Suicide: A Public Health Crisis

The suicide deaths of designer Kate Spade and the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain have at least temporarily - the American media has the attention span of a gnat - focused attention on the growing suicide rate in America which, like so many other things (e.g., gun violence) exceeds that of other advanced nations. Having made two serious attempts myself over a decade ago, it's a topic I am familiar with and on which I have strong opinions as to the causation.  While treatment for depression is much more common, much of what is available simply doesn't work, plus there is the impediment of the social stigma than many still hold towards seeking treatment, especially among men.  Like so much in American medicine, the most common approach seems to be simply prescribing drugs to mask the situation rather than deal with underlying causation. Feeling like one's body is not fully one's own and being drugged up is not a satisfactory long term solution.  Getting to the underlying causation, however, means extended therapy and counseling sessions - things for which most American health insurance plans  provide paltry coverage.  Thus, unless one has the ability to pay out of pocket, long term therapy simply doesn't happen in all too many cases.   The consequences can be literally deadly.  A piece in the New York Times looks at the growing public health crisis.  Here are excerpts:

Treatment for chronic depression and anxiety — often the precursors to suicide — has never been more available and more widespread. Yet the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week reported a steady, stubborn rise in the national suicide rate, up 25 percent since 1999.

The rates have been climbing each year across most age and ethnic groups. Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. Nearly 45,000 Americans killed themselves in 2016, twice the number who died by homicide.

After decades of research, effective prevention strategies are lacking. It remains difficult, perhaps impossible, to predict who will commit suicide, and the phenomenon is extremely difficult for researchers to study.

One of the few proven interventions is unpalatable to wide swaths of the American public: reduced access to guns. The C.D.C. report found that the states where rates rose most sharply were those, like Montana and Oklahoma, where gun ownership is more common.  It is predominantly men who use guns to commit suicide, and men are much less likely to seek help than women.

The escalating suicide rate is a profound indictment of the country’s mental health system. Most people who kill themselves have identifiable psychiatric symptoms, even if they never get an official diagnosis.

The number of people taking an open-ended prescription for an antidepressant is at a historic high. More than 15 million Americans have been on the drugs for more than five years, a rate that has more than tripled since 2000.

[O]ne recent study, by Danish researchers, supported the benefits of therapeutic intervention.  Using detailed medical records, the investigators studied more than 5,500 people who had been treated for deliberate self-harm, including cutting and clear suicide attempts.

Over decades, the portion of those people who got psychotherapy at suicide clinics were about 30 percent less likely to die or commit further self-harm than those who did not.  “I personally think that it’s the quality of care that matters, not the quantity,” Dr. Insel said. “We need more access, better measures and better quality of care.”

But in this country, many of those who commit suicide have received little or no professional help. Indeed, they rarely tell anyone beforehand of their plan — when there is one. Often the act is impulsive. . . . . the wide majority of people who die by suicide “explicitly deny suicidal thoughts or intentions in their last communications before dying.”

Andrew Spade, Ms. Spade’s husband, said she had seemed fine when he’d talked to her just before her suicide. Mr. Bourdain was filming one of his clever, humorous shows in Strasbourg, France, when his body was discovered.

The rise of suicide turns a dark mirror on modern American society: its racing, fractured culture; its flimsy mental health system; and the desperation of so many individual souls, hidden behind the waves of smiling social media photos and cute emoticons.

More recently, the economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton of Princeton have argued that the hollowing out of the economy and loss of middle and working class supports, like unions, have contributed to a broad increase in self-reported pain in those groups, both mental and physical.

The aggressive marketing of opioids by Purdue Pharma and others eased some of that pain — and helped create a generation of addicts, tens of thousands of whom die each year. Opioids are the third most common drugs found in the systems of suicides, after alcohol and anti-anxiety medications like Xanax, the C.D.C. reported.

A decline in marriage rates has likely played a role, as well. In her research, Dr. Phillips has found that in 2005 single middle-aged women were as much as 2.8 times more likely to kill themselves than married women, and their single male peers 3.5 times more likely than married men to do the same.

