Missing Hearts and Souls

I’m going to ask for the indulgence of my readers, and quote a relatively long excerpt from an article that recently appeared in the Miami New Times in the wake of revelations about George Rekers, a leading Christian Right figure. (If somehow you missed those revelations, the short version is that Dr. Holier-than-Thou visited “Rentaboy.com” and engaged the services of a male prostitute who accompanied him on a European trip. To—ahem—“carry luggage.”) Here’s the excerpt:

“In 1974, Rekers, a leading thinker in the so-called ex-gay movement, was presented with a 4-year-old “effeminate boy” named Kraig, whose parents had enrolled him in the program. Rekers put Kraig in a “play-observation room” with his mother, who was equipped with a listening device. When the boy played with girly toys, the doctors instructed her to avert her eyes from the child.

According to a 2001 account in Brain, Child Magazine, “On one such occasion, his distress was such that he began to scream, but his mother just looked away. His anxiety increased, and he did whatever he could to get her to respond to him… Kraig became so hysterical, and his mother so uncomfortable, that one of the clinicians had to enter and take Kraig, screaming, from the room.”

Rekers’s research team continued the experiment in the family’s home. Kraig received red chips for feminine behavior and blue chips for masculine behavior. The blue chips could be cashed in for candy or television time. The red chips earned him a “swat” or spanking from his father. Researchers periodically entered the family’s home to ensure proper implementation of the reward-punishment system.

After two years, the boy supposedly manned up. Over the decades, Rekers, who ran countless similar experiments, held Kraig up as “the poster boy for behavioral treatment of boyhood effeminacy.”

At age 18, shamed by his childhood diagnosis and treatment, Rekers’s poster boy attempted suicide, according to Gender Shock, a book by journalist Phyllis Burke. Rekers, whose early experiments were the first to ostensibly demonstrate a “gay cure,” resigned from the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) last week, after it was revealed the gay escort had given him nude sexual massages. NARTH, however, stands by his science.”

It is one thing to diagnose Dr. Rekers; self-hate and projection explain a lot. I have a different question. What in the world was wrong with those parents?

My husband and I have five children and four grandchildren. Believe me, I know how easy it can be to react badly to childish provocations, how hard it is to parent adequately. I’ve second-guessed my own mothering skills more times than I can remember. That said, however, I can’t imagine treating any child the way these people treated this little boy, even for behaviors that we would all see as unequivocally and objectively wrong. Here, there was no dangerous or destructive behavior; the child was simply “effeminate,” whatever that means. Where is it written that being effeminate is a trait to be scorned or an affliction to be cured? What is it about the prospect of a child growing up gay that is so terrifying that it justifies the infliction of such unbelievable emotional abuse?

In the years since he came out, my son has periodically shared heartrending stories about friends or acquaintances whose parents rejected them. Many of them came from “religious” families—families in which “bible-believing” is a euphemism for self-righteousness, rigidity and intolerance. Some of these young people were later able to overcome the damage and achieve a measure of self-acceptance; others never did. Some haven’t spoken to their parents in years. Some developed substance-abuse problems. Others engaged in risky sexual behaviors, or gave other indications of self-loathing.

I think about all the people who cannot conceive, about the couples who wait years to adopt a child, about loving adults who want nothing more than to nurture and rear a child—and then I wonder at the unfairness of a world in which fertile people procreate easily and then abandon, neglect or mistreat the human beings entrusted to their care.

I try to understand, but I never will.

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Constitution 101

A few years ago, the American Constitution Center conducted a poll to assess the country’s constitutional literacy, and drew a depressing conclusion: Americans revere the Constitution, but have virtually no idea what it says or means.

 If that conclusion seems a bit “over the top,” consider some of the more indignant reactions to two recent court opinions applying the religion clauses of the First Amendment. In a case close to home, Judge Sarah Evans Barker ruled that a public high school’s graduating class could not vote to have prayer at its official ceremony.  A decision with more national scope held that a Presidential designation of a Day of Prayer is improper. I found the homegrown case particularly ironic, since I invented a virtually identical fact situation a few years ago, and have been using it as part of my midterm exam. Unlike the school officials involved, my students almost always recognize that the issue is not whether students may pray, but whether the government can sponsor prayer.

