Sunday, October 24, 2010

Happy 2nd Year Anniversary Thalamus Center


The Thalamus Center project is about
Protecting Children by education about Human Sexuality.

There is a scene in an old TV series called “All in the Family” where Edith Bunker is experiencing menopause and she does not know what is happening to her. Edith’s daughter Gloria is explaining to her the symptoms of menopause. Edith feels bad that her daughter has to tell her about menopause. Photo

Edith expresses her frustration and sadness about her lifetime lack of knowledge about human sexuality.

“When I was a young girl, I didn’t’ know what every young girl should know. Now, I‘m going to be an old lady, and I don’t know what every old lady should know.” Edith Bunker – video clip
“All in the Family - Edith’s problem (TV episode 1972 #2.15)

Edith is not alone even today. Much of the opposition to same sex marriage is likely to a great degree related to feelings and confusion about many aspects of human sexuality exactly like Edith, on the part of millions of people, for women as well as for men, everyone. However,

Ignorance about human sexuality is extremely harmful to children.


Sexual orientation
- Internalized Homophobia –
“Auschwitz – Benedict XVI - Christmas 2008
A flashback
Far more severe than in
Brokeback Mountain”
GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE - Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Thalamus Center

Sexual orientation
is
less about sex
 and
more about love,
being one with another
human being
Attachment Theory - LOVE & RELIGION – Gay Marriage

Attachment Theory

Attachment theory has been researched by John Bowlby M .D. (video), and Mary Ainsworth Ph.D. observing infants beginning at about 1o months of age discovering the significance of the formation of early childhood attachments having lasting effects throughout a person's life. Photo

Attachment is an emotional bond to another person. Psychiatrist, John Bowlby was the first attachment theorist, describing attachment as a "lasting psychological connectedness between human beings" (Bowlby, 1969, p.194). Read more

Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times. These close emotional bonds what we call love were the focus of Mary Ainsworth's work. Her work can be described as the scientific study of love and how it develops. Her primary focus was on the infants developing love for its' primary caregiver. She saw this as the early form of a lifelong emotional bond. (quote from the video clip) Additional resource the International Attachment Network

Developmental Narratives

From developmental narrative studies growing up gay of Jack Drescher, M.D., Richard Isay, M.D., and Sidney H. Phillips, M.D., we learn that the expression of sexual orientation begins very early in life, as it does for heterosexuals, in the form of expressing love to another human being and the need to be loved. Gay adult men who were raised in social environments influenced by antigay social and religious norms retrospectively remember being 4 or 5 years of age feeling "different" not gay but "not fitting in."

For the heterosexual boy at the same age in early childhood years has hopes and aspirations of wanting to marry his mother. These innocent childlike expressions of love for his mother are affirmed and are experienced as acceptable to the mother and the other adults in the child's life at the time. The child is told that he cannot marry his mother but that some day he can meet someone like his mother who he can marry. Today I met the boy I’m gonna marry - Father of the Bride 11,308

A Child's Life Growing Up Gay

This same situation for a gay male child, who is raised in a social environment that is influenced by antigay social and religious norms, his signs of affection for his father will be in a number of ways rejected, even scorned. In addition, not only will this boy be suffering from this kind of emotional abuse but he could also be physically abused, as well. When this male child expresses his desire to marry his dad he is likely to be told most emphatically in a shaming tone of voice that he cannot marry his dad that boys do not marry boys. The shock of this unforeseen forceful rejection of this male child’s most authentic and sincerest desire to express his love for his father can be quite traumatizing for him. Because it is an attack on the core of a human being most basic need to love and to be loved. This male child’s hopes and aspirations are not affirmed as acceptable, in fact they are considered unacceptable and offensive. Any child of either sexual orientation at this early age in childhood development will experience this kind of rejection as confusing and depending on intensity even traumatizing.

This male child throughout his early childhood years is likely to experience this kind of rejection multiple times having different levels of severity because he does not understand what he is doing wrong. To a gay male child this kind of reaction is not only extremely hurtful but at the same time it most confusing, it does not make sense to him. There is no one who can help explain the overwhelming flood of emotions he experiences every time he reaches out to love. Ultimately a child will realize that he is not to trust his inner feelings to love and to be love that in fact as for many, he will come to the conclusion that he is "always wrong" about love. This is one of many defenses any child would enact as a form of protection from what is experienced in a child’s mind as a horrific onslaught of rejection. This leaves the child living in an "implicit" form of isolation from human connectedness or bonding.

They’re writing songs of love - But not for me ...A lucky star's above, but not for me,... With love to lead the way I’ve found more clouds of gray… Gershwin,1960 Grammy Award Listen 753
Read more:

Internalized Homophobia
American Psychoanalytic Foundation Public Forum
Ralph Roughton, M.D. 1999

…When we speak of internalized homophobia, we refer to the shame, denigration and anger turned inward onto the self of the homosexual individual either as a re-internalization or from the absorption of homophobic attitudes in the environment and then identifying with the hated and feared object. The primary emotion is shame, but a whole gamut of inhibitions, loss of self esteem, depression and self-destructive behavior often follow.
Read complete address:

Annie Proulx, Fiction,
“BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN,”
The New Yorker, October 13, 1997
Excerpts:

ABSTRACT: Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, herding sheep together on Brokeback Mountain in 1963, develop a close friendship that quickly turns into a sexual relationship. Their foreman, Joe Aguirre, sees them one day through his binoculars. After the summer ends, Ennis marries Alma, settles in Riverton, and has two daughters. Jack moves to Texas, rides rodeo, marries Lureen, and has a son. Four years later, Jack writes to Ennis to tell him he will be in town. Jack goes to Ennis's house, and they embrace violently. They go out to a motel, where they have sex and discuss their powerful attraction and bond. Jack wants them to be together, but Ennis knows that people like them get killed: when he was a boy, his father took him to see the corpse of a man who had been beaten with a tire iron and castrated for that reason. Jack gets Ennis to take a few days off and go away with him. They begin taking occasional fishing trips together… Photo

