Thank You to 2 Catholic Hospitals for Telling Me Being a Lesbian Was Mental Illness

Misercordia, I don’t remember the psychiatrist’s name, but he was so confident that I was delusional that I was a lesbian.  Sacred Heart Hospital, who violated my rights in so many ways and wanted me to quit graduate school to go on welfare and live in a group home with no sex, I remember your telling me so many times that my lesbian therapist had corrupted and misled me and that you refused to let her visit me.  You kept me so many days longer than others until I gave in and said I wasn’t a lesbian, I was crazy.  Just like 5 East tried to convert me to bipolarism instead of the reality of a common steroid reaction  to for 6 + months, 2 Catholic hospitals tried to convert me to the idea that lesbianism was a delusion and a mental illness.  The only difference is neither of the Catholic hospitals threatened to send me to a state hospital even though that was so much more common all those years ago and 5 East decided I belonged in Western the first day I got there.  For my hereticism I guess.  If psychiatry isn’t a religion, a false one, than I guess it is more like the Spanish Inquisition, but not the funny kind.  Thanks for all you have done to mess up my life with your false prophecy and arrogance and moralism in the guise of medicine and most of all, your bigotry.  Your welcome is that I am still here and I am free to be whoever I want to be and you can not force toxic drugs on me and you can not hinder my free speech outside your snake pits.  Nor can you threaten me with physical assault without being arrested.  So sad.  For you.

AIDS in My Hometown

Just Because Meg Christian Videos Never Stay Up Long–For Meg Christian Fans Only :)

It Can Happen Here if You Vote for McCain/Palin

 Fred Small › Face At The Window  http://www.lyricsfreak.com/f/fred+small/face+at+the+window_20193421.html

In the stillness of the alley waits a man with an open blade
And he hurts the woman badly and within her plants his seed
She can’t shake the dirt and horror as the seed takes root and grows
But the law now claims her body, the doctor’s door is closed
She goes back to another alley to a leering butcher’s blade
And the deal is dark and bloody in the crime the law has made.
CHORUS:
And the face at the window never blinks never turns away
When you wake in the night to a flashing light
When you burn on judgment day
They have spoke aloud your daydreams
They have listened to your plans
They have watched you dance in the rainstorm
They have seen you ride the wind.
Walking slowly home at night a man touching a man
And the car looks kind of familiar and it’s coming round again
You got no chance in that deadly dance when they cut you to the bone
There’s a bleeding gash from the broken glass and you hear somebody moan
And maybe somebody calls the cops and they take their own sweet time
And they say it’s just a couple of fags again and maybe your friend is dying.
CHORUS
And your lover comes to you softly and you touch and you feel no shame
And you steal away from the city and lightning fills your veins
In an air-conditioned office the committee discusses your case
They know the words you whispered they felt the flush upon your face.
They have files on every fantasy, who’s on top and who’s below
You have crossed into the shadow place where outlaws freely roam.
CHORUS
You can drink the lies of paradise while the books on the shelves disappear
You can make a comfortable living, you can swear it can’t happen here
And maybe they’ll come for the unionists and maybe they’ll come for the Jews
And maybe they’ll come for the heretics but they’ll never come for you
When you hear the step in the hallway, when you taste the iron fear
Don’t you go shouting out for justice ’cause there’s no one left to hear.
CHORUS

Ella’s Song–We Who Believe in Freedom Can Not Rest Until It Comes

In G-D’s Eyes We’re All The Same

Child Killed By Heterosexism And Bigotry And A Gun In the Hands Of A Child

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/us/23oxnard.html

Boy’s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town

Phil McCarten/Associated Press

A makeshift memorial at E. O. Green Junior High in Oxnard, Calif., honoring Lawrence King, 15, who was killed at the school.

By REBECCA CATHCART

Published: February 23, 2008

OXNARD, Calif. — Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime.

 

Ventura County Star, via Associated Press

Lawrence King in December 2006. A 14-year-old classmate has been charged in his death.

The New York Times

Oxnard is known as a laid-back beach community.

In recent weeks, the victim, Lawrence King, 15, had said publicly that he was gay, classmates said, enduring harassment from a group of schoolmates, including the 14-year-old boy charged in his death.

“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex,” the Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church told the crowd as he stood in front of a large photograph of the victim. “Larry was a masterpiece.”

The shooting stunned residents of Oxnard, a laid-back middle-class beach community just north of Malibu. It also drew a strong reaction from gay and civil rights groups.

“We’ve never had school violence like this here before, never had a school shooting,” said David Keith, a spokesman for the Oxnard Police Department.

Les Winget, 44, whose daughter Nikki, 13, attends the school, called the crime “absolutely unbelievable.”

Jay Smith, executive director of the Ventura County Rainbow Alliance, where Lawrence took part in Friday night group activities for gay teenagers, said, “We’re all shocked that this would happen here.”

The gunman, identified by the police as Brandon McInerney, “is just as much a victim as Lawrence,” said Masen Davis, executive director of the Transgender Law Center. “He’s a victim of homophobia and hate.”

