agreement by both partners. When couples adopt a “let’s wait and see how it goes” approach, it usually goes badly. I tell clients, “you really have to spell out everything. The tiniest little thing that you think your partner should know, he doesn’t. You have to tell him.” (This is often true in monogamous couples as well. We think we know what our partner is thinking, feeling, needing or that he should know what we think, feel, need just by virtue of having been together, but attempting to mind-read leads being misunderstood and misread).

You also have to be willing to share feelings, hear those of your partner and be honest to the point of willingness to say things that may be difficult for your partner to hear. The difference between open relationships and cheating is that you take betrayal off the table. All your partners know what you are up to and there is no lying or deceit. Most couples who wind up in therapy because of infidelity due not so much because their significant other had sex with someone else, but because of the betrayal and lying that usually come with it. So it may be difficult to say to your spouse, “I met someone new I’d like to go on a date with” or ask him, “how would you feel about my having sex with Sarah?” but for the relationship to sustain, honest communication has to be a priority.

4. Come from a family that made you feel loved and secure.  In my experience, I’ve seen that poly relationships tend to be more difficult for people who have deep fears of abandonment. In Daniel Siegel’s book, Parenting from the Inside Out, he gives a good description of different ways in which we attach to our parents depending on how attuned they were to us (think of attunement as being “tuned in” to a baby or child’s needs). When a children grows up feeling safe, secure, loved and valued, typically they internalize a sense of safety, calm and self-worth. This fundamentally critical experience can help a person navigate poly relationships: a partner’s connection with someone may not elicit old fears about being left or discarded.

In households where abuse, violence, neglect, alcoholism, the loss of a parent through divorce or death or other kinds of disorders (like a parent’s major depression) children are less likely to receive the parental attunement they so badly need to internalize the same sense of safety or self-worth. As children, we literally need our parent’s physical and emotional presence for survival. When we don’t get it, our “fight/flight” response gets activated because literally our survival is being threatened. I’ve observed in a number of clients that when an adult partner is investing time and energy in a new relationship, it may ignite old trauma and fears of being left. That trauma can feel completely overwhelming and engulfing, requiring a person to address the early trauma and come to discern that her feelings are rooted in these early experiences. Certainly coming from a background with abuse or trauma does not make being in a poly relationship impossible, it just may be a bit more challenging to cope with intense feelings of panic and fear of abandonment if they arise.

5. Get support from people who can affirm your relationship choices. Coming out as polyamorous is quite similar to coming out as gay, lesbian or bisexual. There are people who will understand and support your relationship(s) and people who won’t. Poly people often deal with judgements, being called immoral, fearing discrimination by employers or family and friends. Consequently, they may strategically choose to remain closeted in some aspects of their life.

Just like coming out as gay, lesbian or bisexual, poly people need to seek out others both in and out of the poly community who support and understand their choices. Dan Savage wrote an excellent article last November in New York Times Magazine about the need for more honest discussion around infidelity and monogamy in marriages. He makes such a good point when he discusses how monogamy is only one aspect of marital satisfaction, but yet it’s the one that we often judge others by. He suggests we reframe fidelity to understand that it is so much more than sexual exclusivity. Marital satisfaction can be about a sense of bonding to another person, joy, honesty, a long-term commitment to be there for that person and one’s children. It can be a commitment to care for one another and experience life together. Each couple needs to define fidelity for themselves (assuming that’s something they value in the first place). I have seen plenty of monogamous couples who lacked fidelity, where one or both of the partners always had a foot out the door. And I have seen primary partners who are polyamorous that are tremendously committed to a life together and share of sense of knowledge that whatever happens – whatever circumstances arise – whatever feelings come up – they will walk through it together.

I’ve been spending time thinking about what a child who is gender variant, meaning he or she does not conform to typical standards of what it means to be a boy or what it means to be a girl in our culture, needs to grow-up into a well-adjusted, securely attached adult who feels self-assured and can thrive in this world.  And why gender-variant children are so at risk for being deprived of what they so desperately need. A gender-variant child needs what every child needs: caregivers that mirror (or reflect back) a sense that ALL of  a child’s self  is worthy and valuable and loved ; caregivers with whom they feel safe and protected by; and at least some people around who let them know that there are others like themselves in the world, that they are not alone.  When children do not receive these things, they don’t learn how to regulate their own emotions and they don’t learn how to have trusting and safe attachments in the world. (for more on Kohut’s theory of self-psychology, upon which this explanation is based, see here)

Storyteller-researcher Brene Brown (definitely watch her Ted Talk), writes that we have a developmental need for connection. The process by which we connect with other human beings is  fundamental not only in that it enriches our lives but in that it is imperative (as Daniel Siegel has demonstrated) for our brain’s development and growth.   The thing that stands most in the way of human connection is shame. Shame prevents people from being vulnerable, from being authentic and from feeling deserving of connection.

We live in a culture where lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people feel shamed. Even when a gender variant child has parents who support gender non-conforming behavior, he still internalizes the message that he is not ok. All he has to do is listen to the discussion in pre-school or look what’s toys are marketed to boys.