…On a trip in 1983, they talk about their affairs with women and their children. Ennis tells Jack he will not be able to see him again until November (it is May) and Jack is furious, frustrated by the impossibility of their situation. He feels that they could have had a good life together; now all they have is Brokeback Mountain. He is sick of the scarcity of their time together. Things unsaid and now unsayable rise around them, but nothing is resolved. The moment Jack remembers and craves is when, at Brokeback Mountain, Ennis came up and embraced him from behind: the only artless and charmed moment in their difficult lives. Months later, Ennis's postcard to Jack saying that November still looks like the first chance comes back stamped "DECEASED." Jack's wife Lureen tells him that Jack was pumping up a flat on his truck on a back road when the tire blew up. The force of the explosion slammed the rim into his face; he was knocked unconscious and drowned in his own blood. Ennis can't decide if it was really an accident, or if it was the tire iron. Jack had wanted his ashes scattered on Brokeback Mountain. Ennis travels to meet Jack's parents, who have the ashes, and decides that it was the tire iron, after all.’… photo

…Ennis goes up to Jack's room. In the back of the closet, on a nail, he finds Jack's shirt stained with Ennis's blood, from when Jack had accidentally slammed Ennis's nose when they were grappling. Placed inside it is another shirt, Ennis's own, which he thought was missing. Jack's father refuses to let his ashes go. Ennis orders a postcard of Brokeback Mountain. In his trailer, he pins it up and, beneath it, the two shirts on a hanger suspended from a nail. He begins to dream of Jack as he was; he wakes sometimes in grief, sometimes in joy and release; the pillow sometimes wet, and sometimes the sheets. There is a gap between what he knows and what he tries to believe, but "if you can't fix it you've got to stand it." Photo
Read complete abstract: The New Yorker, October 13, 1997

Brokeback Mountain (2005) Movie

Auschwitz - Christmas 2008
A flashback far more severe than
in Brokeback Mountain

Excerpts:


Ennis's Flashback


An example of this is most vividly portrayed in the movie "Brokeback Mountain." It takes place when Ennis and Jack are together again for the first time in 4 years, after first meeting on Brokeback Mountain. They are sitting around a campfire in the evening and Ennis is relaxing reclining back starring up at the stars. Jack looks over at Ennis and says to him, "Is there anything interesting up there in heaven?" Ennis replies with a very pleasant smile on his face "I was just sending up a prayer of thanks." This is a very tender moment in the film, which Jack is in a way proposing to Ennis. Jack tells Ennis that "... it could be like this always, just like this, always." Ennis's face loses its smile becoming strained as he turns his face away from Jack, looks down at the ground. Ennis then begins to soberly tell Jack about this vivid flashback he is having to his early childhood days growing up. Ennis describes for Jack this disturbing scene from his past how his father took him and his brother along this pathway in the country to show them the kind of violence that happens to adult men who lived together. The traumatic psychological effects from this event with his father appear to have remained vivid throughout Ennis's adult life. It is shown in Ennis's inability to form and be in a relationship, any kind of relationship, but particularly the one with Jack, to go with Jack, and build a life together.
Read more:

Auschwitz - Christmas 2008
A flashback far more severe than in
Brokeback Mountain
December 26, 2009

…I am a priest and a clinical psychologist (MS). And for one of my research projects I chose to do a qualitative research project of the recorded verbal accounts of survivors of the Holocaust, 50 years after the event. It was a difficult research project, because I could not make sense of one of the accounts of the survivors.

For example, one survivor was describing what it was like riding the train to AUSCHWITZ, but he was describing how he was trying to make conversation with a girl on the train. I listened and wrote out this one account almost 30 times but I just was not getting it. I could not understand how this man could be talking about wanting to make conversation with this girl on the same train to AUSCHWITZ!?! Photo

Because I had taught high school religion classes for nearly 20 years, it hit me hard, like a flash of lightning. Instantly, all the pieces came together, so fast. Though this survivor was in his late 60’s when he gave his account of his story on audiotape, he was remembering the events that took place, but naturally they were recounted through the mind of a teenager, the age he was on the train to AUSCHWITZ. That is why the dialogue wasn’t making any sense. I was thinking of him as an old man because the voice on the audiotape was the voice of a 68-year-old. As shocking as a bomb going off, all the different aspects of the psychological developmental stages of a teenager kicked in. I realized only too fully that he was just a young normal teenager on that train!!! And so was the girl he was trying to make conversation, and their moms and dads were there with them!!! There was no way to pretend I did not realize what I discovered. It kept hitting me: this is not some script from a movie or TV miniseries on the Holocaust. No; as much as I wished it were. The reality of this horror hit me all at once, on so many different levels of consciousness: what an unbelievable horror it was!!! How could we treat human beings like this! I remember when the realization of the magnitude of this horror first hit me, like an instant reflex. I threw down the transcript I was holding as if it were a blazing hot poker. It kept hitting me over and over again that this is not a movie script or some kind of play – this really happened! It really happened! Oh, my God, how could this have happened!?!!!

My supervisor told me at the time that I was traumatized by the oral content. Qualitative research is an attempt to understand the complexity of emotions, the kinds of emotions, and the degree of intensity involved. Our emotions are what allow us to connect with other human beings. We identify with the non-verbal quality of emotions more immediately and strongly than with the words used to express them. The non-verbal qualities include tone of voice, eye contact, facial expression, body posture, and gestures, all of which express emotions. Emotions are why we can connect with people through time, across cultures, and individually. It is the expression of human emotions in the arts that makes some works of art timeless, because they continually speak to all people through the ages. Photo

And when I heard what Pope Benedict XVI said about homosexuals and transgendered human beings at Christmas 2008, I felt that same trauma all over again. Because in some way, somehow, he was conveying in a non-verbal manner the horror of the Holocaust, in what appears to be a traumatized, trance-like, accepted social norm from that period of time dictating that some people just don’t count, aren’t important, and can be easily disposed of. And if you rock the boat, you could be next to be disposed of.