“In contrast to homicide and traffic safety and other public health issues, there’s no one accountable, no one whose job it is to prevent these deaths — no one who gets fired if these numbers go from 45,000 to 50,000,” Dr. Insel said.  “It’s shameful. We would never tolerate that in other areas of public health and medicine.”  

With Trump and Republicans dismantling heath care coverage, quality treatment will likely decline and, most likely, the death toll will increase.  Not that Trump or the GOP give a damn about ordinary citizens. 

If you are having thoughts of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 (TALK) or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for a list of additional resources.

Army Veteran Was Lone Dallas Gunman

Officers killed in Dallas, Texas

The tragedy in Dallas ought to be a wake up call to America in a number of ways.  The first message, that we have received over and over again is that it ought to be impossible for civilians to purchase military style weapons.   Newtown, Orlando - the list is far too long - all have involve military grade weapons that have one purpose : killing numerous people quickly.  Despite this obvious threat to the majority of Americans and godsend to would be terrorists, thanks to the NRA and prostitute like politicians the sale of such weapons continues unabated, if not at a more rapid rate.  If Ronald Reagan could support a ban on assault rifles, why the Hell can't today's Republicans?  The Washington Post has these details on the Dallas shooter:

“At this time, there appears to have been one gunman with no known links to or inspiration from any international terrorist organization,” Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Friday afternoon.

Police said Friday that Micah Xavier Johnson, a black 25-year-old believed to be from the Dallas area, was the attacker. Dallas Mayor S. Mike Rawlings told the Associated Press Johnson used an AR-15 assault weapon in the ambush.

Johnson, who had no criminal history, deployed to Afghanistan with the U.S. Army from November 2013 through July 2014 and was in the Army Reserve from 2009 until last year. Army records show that Johnson, whose home was listed as Mesquite, Tex., had served with an engineering brigade before he was sent to Afghanistan. He did not have a combat job and was listed as a carpentry and masonry specialist.

The Dallas Police Department said Friday that during a search of Johnson’s home, they found “bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition, and a personal journal of combat tactics.” Authorities said they were still investigating the journal’s contents.

Texas law allows people to openly carry long firearms.

Johnson’s Facebook page, confirmed by a federal law enforcement official, shows that Johnson made his primary picture an image of himself raising a single fist in the air, a symbol associated with the Black Power movement of the 1960s. He also posted a similar image of a fist with the text, “Black Power.”

The profile also contains a picture of him and Richard Griffin, of the rap group Public Enemy — a point police noted in a statement they released Friday about the case. “The suspect’s Facebook account included the following names and information: Fahed Hassen, Richard GRIFFIN aka Professor Griff, GRIFFIN embraces a radical form of Afrocentrism, and GRIFFIN wrote a book A Warriors Tapestry,” police wrote. They also said others had told them Johnson was a “loner.”

An AR-15 and no criminal record.  The same story we hear over and over again, making it clear that background checks are not enough.  Such rifles need to be banned and those in circulation surrendered as was done in Australia.  No one needs to have such weapons.  For those who like to target shoot, get something else - which requires skill and not just a barrage of bullets.

The second message is that something must be done to address the excessive use of force by police - especially against black Americans.  I have black friends - one is even in law enforcement - who live in fear of being pulled over for something trivial and ending up dead.  Law abiding citizens should not have to live with that kind of constant fear. Yes, the majority of police are good people seeking to do their jobs.  But using arrests and court fees to fund city operations - locally, Norfolk is horrendous in this regard - which drives up the number of needless stops must stop.  Likewise, the "bad apples" need to be weeded out and, in my view, much more psychological screening done before individuals are hired by police forces.  Bullies, authoritarians, and racists have no place on police departments.  Over my life time I have met too many police who were brutish assholes.  If I white attorney can have such experiences, imagine what a young black male experiences.  It needs to stop!!!