In a recent column, Russ Pulliam declared that the founders did not want to eject religion from the public square. True. There is an important difference, however, between the public square and the public sector—a difference that evidently eludes many Americans.

There are two religion clauses in the First Amendment. One—the Establishment Clause—prohibits government from sponsoring, endorsing, favoring or otherwise getting involved with religion. The second—the Free Exercise Clause—forbids government from interfering with individuals’ voluntary expression of religion. Together, those clauses send a message to government: hands off.

If you want to take religion into the public square, you are absolutely free to do so. You can post religious verses on your house, wear tee shirts with religious messages, hand out religious handbills on the public streets, place religious messages in newspapers or magazines, or hold revivals in public parks. If you have the means, you can buy a television network and broadcast religious messages 24/7. You can engage in these and innumerable other religious activities in the public square and agencies of government will be constitutionally prohibited from interfering.

If, however, you want the public sector (government) to weigh in—if you want a publicly-owned building to post your bible verse, a government official to endorse or lead your prayer, or a legislative body to ensure that your neighbors are behaving in accordance with your religious beliefs, you have a constitutional problem, because the Establishment Clause prevents any group of citizens, no matter how numerous, from using the power of the state to impose their religious beliefs on other citizens.  Your neighbors cannot take a vote to make you an Episcopalian or a Baptist or a Muslim, and the senior class cannot vote to have an agency of government—the public schools—impose a religious observance on those attending the graduation ceremony.

We should all have learned the difference between the public sector and the public square in Government 101. Unfortunately, too many of us skipped class.

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Political Con Game

The incessant political ads leading up to the primaries all seemed to assume that we voters are either children or idiots. Every candidate for every office will protect our perks and cut our taxes! For the record, guys, most of us know there is no such thing as a free lunch. We know—or we should know—that if we want government services, we have to pay for them, and that actually might mean paying taxes.

 On the other hand, perhaps the candidates are right. Perhaps we are children.

 Look at what is happening in Indianapolis right now: Six libraries are closing.  IndyGo—already one of the country’s most inadequate bus systems—is cutting out additional routes. My own neighborhood, the Old Northside, is working with other downtown neighborhoods on a plan to hire private police to supplement IMPD. In too many places, our streets and sidewalks are disintegrating. And don’t even look at the condition of our parks.

 When I worked for city government, back in the days when Bill Hudnut was mayor, there was a recognition that city services had to be paid for, and that there were better and worse ways to do that. Sinking funds (savings accounts) were preferable to bonds (borrowing from future taxpayers) for operating costs. Ongoing maintenance of infrastructure was more cost-effective than cycles of neglect and repair.

 The Hudnut Administration wasn’t perfect, but it was probably the last Indianapolis administration to operate on a pay-as-you-go basis.

 Hudnut was succeeded by Stephen Goldsmith.  Goldsmith (recently installed as Deputy Mayor of New York) was very good at convincing people that he could deliver government on the cheap. “Privatization” initiatives were used to shift costs from the operating to the capital budget; debt was refinanced over longer periods; maintenance skimped or deferred. The Peterson Administration chose not to confront the dire fiscal problems it inherited, resisting even modest tax increases as long as possible. Ironically, when an increase could no longer be avoided, the timing was politically disastrous.

 The Ballard Administration has taken a leaf from the Goldsmith book. A simple transfer of our sewer and water utilities to Citizens Gas actually might make a lot of sense, fiscally as well as politically.  But as the Star recently documented, the up-front “payment” is nothing more than a deferred tax that will be paid by ratepayers in the future.

 The money to fix our decaying infrastructure has to come from somewhere, and our childish belief that we can expect something for nothing—a belief nurtured by years of dishonest political rhetoric—means the administration will not raise taxes directly. The problem is, when these “creative” tax mechanisms are employed, they end up being much more arbitrary and unfair than property or income taxes. In this case, ratepayers living in million-dollar homes will pay precisely the same amount as ratepayers living in hovels, so that we can pave our streets and fix our sidewalks without admitting that we are raising taxes.

 Shouldn’t we all just grow up?