I truly have to believe that a person in his position would not be doing this consciously or intentionally. The horror of the Holocaust is like an atomic bomb with fallout so extensive that it spreads over a radius of more than 150 miles. The horror of the Holocaust began in 1933 and ended in 1945. The psychological fallout would have been far more extensive and more deadly, especially when it is not identified as such. Photo

It hit me the way it did when I realized that the research I was doing about a Holocaust survivor, a man 68 years old telling his story, who was remembering what it was like to be on the train to AUSCHWITZ, from the perspective of a young teenage boy who just wanted to talk to a girl. It seemed like the same kind of horror, a tacit assumption that some people don't count and can be disposed of without remorse. Could it be that Benedict XVI is unconsciously repeating Hitler's crime against humanity by taking on a long-accepted social attitude from that period of time?

The question I asked myself was: what would it have been like for someone growing up gay during the Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933 -1945?

What would be the severity of the psychological effects on a boy who grew up to be gay in Germany during the time of Hitler’s NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS 1933 -1945? During the Nazi regime, homosexuals were publicly defamed and falsely accused for the major social problems of that time, which was done to incite massive public hatred and hostility directed against homosexuals. Homosexuals were used for medical experiments, physically mutilated, brutally tortured and exterminated.

Would this child, as an adult, in a severe dissociated state of mind from his own homosexual feelings (Harry Stack Sullivan MD, Dissociative Processes, Clinical Studies on Psychiatry (1956)), unconsciously perpetuate the terrifying horror of the insensitivity he had experienced growing up? If he found himself in a position of authority would he recreate the same social and political environment of violence and terror for homosexuals that he experienced, as a child who grew up to be gay, during the NAZI PERSECUTION OF HOMOSEXUALS?

I think in truth on a much deeper level I was frightened, really frightened, to hear Pope Benedict XVI’s Christmas remarks against homosexuals and transgendered human beings and even more frightened by the silence from the larger global community of human beings. What is so frightening is, even if there is agreement that one person does not matter or is not important, in truth then no one matters… Read more:

The Significance of Brokeback Mountain
by Ralph Roughton
Self Psychology News – Fall 2007

"Brokeback Mountain" began as a short story of just 31 pages by Annie Proulx, published in The New Yorker in 1997. Her spare and gnarly prose is thoroughly grounded in the gritty, hard-bitten landscape of Wyoming. At the same time, it has an elegance and economy of expression—like a haiku poem, where every word is necessary and no word is superfluous...

…What words could have the impact of simply watching Ennis discover the two shirts nestled lovingly in Jack's closet? The realizations unfold in our minds and stir up our feelings. Jack really did love him and held him in his memory. And Jack's mother knew about the shirts and must have understood what their silent embrace meant. In her own unspoken way, she accepts Ennis as Jack's lover. How? By simply suggesting he go up to visit Jack's room, knowing he will find the shirts. By assuming that he will want to take them, silently getting a paper sack for him to put them in, by nodding to acknowledge his gesture of thanks, and by inviting him to visit again. The message is subtle, but powerful. For the first time, Ennis has met understanding and acceptance of his love for Jack. Photo

We can infer that, having felt this acceptance of his love, Ennis can now put his daughter's happiness ahead of his need to work. In the very next scene, she comes to invite him to her wedding, and initially he begins to make excuses about having to be away at the cattle roundup. But then he stops, realizing her disappointment, and says they can just get themselves another cowboy. His "little girl" getting married is more important. It is the first time that Ennis has not disappointed someone who loved him (Jack, Alma, his daughters, the waitress).

The film ends with another wrenching visual metaphor, as described by critic Stuart Klawans in The Nation (Jan 9/16, 2006):

". . . [T]he closing shot of Brokeback Mountain . . . cuts the screen in half. On the right, glimpsed through a mobile home's window, is a patch of western landscape. On the left is a shadowy closet—a shrine, actually—holding a lover's relic. Nothing could be simpler. Nothing could say more."
This final scene is a visual contrast between the confining space of the closet and the freedom of the landscape; between the life Ennis has lived and what might have been. But, as is always true, there is complexity in the tragedy. While the closet stifles and limits, it also provided the safety for Ennis to survive in a hostile, homophobic environment. This was the lesson his father so brutally instilled in him as a boy. Jack, less encumbered by fear and shame, followed his desires. He chose freedom, with its risks; and its lurking dangers killed him.

The closet also holds the memories of love which sustain Ennis in his loneliness. It's conveyed so beautifully in pictures—as we realize that Ennis has reversed the shirts. Ennis now cradles Jack in his arms, reflecting the flashback that was non-verbal in the film but described here in Annie Proulx's words:

"What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger.

"They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire . . . Ennis' breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat."

The film closes as Ennis lovingly, tearfully adjusts the shirts and the postcard picture of Brokeback Mountain. He can only murmur, "Jack, I swear"—which is probably as close as he can come to saying, "Jack, "I love you." Photo
But Brokeback Mountain is much more than an artistic success. Most importantly, it evoked a national discussion about gender and sexuality, about love and homophobia. Cowboys are an icon of masculinity, and here we have two cowboys in love, challenging the assumption that being attracted to another man unmans you—that you cannot both want a man and be a man…

…We're looking back on a historical period—and it's not over yet. The story begins in 1963—six years before the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village that ignited the gay rights movement; and ten years before the APA decided that homosexuality is not a disorder. We're in the wild, wild west of Wyoming, where men are men; and anyone who acts queer might get worked over with a tire iron. The story covers a 20 year period, up to the mid-1980's. Remember that in 1986, the U. S. Supreme Court upheld a Georgia law that made it a crime for two consenting adult men to have sex with each other in the privacy of their own home. Annie Proulx's story was first published in The New Yorker in 1997, a year before gay college student Matthew Sheppard was brutally tortured and murdered on a fence post—in Wyoming. Despite remarkable progress in many areas, homophobia was alive and flourishing throughout the land.