To me a third message is that America needs to do more for its military veterans, especially in the area of mental health.  Republicans are always only too quick to send men and women to war, but then don't want to properly fund and equip the troops - making me want to vomit when I hear them lie and claim that they "support our troops.  But the abuse continues once these men and women leave active duty.  Funding is far to low for medical and other care for veterans, especially in the mental health realm in the wake of horrible wars such as Iraq and Afghanistan.   If GOP blowhards in Congress will not properly fund all aspects of the wars they love to launch, then they need to shut up and never mutter a word about wanting "boots on the ground."  They need a boot of their asses and, ideally, a defeat in the next election cycle.

OK, my rant is over.

The Virginia GOP and False "Pro-Life" Values

The following is a cross post of my May, 2015, column in VEER Magazine which looks at the dishonesty of the Virginia Republican Party and Christofascists supporters who make a great show of claiming that they are "pro-life" yet continue policies that make it clear that for the most part, once a child is born and leaves the womb, they really don't give a damn about that child as it grows up - especially if it has mental or developmental disabilities.  And that doesn't factor in those dying prematurely due to lack of affordable health care.  Some of the data in the column is most damning.  Here is the column:

VIRGINIA'S SHAMEFULL RESPONSE TO THOSE WITH INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITIES 

In August of last year, we lost my husband's father, a retired Baptist minister, the last of our surviving parents, four months to the day after the date of our marriage in Washington, D.C., where he co-officiated at our wedding.   While one expects to navigate through grieving and issues of settling an estate, selling the deceased parent's home and similar travails - my husband is the executor and trustee of the estate - nothing had prepared us for what would prove to be the biggest challenge: finding community services and housing and appropriate supervision for my husband's adopted special needs brother who was adopted many years ago by my husband's late parents who realistically had no idea what they were getting themselves and now us into.  Now age 43, their adopted son - a fetal alcohol syndrome child - through no fault of his own suffers from intellectual and developmental disabilities and will never be a fully functioning adult.  

As a result, the husband and I have found ourselves being thrust into dealing with the Byzantine bureaucracies of the local Community Services Board, local Department of Social Services and the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Services (“DBHDS”) and witnessing the disturbing manner in which Virginia treats those with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The lack of accountability and seeming near indifference on the part of some personnel encountered has been both disturbing and maddening.  However, the more we have learned, the more it has become apparent that there is a systemic problem with the manner in which Virginia deals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  Indeed, it is much akin the shocking deficiencies in Virginia's inadequate mental health care services that were brought into sharp focus by the tragic wounding of Senator Creigh Deeds and the suicide death of his son.  Pushing paper and playing a shell game to hide the reality that there is nowhere near enough state funding or enough available facilities is not meeting anyone's needs, especially those in desperate need of community based services. 

Depending on the income ranking one chooses, the Commonwealth of Virginia ranks either 5th in the nation in per capita income or 7th in median per capita income.  In short, in relative terms nationwide, Virginia is a wealthy state. But in terms of its spending on the needs of those suffering from intellectual and developmental disabilities, Virginia ranks 49th in the county.  That's right, second to last.  Only Mississippi spends less on those with intellectual and developmental disabilities.  Stated another way, even Alabama and Arkansas - ranked 45th and 49th, respectively - spend more per capita on those with intellectual and developmental disabilities than Virginia spends.  This circumstance is nothing short of a disgrace.  Making the situation even more outrageous - or hypocritical depending upon one's political view - is the fact that Virginia is currently controlled by a General Assembly dominated by the Republican Party.  The GOP elected officials and sycophants incessantly blather about being "pro-life," protecting the unborn, etc., with the result that Republican members of the General Assembly seek to restrict all abortions (which will yield yet more children with disabilities).  

Sadly, the concern of the Republicans and their constituents who demand never ending tax cuts and their far right religious supporters for the unborn seemingly evaporates the moment those unborn children pass from their mothers' wombs.  These "god fearing folk" oppose Medicaid expansion, oppose government programs for the poor and unfortunate, and care nothing if those children suffer from intellectual and developmental disabilities.   Historically, their solution has to been to lock away such individuals in institutions where they lack socialization and optimization of their potential.  Even then, the spaces available came nowhere near meeting the demand for services.  