The law center is working with Equality California and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network to push for a legislative review of anti-bias policies and outreach efforts in California schools. According to the 2005 California Healthy Kids Survey, junior high school students in the state are 3 percent more likely to be harassed in school because of sexual orientation or gender identity than those in high school.

That finding is representative of schools across the country, said Stephen Russell, a University of Arizona professor who studies the issues facing lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual youth.

Mr. Davis said “more and more kids are coming out in junior high school and expressing gender different identities at younger ages.”

“Unfortunately,” he added, “society has not matured at the same rate.”

Prosecutors charged Brandon as an adult with murder as a premeditated hate crime and gun possession. If convicted, he faces a sentence of 52 years to life in prison.

A senior deputy district attorney, Maeve Fox, would not say why the authorities added the hate crime to the murder charge.

In interviews, classmates of the two boys at E. O. Green Junior High School said Lawrence had started wearing mascara, lipstick and jewelry to school, prompting a group of male students to bully him.

“They teased him because he was different,” said Marissa Moreno, 13, also in the eighth grade. “But he wasn’t afraid to show himself.”

Lawrence wore his favorite high-heeled boots most days, riding the bus to school from Casa Pacifica, a center for abused and neglected children in the foster care system, where he began living last fall. Officials would not say anything about his family background other than that his parents, Greg and Dawn King, were living and that he had four siblings. Lawrence started attending E. O. Green last winter, said Steven Elson, the center’s chief executive. “He had made connections here,” Dr. Elson said. “It’s just a huge trauma here. It’s emotionally very charged.”

Since the shooting, hundreds of people have sent messages to a memorial Web site where photographs show Lawrence as a child with a gap in his front teeth, and older, holding a caterpillar in the palm of his hand.

“He had a character that was bubbly,” Marissa said. “We would just laugh together. He would smile, then I would smile and then we couldn’t stop.”

On the morning of Feb. 12, Lawrence was in the school’s computer lab with 24 other students, said Mr. Keith, the police spokesman. Brandon walked into the room with a gun and shot Lawrence in the head, the police said, then ran from the building. Police officers caught him a few blocks away.

Unconscious when he arrived at the hospital, Lawrence was declared brain dead the next day but kept on a ventilator to preserve his organs for donation, said the Ventura County medical examiner, Armando Chavez. He was taken off life support on Feb. 14.

Brandon is being held at a juvenile facility in Ventura on $770,000 bail, said his lawyer, Brian Vogel. He will enter a plea on March 21.

At a vigil for Lawrence last week in Ventura, 200 people carried glow sticks and candles in paper cups as they walked down a boardwalk at the beach and stood under the stars. Melissa Castillo, 13, recalled the last time she had seen Lawrence. “He was walking through the lunch room, wearing these awesome boots,” she said. “I ran over to him and said, ‘Your boots are so cute!’ He was like, ‘Yeah, I know.’ ”

She raised her chin and arched an eyebrow in imitation. “ ‘If you want cute boots,’ ” Lawrence had told her, “ ‘you have to buy the expensive kind.’ ” His boots had cost $30.

“So, for Lawrence,” Melissa said to five girls holding pink and green glow sticks, “we have to go get the expensive kind.”

For All The Brave Boys, Girls, Men And Women Living With AIDS At Christmas

Brave Boys

copyright 1992 Ron Romanovsky (music) and  Gene Porter (lyrics)

No flags fly

No nation kneels in respect

No monument stands

Though we continue to die

No apologies from enemies so full of hate

No eulogies of comfort raised by any head of state

On the front lines without a gun

Together they face the night

Those brave boys

Brave boys continue the fight

They are brave boys, every one

No rings bind

No medals pass to a spouse

No bereavement pay

For the wounded who get left behind

No bells will ring

From the steeples across the land

No choirs will sing

But God awaits to comfort with his hand

Still their love burns on the homefront

For those who have met the night

Those brave boys

Brave boys continue the fight

They are brave boys, every one

If a full heart

Could make yours beat another time

If mortal tears could mend your wounds

I’d give you all that’s mine

You showed me God

With the courage in your eyes

And heroes live in more than myths

And bedtime story rhymes

But all I have is a humble song

And two arms to hold you tight

You brave boys

Brave boys continue the fight

You are brave boys, every one.

There Is No Hierarchy of Oppressions by Audre Lorde

I was born Black, and a woman.  I am trying to become the strongest person I can become to live the life I have been given and to help effect change toward a livable future for this earth and for my children.  As a Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, poet, mother of two including one boy and a member of an interracial couple, I usually find myself part of some group in which the majority defines me as deviant, difficult, inferior or just plain “wrong.”  From my membership in all of these groups I have learned I have learned that oppression and the intolerance of difference come in all shapes and sizes and colors and sexualities: and that among those of us who share the goals of liberation and a workable future for our children, there can be no hierarchies of oppression.  I have learned that sexism (a belief in the inherent superiority of one sex over all others and thereby its right to dominance) and heterosexism (a belief in the inherent superiority of one pattern of loving over all others and thereby its right to dominance) both arise from the same source as racism–a belief in the inherent superiority of one race over all others and thereby its right to dominance.