The film works on different levels for different people. Some will see it as a love story, others as a tragedy. Some will gain a deeper realization of the effects of homophobia, both the kind that killed Jack and the kind that smothered Ennis's emotional life. Some will focus on the effect on the wives and children; others on the thwarted lives of the men. It's also about loneliness and about yearning for what you can't have. Photo

For those of us who lived through the same era as Jack and Ennis, yearning for what we couldn't have, it packs a particular wallop—the loneliness, the longing, the feeling that life has dealt you an unfair blow—and at the same time that it's all your own fault. It's powerful because we feel "recognized" by the film and therefore affirmed.

I agree with critic Daniel Mendelsohn, writing in The New York Review of Books, that to call this a universal love story, or even a story about universal human emotions, is to seriously misconstrue its real achievement. Rather, he says, it is a tragedy about the closet. Jack Twist and Matthew Sheppard were each killed by actual homophobic enemies. Ennis suffocates in the closet of his own internalized homophobia. Society's attitudes became part of the matrix of his developing personality and connected his sexual desire with fear and shame, deeply affecting his ability to love; but even more so it robbed him of the conviction that he had a right to the love he desired. To quote Mendelsohn:

"The real achievement of Brokeback Mountain is not that it tells a universal love story that happens to have gay characters, but that it tells a distinctly gay story that happens to be so well told that any feeling person can be moved by it." --------Photo
Read complete review:

“He was a friend of mine” 
Willie Nelson 
Brokeback Mountain soundtrack 54,916

A Kiss To Build A Dream On 
KD Lang 94,687

SEXUAL CONVERSION THERAPIES
Jack Drescher, M.D.

Family Acceptance Project™

Family Acceptance Project™

IMPACT Program
I Heart My Sexuality is a video project sponsored by IMPACT. The project aims to highlight the strengths of LGBTQ youth, instill pride in the community, and tell stories of healthy relationships. 
Read more/view video:
Press release |PDF|

Dr. Brian Mustanski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Juvenile Research and is an expert in LGBT health and development. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bloggers/brian-mustanski-phd

Discussing all things related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) health and development: from the biology of sexual orientation to talking to your family about sexuality to the pros and cons of the Internet in our romantic lives. by Dr. Brian Mustanski

The Psychology of the Closet: Governor McGreevey's New Clothes
by Jack Drescher, M.D. – August 27, 2004

Read more:

Gay marriage -> Restoring
"Hope of Love"
To Children In Early Childhood -> Marriage Equality – March 23, 2010 – Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Marriage Equality, like Galileo, is the truth about the facts of growing up gay. Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the “hope of love” to children in early childhood – essential to their development and well-being for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.






Child Protection Service of the
Archdiocese of Dublin 

Gay Marriage Obsession of 
Benedict XVI 
Neglected Safety of Children 
Cover-ups Wrongly Blaming Gays - -

“What the Pope Knew” 
Gary Tuchman, 
September 25, 2010, 
CNN & CNN International 
(Investigative documentary)
video
                              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjIueX6i3Ns
Related links:

Priest says he was pressurised into taking blame for pope 
– by PADDY AGNEW, DEREK SCALLY and PATSY McGARRY
4/19/10 
– The Irish Times – read more

Priest says he was bullied into taking fall for Pope in abuse scandal 
- The Local – 4/18/10
Germany’s News In English – read more


Ratzinger & Vatican 
“They did as much as they had at each point in time given the public outcry, and no more.” 
Katrin Bennhold – 4/27/10
The New York Times – read more

“…the church must … end its campaign to block the weak and the vulnerable from receiving help to deal with the consequences of criminal sexual abuse.” 
By Lawrence Lessig – 4/26/10
The New York Times – read more



GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE 
Roman Catholic - hierarchy child sexual abuse “cover-ups”
ordered by Benedict XVI
to avoid public outrage & criminal charges
falsely accused gay priests - WATERGATE?
December 17, 2009 - 
by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Thalamus Center 

The following statements are harsh statements, but unfortunately they are heavily documented. (1) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy failed to protect children from child sexual abuse for decades. (2) They mistreated and intimidated the victims and their families who came to report the child sexual abuse, in order to cover up publicity of any child sexual abuse. (3) They failed to protect children by repeatedly reassigning the child sexual abusers to assignments where children would be present. (4) When the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children became public, globally, in 2002 they shifted the blame wrongfully onto gay priests.

Read complete report: 
Child Protection Service of the Archdiocese of Dublin http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504

(5) By falsely, against known research to the contrary, blaming gay priests they implicated the entire LGBT community and how they are fighting against Marriage Equality. When the scientific facts known for decades about human sexuality have been discounted with no substantiated facts given to explain why, it causes many questions whether Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s fight against Marriage Equality is more a fight to maintained the cover-up of the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children? Benedict XVI and his hierarchy need to clearly offer substantiated reasons why they are against Marriage Equality. This statement needs to be spelled out in great detail and follow Pope John Paul II’s test of truth of not separating science and religion. 

(6) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous public propaganda against homosexuality encourages public intolerance towards LGBTQ&I adults and children. They continue to do this even though this summer 2 major Christian denominations approved LGBT singled and partnered people for all forms of ordained ministries. (7) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous promulgation of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings that are harmful to children in their early childhood psychological developmental years, harm that is crippling throughout their lives. They have continued this even after the beginning of the year, 2009, the Family Acceptance Project research studies had shown the negative effects caused to youths, when their sexual orientation is not accepted, having health problems, suicidal ideation, etc. They ignore all the major medical, psychiatric, psychological and social workers national and international professional associations regarding their findings regarding human sexuality and sexual orientation. WHEN DO WE START PROTECTING CHILDREN?!?!

Written by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz


Hate Crime Bill vs Attacks
But No Facts -> Fear And Ignorance
Of The Blind Leading The Blind
October 27, 2009 
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Thalamus Center
…So, now we have some priests, ministers and even pontiffs saying that the bible states that homosexuality is evil, in exactly the same way that they condemned Galileo because he said that the earth revolves around the sun. Their freedom of speech psychologically harms for life children who grow up gay, it evens creates a hostile social environment that physically threatens the very lives of these children. And should one of these gay children be singled out and beaten to death, the person who killed the child will be charged with a hate crime, not the preacher, priest or pontiff. Their judgment will be made by God, likely more severe than anything on earth could possibly be, because of their negligence in their duty to protect children.