Just how bad are things in Virginia?  In 2010, the Civil Rights Division of United States Department of Justice "("DOJ") launched an investigation that found that Virginia violated the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by failing to serve individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities in integrated settings appropriate to their needs, and failing to provide adequate community services and supports.  The Department of Justice filed suit against Virginia in while anti-abortion warrior Ken Cuccinelli was Attorney General of Virginia.  Ultimately, Virginia entered into a settlement agreement with the Department of Justice upon the advice of Mr. Cuccinelli's office in an effort to reach a settlement without subjecting the Commonwealth to an extremely costly and lengthy court battle with the federal government. (See Civil Action N0O: 3:12cv059-JAG in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, Richmond Division) The settlement agreement resolves DOJ’s investigation of Virginia’s training centers and community programs and the Commonwealth’s compliance with the ADA and Olmstead with respect to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities provided that Virginia complies with the mandated improvements set forth in the settlement agreement.

Since Virginia has proven that it cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, an Independent Reviewer files a report with the Court that evaluates Virginia's compliance with the settlement agreement and the progress or lack thereof being made.  The most recent report was filed in December, 2014, and found that despite progress "Despite these efforts, however, the Commonwealth continues to be significantly behind schedule. There have been repeated delays in complying with certain obligations, including elements critical to an effective community based services system that is truly responsive to individuals with ID/DD."

What does this mean for every day Virginians?  From my conversations with agencies familiar with the situation faced by those waiting for Medicaid waivers that will allow them to receive much needed housing and/or grants to allow them to remain in their own homes or the homes of family caregivers, the situation is grim.  Here are some of the statistics:

According to the most recent data from DBHDS, there are 7,948 people waiting for the Intellectual Disability (“ID”) Waiver (4,851 individuals are on the urgent list and 3,097 are on the non-urgent list) and 1,902 waiting for the Developmental Disability (“DD”) Waiver. Between June 2014 and April 2015, 903 people were added to the ID waiting list, and 447 added to the DD waiting list.  Despite this growing need, only 365 slots were funded during this last general assembly session for this fiscal year (Jul 2015-Jun 2016); this was the minimum required by the DOJ settlement agreement referenced above.

According to 2013 data that was released last month in the State of the States that compares data nationwide:

- --Virginia is ranked 29th in family support spending.

--- Virginia is ranked 50th in family caregivers receiving I/DD state agency support.  There are an estimated 98,828 care giving families of people with I/DD in Virginia; in 2013, only 325 of these families received state agency support (i.e., 0.3%).

As bad as these statistics are, I suspect that they likely mask the true number of individuals in need of services because the existing bureaucracy discourages those in need and/or their families from seeking services.  The husband's experience in dealing with the local community services board and office of social services has been one of bureaucracy at its worst: indifferent on the part of many of the staff and/or non-responsive staff and unrelenting passing the buck.  The more I have learned, the more I believe that their ultimate ploy is to avoid admitting that there simply is no state funding.  People with developmental and intellectual disabilities simply do not matter in Virginia.  It is far past time that our state legislators correct this situation – particularly those who talk disingenuously about supporting “family values” and being pro-life.

America's Mental Health Crisis; Creigh Deeds on "60 Minutes"

While I supported him against the now disgraced Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell, Creigh Deeds was a terrible candidate when he ran for governor of Virginia in 2009.  That said, his appearance on 60 Minutes this evening was incredibly powerful and helped to expose the disgraceful state of mental health care in America.  His scared face and deep emotion was so very, very moving. The lack of mental health care is literally a national embarrassment.  But it is especially relevant to members of the LGBT community struggling to deal with the harm done by anti-gay bigotry and the family rejection that some of us are faced with.  A clip from the show is posted above and well worth watching.

When I came out and struggled to overcome religious based internalized homophobia and societal condemnation, access to competent and supportive therapists was crucial.  Yet even with good medical insurance, coverage for mental health therapy was greatly limited and significant out of pocket costs were part of receiving the assistance I needed.  One can only hope that the nightmare that Creigh Deeds experienced and his personal testimony will push the Virginia General Assembly to do the right thing and (i) allocate more money for mental health care and (ii) force insurers to afford increased coverage for this much needed  segment of health care.