Gender different children (and adults) experience, insidious trauma, the little traumas or “micro-aggressions” that happen on a day to

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day basis when the world lets you know that who you are is not good enough.  I worked an eight year old boy whose parents told him that Santa would only bring him boy toys. On Christmas morning, even though the boy has asked for a kitchen set, he found that Santa had brought him balls and cars. He threw such a tantrum that his parents finally relented and went to the toy store to get what he wanted.  In Dr. AndreA Neumann Mascis’ presentation on Advanced Clinical Perspectives in Working with Transgender Survivors, (in which the term “survivor” refers not only to surviving discrete physical, sexual or emotional abuse, but refers to surviving in a culture that deprives trans people of basic human dignity and nurturing) he noted that for some gender variant children “everything feels like a punch.”  Can you imagine the despair of a child who has seen that not even Santa Claus can see him clearly? Even something that should be so celebratory as Christmas morning can be devastating for a child who is not mirrored and accepted for who he is.

As a culture we need to continue to unpack these antiquated notions about what it means to be a boy and what it means to be a girl. We need to challenge people and institutions who insist and adhering to this oppressive ideas in order to hold onto their own power. As parents of kids across the gender spectrum, we must support and encourage gender variance, letting each of our children know that he or she is loved and safe and not alone.

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Cynthia Nixon has some gays activists up in arms, worried that her remarks will be used by conservatives to affirm that lesbian, gay and bisexual people are selecting a life of perversion. In a New York Times article, she claimed that for her, being gay is a choice (and a better choice than being straight, at that.). After serious backlash for the gay community, she later went on to amend her statement in the Huffington Post, stating that her bisexuality is not a choice but she chooses to be in a relationship with a woman.

Since the beginning of the gay rights movement, activists have made the argument that sexuality is an innate biological trait and therefore we ought not be discriminated against because of it.  The argument was sound and simple, and certainly helped us make headway, even among religious folks who pitied us for being born with a perceived defect of sorts.  However, this argument no longer reflects the variation in human sexuality that we see in 2012.

Nixon has it right. Politically, it’s time to let go of the argument that we are “born this way.” Nixon symbolizes what has become much more prevalent within the queer community. Sexuality is not immutable, but in fact is often fluid and changeable over the course of a lifetime.   The argument over nature vs. nurture is as old as human behavior itself.  Whether sexual orientation is innate or perhaps some combination of genetics, environment and socialization is ultimately irrelevant, and as a basis for equal rights is anachronistic and not legally necessary (as Christopher Stoll writes in the Huffington Post).

We ought to be able to choose who we  love and with whom we create family and be subject to the same protection and privileges under the law that heterosexuals are regardless of the basis of our sexual orientation.  For argument’s sake, what if I have chosen to be gay? Isn’t this choice just as legitimate a choice as anything else? We should not be discriminated against because of the sex of the person with whom we choose to partner.  Period. How or why that affinity came to be is inconsequential.

It helped me that around the same time conservatives were  flyering the internet, warning parents that the Girl Scouts are pro-lesbian, pro-feminist and pro-choice. I thought “well, I can only hope.” That said, I couldn’t have foreseen that joining the Brownies would be such a rich opportunity for Emma and a couple of her friends from the troop to show support for a transgender girl named Bobby Montoya who is a Girl Scout in Colorado.  This was a story that Emma could relate to – a little girl who wanted to be a Girl Scout – and therefore was the perfect example to teach her about being an ally and accepting people for who they are and who they say they are.

By now, many of you are probably aware of the controversy that has been sparked by the decision of the Colorado Girl Scouts to include a seven year-old transgender girl named Bobby Montoya in one of their local troops.  After initially denying her enrollment, the Girl Scouts of Colorado flipped their decision, making an official statement that  ”if a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.”

Consequently, there has been cookie backlash! A 14-year-old called Taylor published a video on you-tube (which has since been made private after the teen was threatened) called for a boycott of girl scout cookies to protest the decision to allow Bobby into the Girl Scouts. In Louisiana, several parents have pulled their girls from Girl Scouts because of the Colorado decision (which, by the way, is a state policy that doesn’t have anything to do with Louisiana Girl Scouts) and started their own, I can only assume transphobic, HonestGirlScouts.com.

When I told Emma what was happening, we talked about making a video to support Bobby and she wanted to invite her troop members to participate with her.  Many parents elected not to have their daughters participate – even if they supported inclusion of transgender girls for reasons I plan to address in another post.

Here is the video that Emma and her fellow Brownies Courtney and Emmy made in their support for Bobby. And just so you know, these are the kids’ words. They wrote it themselves, and they read aloud the Girl Scout Law to remind people what the Girl Scouts are really about.  I’m obviously more than just a little proud, and actually I’ve discovered that Brownies are pretty cool as well.

Link to you-tube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS_F0smsIB0&context=C38c2528ADOEgsToPDskJeLV0wwhCc5tZrPR2egnuV