The bible in fact does not condemn Galileo or homosexuality, which science reveals that are normal elements of nature and human sexuality.

People for whatever reason seem to be using the bible to hide from their own personal sexual issues. This is a sacrilege! It is a total disrespect for the bible to be used to hide and harm innocent people, most especially children. These people do not check out the facts about the bible and science on homosexuality, because in truth they do not want to know the truth. Even in discourse with people who believe that homosexuality is evil because they say the bible states it to be, as with Galileo, they are not interested in a discussion, they do not want to hear the truth. They only want to discredit the truth, in every conceivable way, by whatever means available to them. They are likely doing what they have been doing all their lives regarding their personal fears about the truth of their sexuality. There is nothing to be gain to be in discourse with such people. In fact, they should be avoided, because they are harmful. Because no matter what they say or how violently they say it, it will not cause the sun to revolve around the earth or for homosexuality to be evil. Photo NASA 

ATTACKS and absolutely no FACTS
from the bible or science
It is a waste of time for you and for them, besides being seriously harmed by their "unchecked meanest" towards others. If and when they do their homework and truly study both the bible and the science regarding homosexuality and human sexuality then there could be a productive discourse. Otherwise, there are no discussions with them; only continuous personal attacks on the person who opposes them that are fierce, cruel and hurtful. Likely, in the way they treat themselves, which may have started when they were treated in such fashion, in their past.

Even Jesus advised leaving them because, as he said, "they are the blind leading the blind" Matthew 15:14. And it is these people who are worried that their freedom of speech will be curtailed, by the new additions to the Hate-Crime Bill. It is only their ability to remain in darkness that is being curtailed, which is greatly more fearful to them, than their concerns about their freedom of speech. They have attacks but absolutely no facts, all motivated by fear and a self-imposed ignorance of the facts. This is the same for Benedict XVI and his hierarchy you never hear any stated facts regarding human sexuality. None!!! They offer absolutely "no" discussion or classes on the topic of human sexuality. None!!! They offer no detailed documentation regarding human sexuality from the bible or science. None!!! Because they know only too well that it would not be approved by scripture scholars or by any scientific studies. Where is the truth, not to mention the LOVE? Photo

Their attacks are likely meant to be distractions to stay off the issue, because any attempts to keep them on the issue are met with fiercer and even more vicious attacks, but no facts, like an obsession. They seem to be like a child throwing a hysterical tantrum, however, unlike a child, they are able to cause serious harm to innocent people. It is this violence that the Hate-Crime Bill is designed to protect people from.

It is the intensity of their forcefulness to attack others without any substantiated facts to support their position that draws public attention to question their sexuality. It is like so many public figures who so forcefully have spoken out against homosexuality and then are found in "public restrooms" engaging in homosexual acts. Today, not only are more people "coming out" of the "closet" but there is an enormous ever growing number of Allies supporting LGBT people and their civil rights. It is the continuos education on human sexuality that keeps this number growing strong. However, it is also becoming more noticeable when someone protest too much against homosexuals with the absence of factural data to support the protesting that catches peoples attention and causes people to wonder, why? What causes this person to protest so strongly, because no valid facts are given?

What should be top priority is the life harm that is caused to children, who grow up LGBT and sadly it is not even considered of any importance. The Bible is about Love the purest form of Love known. The Bible is not about permission to hate, to remain blind or to harm people, especially very young children.
Related links:


Hating Gays:
An Overview of Scientific Studies
by Gregory M. Herek
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
…It frequently is assumed that feelings of personal threat result in strong negative attitudes toward homosexuality, whereas lack of threat leads to neutral or positive attitudes. This perspective often is associated with the term homophobia, and it derives from a psychodynamic view that prejudiced attitudes serve to reduce tension aroused by unconscious conflicts.

Attitudes are likely to serve a defensive function when an individual perceives some analogy between homosexual persons and her or his own unconscious conflicts. Subsequently, that person responds to gay men and lesbians as a way of externalizing inner conflicts and thereby reducing the anxiety associated with them. The conflicts specific to antihomosexual prejudice presumably involve a person's gender identity, sexual object choice, or both. For example, unconscious conflicts about one's own sexuality or gender identity might be attributed to lesbians and gay men through a process of projection. Such a strategy permits people to externalize the conflicts and to reject their own unacceptable urges by rejecting lesbians and gay men (who symbolize those urges) without consciously recognizing the urges as their own. Since contact with homosexual persons threatens to make conscious those thoughts that have been repressed, it inevitably arouses anxiety in defensive individuals. Consequently, defensive attitudes are likely to be negative… - International Day Against Homophobia
Read complete article:

Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation
Dr. Gregory Herek,
University of California at Davis &
Yale University &
City University of New York

Report: Homosexuality No Factor in Abusive Priests
by RACHEL ZOLL
ABC News – 2009

New Catholic Sex Abuse Findings: Gay Priests Are Not the Problem
by DAVID GIBSON
Politics Daily - November 18, 2009

UNIDENTIFIED 
Internalized Homophobia – 
Devastating, and Horrific Consequences On Innocent Children 
PERPETUATING GENERATIONS HATRED & VIOLENCE
…When we speak of internalized homophobia, we refer to the shame, denigration and anger turned inward onto the self of the homosexual individual either as a re-internalization or from the absorption of homophobic attitudes in the environment and then identifying with the hated and feared object. The primary emotion is shame, but a whole gamut of inhibitions, loss of self esteem, depression and self-destructive behavior often follow…

[Unsubstantiated] --- RELIGIOUS BELIEFS that gay and lesbian relationships are SINFUL or INFERIOR to heterosexual relationships
HARM gays and lesbians.
Judge Vaughn Walker Ruling
California Prop 8. August 4, 2010

On Prop 8, it's the evidence, stupid
By Lisa Bloom
CNN.com
and related links:


California Prop 8, Aug, 4, 2010 - Deep misunderstanding –
"We the People"
means - US Constitution – DANGERS of majority rule - a reflection of prejudice, intolerance, ignorance, panic and crude self-interest…
by Geoffrey R. Stone - Chicago Tribune
…The framers of our Constitution fully recognized the dangers as well as the strengths of majority rule. They understood that THE MAJORITY will sometimes act in ways that are not truly public-regarding, but are instead a reflection of prejudice, intolerance, ignorance, panic and crude self-interest. A profound puzzle the framers encountered was how to deal with this danger…


Gay Marriage - WITCH HUNTS ->The Crucible (1996) -> McCarthyism 1940’s -1950’s, -> Benedict XVI 2005

Senator Joseph McCarthy, with his reckless charges of spies and ''comsymps,'' occupied the front pages, while behind the scenes J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the F.B.I., presided over and manipulated a vast internal security bureaucracy, issuing periodic bulletins intended to fan the flames of the domestic cold war. Photo
In the center ring were the congressional inquisitor-investigators, asking ''Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?''

Professor's view: 
Witch hunt for gay priests 
off base when target should be child abusers 
 By: Iver Bogen, 
University of Minnesota Duluth 
 Duluth News Tribune

Pope Benedict XVI in August 2005 ordered an investigation of America’s 229 Catholic seminaries in order to eliminate gay seminarians. The week of Sept. 27, Vatican investigators began the “witch-hunt” at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. The question posed to the students: “Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?” Photo  

Pope Benedict XVI in August 2005 ordered an investigation of America’s 229 Catholic seminaries in order to eliminate gay seminarians. The week of Sept. 27, Vatican investigators began the “witch-hunt” at the Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis. The question posed to the students: “Are you, or have you ever been, a homosexual?”

The investigation was reminiscent of the house arrest of Galileo in his home near Florence from 1633 until his death in 1642 for espousing the Copernican heliocentric view of the universe. The church does not suffer “heretical” thinking well and is extremely slow in altering its doctrines to be consistent with scientific progress as well as changes in cultural mores regarding acceptable human behaviors… Photo

… It is my belief the Catholic Church’s focus on gay priests is merely a strategy for affixing blame and is consistent with its historical antipathy toward homosexuality and same-sex behaviors. However, research in the area of child sexual abuse suggests that pedophilic intrusions occur preponderantly with heterosexual males rather than gay men. It is not one’s orientation that is predictive of pedophilia. According to Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy, “The man who offends against prepubertal or immediately postpubertal boys is typically not sexually interested in older men or women.” Cartoon of Benedict XVI & Hierarchy

Being immature psycho-sexually, these men find themselves responding sexually to other males who also are immature. One’s orientation is not predictive of pedophilia. Read complete article - By: Iver Bogen, 
University of Minnesota Duluth
Duluth News Tribune


"Most religious denominations 
continue 
to 
condemn homosexuality as sinful 
and 
provide a rationale 
for 
marginalizing LGB people.”
Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) Photo


Suicide Risk and Prevention for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth

Social Environment  
...Morrow (2004) points out that “GLBT adolescents must cope with developing a sexual minority identity in the midst of negative comments, jokes, and often the threat of violence because of their sexual orientation and/or transgender identity” (p. 91-92) and that, given the pervasive homophobia in our culture and in the families of LGBT youth, “the internalization of homophobic and heterosexist messages begins very early—often before GLBT youth fully realize their sexual orientation and gender identity” (p. 92). Morrow also says that positive role models for LGBT youth are hard to find. Photo

Herek and colleagues (2007) describe a framework to understand the social environment for sexual minorities. The framework integrates the sociological idea of stigma with the psychological idea of prejudice. Through stigma, society discredits and invalidates homosexuality relative to heterosexuality. Institutions embodying stigma results in heterosexism, and heterosexual individuals internalizing stigma results in prejudice. The United States legal system has faced challenges by sexual minorities and sympathetic heterosexuals that have led to significant changes. However, the legal system continues to reinforce stigma through discriminatory laws and the absence of laws protecting sexual minorities from discrimination in employment, housing, and services. A minority of states had antidiscrimination laws as of 2005, and most of these only referred to employment and not to housing or services. Most religious denominations continue to condemn homosexuality as sinful and provide a rationale for marginalizing LGB people... 
Read complete research:

Suicide Risk and Prevention for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth - Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC)

Bullying in Schools: Harassment Puts Gay Youth at Risk 
Mental Health America

Prepared by the 
Suicide Prevention Resource Center
for the Center for Mental Health Services
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration 
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Supported by Grant No. 1 U79 SM57392-02
2008 
About:
The Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) provides prevention support, training, and resources to assist organizations and individuals to develop suicide prevention programs, interventions and policies, and to advance the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.
Read more:

Suicide Prevention Resource Center
Education Development Center, Inc.
55 Chapel Street
Newton MA 02458
877-GET-SPRC (438-7772)

  

New Vatican Rule Said to 
Bar Gays 
as New Priests
September 22, 2005,
The New York Times
ROME, Sept. 21 - Homosexuals, even those who are celibate, will be barred from becoming Roman Catholic priests, a church official said Wednesday, under stricter rules soon to be released on one of the most sensitive issues facing the church.
The official, said the question was not "if it will be published, but when," referring to the new ruling about homosexuality in Catholic seminaries, a topic that has stirred much recent rumor and worry in the church. The official, who has authoritative knowledge of the new rules, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the church's policy of not commenting on unpublished reports.

"Impending rules on gay priests create Catholic divide"
by Charles Honey 
October 8, 2005
The Grand Rapids Press

When the Rev. Martin Kurylowicz came out to his Sparta parish eight years ago, he said he had struggled for years with his homosexuality.