A sincere thank you to Creigh Deeds for speaking out so that the tragedy that happened to his son and his family hopefully does not happen to anyone else! 

Why Creigh Deeds’ Son Wasn’t In A Psych Ward

More media outlets are jumping on the issue I raised concerning the tragedy surround Creigh Deeds and his family, especially his apparently emotionally/mental troubled son: Virginia's mental health care system is horrific and a failing system has been made even worse by GOP backed spending cuts.  While Virginia is in the low end of the spectrum of mental health services, the problem in Virginia is not unique.  Ultimately, it is symptomatic of a mentality by the Christofascists/Tea Party that is more than happy to leave the poor, the uninsured and the mentally ill (especially if they are blacks and minorities) to just literally fend for themselves and/or die.  The short sightedness of the mindset ignores that ultimately, we pay one way or another, including through mass shootings and avoidable suicides and violence.  Think Progress looks at the problem.  Here are highlights:

On Tuesday, Gus Deeds, son of former Virginia gubernatorial candidate and state Sen. Creigh Deeds (D), allegedly stabbed his father multiple times before turning a gun on himself and committing suicide. The younger Deeds had a psychiatric exam performed under an emergency custody order the previous day, but was ultimately released because there were no psychiatric beds available for his use in western Virginia.

In fact, an ongoing trend of state governments slashing funds for mental health programs has greatly diminished the number of beds available to Americans with serious mental illnesses, including those who need emergency inpatient care.

“Many states appear to be effectively terminating a public psychiatric treatment system that has existed for nearly two centuries,” wrote researchers in a 2012 report by the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit group that examines mental health issues. “The system was originally created to protect both the patients and the public, and its termination is taking place with little regard for the consequences to either group.”

According to the report, Virginia eliminated 15 percent of its public psychiatric beds between 2005 and 2010. The state has just 17.6 such beds per 10,000 people — less than 40 percent of the recommended minimum 50 beds per 10,000 people. That didn’t stop Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) from proposing even more cuts to mental health programs in 2012.

But McDonnell isn’t the only one to embrace such cuts. In fact, state governments across the nation slashed psychiatric funding to the point that, overall, the nation’s hospitals had just 28 percent of the recommended minimum number of hospital beds by 2010. 

Mental health advocates often argue that community-based care is more effective than institutionalizing a mental health patient in state facilities. But state governments haven’t been nearly as amenable to funding community-based mental health programs as they have been to closing state wards and cutting funding. As a result, Americans with serious mental illnesses often wind up in jails rather than hospitals. 

In a sad bit of irony, Sen. Deeds himself has long been a strong proponent of enhanced funding for community-based mental health programs. He is currently listed as being in “fair” condition at the University of Virginia Medical Center.

The crisis in mental health care is but one aspect of America's broken healthcare system.  A system that the GOP wants to keep in place as is. 

Deeds Family Tragedy - Virginia's Broken Mental Health Care System

Creigh Deeds and son Gus in happier times

The Virginia - and national - news media is awash with coverage of the horrific events that occurred this morning which have left Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds in fair condition after multiple stab wounds and his 24 year old son dead by apparent suicide.  As a parent myself, I cannot imagine the anguish that the entire Deeds family is experiencing at present.  The Daily Progress looks at the day's tragic events and provide this summary:

The horror unfolded at a secluded farmhouse at the end of a long gravel driveway in rural Bath County.

Repeatedly stabbed by his son in the head and torso, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, 55, made his way to a road, where his cousin picked him up, police said. His son Austin Creigh “Gus” Deeds, 24, killed himself with a gunshot, police said.

The senator was transported to the University of Virginia Medical Center, where he was listed in fair condition Tuesday night.