  

“Oh, says a voice from the Black community, :but being Black is NORMAL!”  Well, I and many Black people of my age can remember grimly the days when it didn’t uses to be!

I simply do not believe that one aspect of myself can possibly profit from the oppression of any other part of my identity.  I know that my people cannot possibly profit from the oppression of any other group which seeks the right to peaceful existence.  Rather, we diminish ourselves by denying to others what we have shed blood to obtain for our children.  And those children need to learn that they do not have to become like each other in order to work together for a future they will all share.

The increasing attacks upon lesbians and gay men are only an introduction to the increasing attacks upon all Black people, for wherever oppression manifests itself in this country, Black people are potential victims.  And it is a standard of right-wing cynicism to encourage members of oppressed groups to act against each other, and so long as we are divided because of our particular identities we cannot join together in effective political action.

Within the lesbian community I am Black, and within the Black community I am a lesbian.  Any attack against Black people is a lesbian and gay issue, because I and thousands of other Black women are part of the lesbian community.  Any attack against lesbians and gays is a Black issue, because thousands of lesbians and gay men are Black.  There is no hierarchy of oppression.

It is not accidental that the Family Protection Act, which is virulently anti-woman and anti-Black, is also anti-gay.  As a Black person, I know who my enemies are, and when the Ku Klux Klan goes to court in Detroit to try and force the Board of Education to remove books the Klan believes “hint at homosexuality,” then I know I cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only.  I cannot afford to believe that freedom from intolerance is the right of only one particular group.  And I cannot afford to choose between the fronts upon which I must battle these forces of discrimination, wherever they appear to destroy me.  And when they appear to destroy me, it will not be long before they appear to destroy you.

Frank Ginn, Ph.D., 1937-July 6, 1992

Frank Ginn died 15 years ago tomorrow at the age of 55.  He had ARC as it was called then, but he died of a heart attack that killed him before he hit the ground, at home, with his companion.   There was no obituary in the Philadelphia papers when Frank died.  His only surviving family was a sister who had severe psychological problems and could not get it together to get an obituary written. 

Frank started out as a seminarian but was kicked out in his 20’s and told by the Bishop that he did not have to tell him why he was being kicked out and he was not going to tell him.  Frank talked of this often in the last months of his life, puzzling over it, bothered by it.  After he died I imagined this Bishop forced to wait for Frank on the other side until Frank got there to tell Frank the reason and give him some peace.  Myself I figured it was because the Church in its wisdom figured out Frank was gay long before Frank did.  Frank didn’t come out as gay until he was 35, after going to graduate school in clinical psychology and devoting the rest of his life to public service psychology, in a residential setting and then in community mental health.  He also volunteered in a gay and lesbian counseling center for years before it closed down and led a life anyone who wants to follow Christ could be proud of. 

Frank did not like his sister, not because she was mentally ill, but because of a family issue years before.  He didn’t spend time with her.  But he also never forced her into treatment and in fact he wore a button on his cap against coercive psychiatry, the only one I had ever seen in my life.  He loved his mother and cared for her in her old age.  He understood how carelessness and indifference by an agency for the aging effected her emotionally on one occasion and used his anger to make sure that the mental health staff who worked for him were never careless nor indifferent to the people we served.  He would not stand for that.  He had loved his brother who died very young.  He loved his friends and his companion and he showed his affection and caring for the people who worked for him in many ways, including opening up his check book and emptying his checking account when his administrative assistant lost her husband suddenly.  He was a generous man. 

Frank taught me by example that one does not have to give up on making a difference in the world and doing your best just because you have had the bad luck to get a bad medical diagnosis.  I hear him in my head often asking as he asked about our clients if we brought problems to him:  “What is he/she doing with his/her days?”  Frank believed that doing not just thinking and feeling were critical to a mentally healthy life.  He was not one for “maintaining in the community” except for my very elderly woman client who had been coming to our center for years who he wanted us to get a cake for on her 80th birthday. 

I still miss you Frank.  You left too soon.  You are still with me.

Kaine Declares May “Make Fun of the Mentally Ill” Month

In a move away from political correctness, Virginia’s Governor Kaine has declared May “Make Fun of the Mentally Ill” Month instead of the traditional “May is Mental Health Month” started by Mental Health America (formerly the Mental Health Association.)

Some commentators were surprised by Kaine’s decision, but people living with mental illness, or at least the few who were willing to be interviewed given the atmosphere of hatred in Virginia towards anyone with a psychiatric history, said they had been expecting the change in emphasis from Kaine. 

Rumor has it that June will be “Bash a Gay or Lesbian Month”, and July will be “Let out your Inner Anti-Semite Month”,  but that has yet to be confirmed. 

****The Above Story Is a Satire or Not Yet True*****

Jerry Falwell, Hater of Gays and Lesbians, Dead at 73

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10187839

LYNCHBURG, Va. May 15, 2007, 2:05 p.m. ET · The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.