The Catholic priest says the struggle would be made harder for many others if the Vatican issues new rules that reportedly would ban gays from becoming priests…

…"I sizzled when I read it," said Kurylowicz, 55. "It's very hurtful, is what it is. In this day and age, there's no reason for it. It sends a message that there's something wrong with gays." Photo 

Kurylowicz said he spoke out then to raise awareness of violence against gays and teach others homosexuality is not a choice but an inborn trait. Church leaders still don't understand that and contribute to gays' poor self-esteem, he said…

…"Kids as young as 4 or 5 know they're different," said Kurylowicz, a psychotherapist… "They grow up with this pervasive guilt, which sabotages their growth and motivation." The result is thousands of dollars in therapy to accept their natural orientation, he said, adding, "Does the Vatican want to take that on, like the tobacco industry had to take on for the damage it caused consumers? "… Photo
Read complete article:
by Charles Honey
Religion Editor
The Grand Rapids Press
Archives


July 2010 

President of the United States
United States Congress
United States Supreme Court
50 United States Governors

Dear -- --------,

My name is Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, a Roman Catholic priest from the Diocese of Grand Rapids Michigan ordained June 16, 1979.

In March 1997, after attending a National Symposium of the New Ways Ministry that was held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I learned that children as young as 4 and 5 years of age know that they are different. This feeling "different" is only identified in their adult years as being gay. However, the harmful influence of antigay social and religious norms -- in particular, for Catholics, the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings -- are severe and last throughout a child’s lifetime. The harmful effects are not isolated only to these children who grow up to be gay, but also affect their families, siblings, friends and anyone whom they might consider special in their lives. They are a prescribed societal sentence of implicit isolation, which place at risk of suicide so many innocent adolescents and young adults. They stifle an enormous amount of human potential in the world that otherwise could be put to use for finding cures for diseases, offering better ways of maintaining peace among people and improving the quality of life for everyone in the world.
Gay Marriage - “SEPARATION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE” Does Not Give Churches Or Benedict XVI - The Freedom To Abuse Children or Adults. July 2010 - By Fr. Marty Kurylowicz http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/gay-marriage-separation-between-church.html


Tortured For Being Gay
by Andrew Sullivan
October 9, 2010
The Atlantic
This story in the NYT this morning obviously speaks for itself. The plight of gay teens and youths, despite so much advances in the culture, for so many remain an unimaginable nightmare. The truth is not, I suspect, that there is a sudden new wave of this; the truth is that we have not been so aware of it before, or that shame on the part of victims, has kept some of this from the light of day. The five well-publicized suicides of the last month do not represent a rise, which is why I've tried before on this blog to mention The Trevor Project, an organization devoted to helping to save suicidal gay teens and children...--Photo GWB

For too long, gay people have been described by too many on the right as a threat to the family, society and decency. Those words have consequences. This is especially true of religious leaders. When even the Pope describes us as "intrinsically disordered" and directed to an "objective moral evil", when Republicans call us a threat to family life, when NOM runs ads of a "storm coming", I hope they understand what these words do to the psyches and souls of the young and impressionable, and to those who need a mere signal to take up arms and attack us.

When you do these things to the least of my brethren, you do them to me, said Jesus. I pray that those who say they follow him would sometimes remember those words when it comes to the rhetoric that gay children and teens cannot help but hear...
Read complete article:


Gay bullying and Catholic responsibilities
by David Gibson, October 8, 2010
Commonweal

A striking aspect of the focus by many bishops on the battle against gay marriage, such as the DVD campaign by Minnesota’s Archbishop John Nienstedt, discussed below, is how out of synch it is with the tragic realities of bullying against gay youths, brought home so forcefully by the deaths of Tyler Clementi and many other teens.

Bishops who have been concerned about gay marriage have also been fighting against anti-bullying laws that include sexual orientation (along with religion and race, e.g.) as a targeted category, which studies show it often is. They argue that including sexual orientation to protect youths from harassment is the slippery slope to gay marriage and other gay rights.

I have a story at PoliticsDaily.com today about some serious soul-searching by Christians, especially those of the conservative stripe, about their language and approach on gays in light of the rash of suicides and bullying that has come to light.
Read more:


Homophobia in the Church:
What Catholics Are Doing About It, and
What Still Needs to Be Done
By Michele Somerville, October 10, 2010
The Huffington Post

I attended a Roman Catholic baptism about two weeks ago. A crowd of young parents and others of all ages stood in semi-circle around the font. The atmosphere was reverent yet festive. Toddlers squirmed. The church was exquisite. Blades of late-morning light slid down through colored glass. The priest exuded hope and delight as he kicked off the rites. As the two parents approached the font to offer their child to the church, I began to tear up. My 11-year-old daughter Grace, not unaccustomed to my poet's penchant for being capsized by moments so tender, saw my waterworks start up, rolled her eyes as adolescents do, smiled, and handed me a tissue. As I often do when my emotions get the best of me in the presence of my children, I get all pedagogical on them. I whispered sidebars to Grace: "That's litany of the saints, it's beautiful when sung in Latin... And that the part about Satan and the empty promises -- it's technically an exorcism!" Photo

I didn't have to explain that it was no ordinary baptism we were witnessing. She knew it was extraordinary, because I had taught her. The two parents at the font were bravely (or so I believe) demonstrating their desire not to throw the baby out with the baptismal water.

They were two gay dads asking a church governed by bullies to bless their child.

My daughter later asked how it was that gay people could have their children baptized in Catholic churches but not be married in them. Good question. I broke it down for her. I told her a far greater percentage of Catholics support gay marriage than support the Vatican. I characterized the failure of my church to offer gay Catholics marriage in the church as just that -- "a failure." And a sin. Photo - not the 2 dads in this article
Read complete article:


Pope Benedict 
to 
Beatify a 
Gay Saint?
 A Conservative Icon? Maybe Both
by David Gibson – September 18, 2010
Politics Daily

…"It is not good for a Pope to live 20 years," Newman once wrote of the long-lived Pius IX. "It is an anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it."

Such frank talk about the failings of the hierarchy tended to make Newman a champion of liberal Catholics -- a courageous man who wrote about the "development of doctrine" in the church at a time when the Vatican was projecting an image of unceasing continuity. He also disagreed strongly with the church's adoption of the doctrine of papal infallibility, and famously wrote that if pressed, he would drink "to Conscience first and the Pope afterwards." Photo 

…Complicating all the interpretations is the fact that Newman had an extraordinarily close relationship with another English Catholic, Father Ambrose St. John, who had died in 1875, leaving Newman bereft -- and giving today's gay Christians an icon of their own.