How Small and Ugly Can We Get?

I received this email from a colleague with whom I team-teach classes from time to time. It speaks for itself.

“One of my IUPUI journalism students was enjoying coffee at a Greenwood, Indiana Starbucks while chatting with his friend José. They were speaking Spanish. A woman interrupted them saying, “You need to start speaking ‘American’ or go back to the hole in Mexico you came from.” My student laughed at her, an admirable response when confronted with blatant racism.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident for my student.  Carmel and Fishers police have stopped my student for DWB–driving with brown skin. Racial profiling is alive and well in Indiana. Indiana has a racist heritage that will take many more generations to be eradicated if, indeed, it will ever be eradicated. My only hope is the woman in this incident has no children to whom she can pass along her hatred of others.

At one time the Klan flourished in Indiana. Hangings were social events followed by pictures of the hangings being sent as post cards to friends. Glen Beck, Rush Limbaugh and many others of their ilk spout their opinions in inflammatory language. Sarah Palin knows who the “true” Americans are, according to her. Unfortunately, a climate of hate speech and lack of civility feeds the courage of those, like the Starbucks woman, who are prone to racism. She apparently speaks “American,” a language that I am not familiar with. My student is a winner of a highly competitive college scholarship who speaks three languages, including English, fluently. The woman who accosted him is fluent only in hate.”

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I Will Never Understand

I always thought that advanced age would bring wisdom—or if not wisdom, at least a greater understanding of the world and the human beings who populate it. I was wrong. There are things I will never, ever understand.

A month or so ago, a federal judge in Mississippi ruled that the rights of high school senior Constance McMillen were violated when her high school refused to allow her to wear a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to the Itawamba Agricultural High School prom. The school promptly cancelled the prom rather than allow Constance to attend. Federal Judge held a trial on the matter later and reaffirmed his ruling, but stopped short of requiring the school board to reinstate the prom, as parents had already formulated their plan to hold a private prom.

As one report put it, “There was a private prom all right.” On the Wednesday before the Friday prom date, the school’s attorney announced that “the prom” would be held at the Fulton Country Club. Constance, her date and seven other kids (two with learning disabilities) showed up—only to find that the “real” prom was being held elsewhere. The parents had moved it to a secret location out of the county.

What is wrong with these people? What on earth would cause these parents, who are presumably adults, to do something this cruel and hurtful? Are they that terrified of difference? That devoid of human compassion?

All I could think of when I read the stories about this event was a photo taken at Little Rock High School, when National Guard soldiers sent by President Dwight Eisenhower escorted an obviously terrified young black woman through a crowd determined to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. In that famous picture, a young white woman of approximately the same age, her face contorted with hate, is spitting on the black girl.

And again, I ask the question for which there is no satisfactory answer: what makes people act like this?

The easy answer is fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of the “other.” Fear of a world that seems increasingly unfamiliar. We can see this in the “Tea Party” gatherings, with their misspelled signs, the accusations of Nazism and Socialism (terms most of them rather clearly could not define if their lives depended on it), and the not-very-veiled racism. We’ve seen it in the American past, with the periodic emergence of groups like the Know Nothings, the Nativists, and others we’d rather forget.

The problem with the explanatory power of this theory is that we all are fearful from time to time. But we don’t all express it in such a hateful and destructive fashion. So what is the distinguishing characteristic? What makes one person decide to put her fears to use by working with others to solve our common problems, while the next person channels it into rage and recrimination?

In a related question, I have always wondered about people who engage in vandalism. Theft I can understand—you want something I have. (I don’t condone it, but I do understand it.) But wanton destruction? Smashing property just for the sake of smashing? That, I have never understood.

After five children and four grandchildren, I know firsthand how fragile all teenagers are, how easily their egos can be damaged and their hopes and aspirations dashed. I also have a gay son and a lesbian granddaughter, and I have watched their struggles to separate their self-images from the hurtful social stereotypes that are still a huge part of American society. I sometimes marvel that any gay child grows up undamaged and whole, given the often thoughtless cruelty of some of those attitudes.

I just cannot imagine purposely doing to any teen what those Mississippi parents did to this child. And I will never understand why.