"I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow greater, than mine," Newman wrote at the time of his friend's death. "From the first he loved me with an intensity of love which was unaccountable." And elsewhere: "As far as this world was concerned I was his first and last."

It gets better: 
A video campaign featuring hundreds of videos 
by people 
standing up for gay youth
by Dr. Brian Mustanski
October 8, 2010
Psychology Today

Video campaign to gay youth says, "It gets better."

In September several LGBT young people tragically took their own lives. In the media it was reported that they had experienced bullying, victimization, and harassment. While the reasons why someone chooses to take their own life are very complicated, we do know that things do get better and that suicide is not the answer. To help tell the story of how things get better famous syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched a YouTube channel that allows gay adults to upload videos of themselves describing the bullying they might have experienced in high school, but also talking about how much better their lives are now.It is a rare opportunity for gay adults to speak directly to gay youth and explain that while sometimes you may feel isolated, that life gets better.  Many celebrities joined in and shared their words of encouragements with the simple message that "it gets better."

f you are struggling with a difficult time and need someone to talk to I encourage you to call the Trevor Project 24 hour hotline designed specifically for LGBT young people at 1-866-4-U-TREVOR.  We also have a lot of resources for LGBT and questionning youth on our website at the IMPACT LGBT Health and Development Program.

I encourage all youth to think about how great your life can be in the future.  This can be a powerful way to cope with some of the tough times you might be experiencing right now. It will get better and you can have an amazing life!
Read more/ view videos:

Dr. Brian Mustanski is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Institute for Juvenile Research and is an expert in LGBT health and development. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/bloggers/brian-mustanski-phd

Discussing all things related to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) health and development: from the biology of sexual orientation to talking to your family about sexuality to the pros and cons of the Internet in our romantic lives.
by Dr. Brian Mustanski


President Obama: It Gets Better
October 21, 2010
The White House

Recently, several young people have taken their own lives after being bullied for being gay – or perceived as being gay – by their peers. Their deaths are shocking and heartbreaking tragedies. No one should have to endure relentless harassment or tormenting. No one should ever feel so alone or desperate that they feel have nowhere to turn. We each share a responsibility to protect our young people. And we also have an obligation to set an example of respect and kindness, regardless of our differences.

We all have a responsibility to protect all of our children.  But we also have an obligation to set an example of respect and kindness regardless of our differences. 

This is personal to me. When I was a young adult, I faced the jokes and taunting that too many of our youth face today, and I considered suicide as a way out.  But I was fortunate.  One of my co-workers recognized that I was hurting, and I soon confided in her.  She cared enough to push me to seek help.  She saved my life.  I will always be grateful for her compassion and support – the same compassion and support that so many kids need today. Photo

In the wake of these terrible tragedies, thousands of Americans have come together to share their stories of hope and encouragement for LGBT youth who are struggling as part of the It Gets Better Project.  Their messages are simple: no matter how difficult or hopeless life may seem when you’re a young person who’s been tormented by your peers or feels like you don’t fit in: life will get better...
Read more/watch video - President Obama:

Related links:

In 
'It Gets Better' 
Video, Nancy Pelosi Says 
Diversity Is An 'American Strength' 
 October 24, 2010 
On Top Magazine


“Someday, maybe, 
there will exist 
a
 well-informed, 
well considered and 
yet 
fervent public conviction 
that the most deadly 
of 
all possible 
sins
 is the mutilation 
of 
a child’s spirit.”

Erik Erikson

…whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to stumble, it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck, and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.  Photo
Matthew 18:6

Protect children and the entire world will be safe.

Important note: No disrespect meant to Pope Benedict XVI or the hierarchy, the one and only concern is the safety and well-being of children.
Kids Are Being Hurt!!!

Galileo 
facing the 
Roman Inquisition 
painting by Cristiano Banti
Holy Office of the Inquisition

Biblical quotes used to Condemn Galileo

Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New International Version)
5 The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
Ecclesiastes 1:5 (New American Standard Bible)
Also, the sun rises and the sun sets; And hastening to its place it rises there again. 

1 Chronicles 16:30 (New International Version)
30 Tremble before him, all the earth! 
The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
1 Chronicles 16:30 (New American Standard Bible)
30 Tremble before Him, all the earth; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved

Psalm 93:1 (New International Version)
The LORD reigns, he is robed in majesty; 
 the LORD is robed in majesty 
 and is armed with strength. The world is firmly established; it cannot be moved.
Psalm 93:1 (New American Standard Bible)
1 The LORD reigns, He is clothed with majesty; The LORD has clothed and girded Himself with strength; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved

Psalm 96:10 (New International Version)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns." 
 The world is firmly established, it cannot be moved; 
 he will judge the peoples with equity.
Psalm 96:10 (New American Standard Bible)
10 Say among the nations, "The LORD reigns; Indeed, the world is firmly established, it will not be moved; He will judge the peoples with equity." 

Psalm 104:5 (New International Version)
5 He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.
Psalm 104:5 (New American Standard Bible)
He established the earth upon its foundations, So that it will not totter forever and ever.
Read more:

Homophobia hurts straight men, too
By Jonathan Zimmerman
October 6, 2010
The Christian Science Monitor
New York
In the 1986 movie Stand By Me, an adult protagonist – played by Richard Dreyfuss – looks back wistfully on the friendships he formed in his youth. “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve,” he muses. “Does anyone?”

For most American men, the sad answer is “no.” In surveys, men report that they rarely sustain intimate, long-standing friendships with other males after childhood. And the reason might surprise you: According to a large body of research, they’re afraid of being seen as gay…

A LONGSTANDING PROBLEM – FOR ALL

He’s right, of course. But to fight intolerance against gay boys, we also need to acknowledge its toll on straights – and our entire culture. Homophobia hurts all of our boys, by driving a wedge between them. Sharing your deepest feelings with another man? That’s so . . . gay. Or so we’ve been taught…
Read more:



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