Thirteen hours before the 911 call came in at 7:25 a.m. reporting an altercation at Deeds’ home tucked deep in the woods of Millboro Springs, Gus Deeds was released from Bath Community Hospital following a mental health evaluation. An effort to find a hospital where he could undergo further evaluation failed, said Dennis A. Cropper, executive director of Rockbridge Area Community Services.   State police are investigating the case as an attempted murder-suicide.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch learned that an emergency custody order had been issued for Deeds' son, Austin Creigh “Gus” Deeds, 24, on Monday, which allowed mental health officials to hold him for up to four hours to determine if he should be held under a temporary detention order. That order would have allowed him to be held for up to 72 hours.

Yes, this sad story is a horrible personal tragedy for the Deeds family and their friends.  But sadly, it is symptomatic of a larger tragedy: Virginia's utterly pathetic mental health system.  Had the Virginia General Assembly - controlled by the Virginia GOP - deemed mental health care even a minor priority, Gus Deeds might have been able to have been placed in a mental health unit of observation/treatment and the entire night mare avoided.  Unfortunately, the Virginia GOP (and its puppet masters among the Christofascists/Tea Party) deems the poor and the sick and the mentally troubled to be little better than disposable garbage to be thrown aside.  Funding for mental heath care has been slashed.  It's the same mindset that motivates the Virginia GOP's drive to block Medicaid expansion in Virginia.  A piece from two months ago in the Virginian Pilot looked at just how poor the mental health care system is in Virginia.  Here are excerpts:

Our country is once again in mourning over a devastating mass shooting, this time at the Navy Yard in Washington. As the founder and president of The Chas Foundation, a new nonprofit dedicated to help the mentally ill find appropriate treatment and immediate resources, I plead with my fellow citizens to consider the mental state of the young man who committed this atrocity.

His symptoms prior to the shooting - hearing threatening voices - clearly indicate he was disturbed. According to E. Fuller Torrey, one of our nation's top psychiatrists and founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, he was most likely a paranoid schizophrenic.  Yet, even though this young man sought help for his mental condition, he received none, . . .

Virginia's mental health system is tragically broken, shattered into hundreds of unmanageable pieces.  This poor system results in many mentally ill persons needlessly losing their lives, or ending up in jails, or homeless, or in the care of families who do not know where to turn for resources.

Sadly, in a 2006 report, Virginia was given a "D" ranking for its mental health system by the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

NAMI Virginia, the state chapter, reports that after the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech, when $42 million in new funding was allocated to the mental health system, the General Assembly took away $37.7 million of that funding within a two-year period.

Statewide, in the last decade, the number of inpatient hospital beds for the mentally ill has declined while the population has increased by 13 percent. According to NAMI Virginia, there are currently 1,136,000 Virginians with severe mental illness and 330,000 each year need urgent treatment.

Chas, my middle son, spent 10 years seeking treatment and diagnosis from various mental health professionals. He was prescribed lithium but, despite taking his medications, he became more paranoid and psychotic. In the fall of 2011, at age 34, he suffered a nervous breakdown.

His wife and I went with him to the emergency room at Senatara Norfolk General Hospital for voluntary commitment. We spent 32 hours before a psychiatric bed was found on the 8th floor.

Chas, who had private insurance, stayed at the hospital for three weeks and was released before his medication proved effective - while he was still psychotic. He attempted suicide. This time, we went to the emergency room at DePaul Hospital. After 12 hours, the staff at DePaul sent him to Virginia Beach Psychiatric Hospital.

He stayed at Virginia Beach Psych for two weeks. The staff worked very hard to find a long-term bed for him at Eastern State. There were no beds, so he was released.

He had gone through the revolving door of mental health services for the last time. On Nov. 14, 2011, he hanged himself in the home he shared with his young wife. His father found him.
[I]f mentally ill people are not on medication, they can be an extreme risk to themselves, like Chas, or to others, like Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the horrific crimes at Virginia Tech.

Unless there are more state and federal funds for hospital beds, long-term treatment and community programs and resources, I fear that Virginia's ranking as 39th in the country for mental health services will worsen.

Not to make light of the personal tragedies of the members of the Deeds family, but Gus Deeds' apparent mental health problems and inability to secure proper treatment/hospitalization are not unique in Virginia.  If the Virginia GOP put any sort of premium on mental health care  - or health care in general - instead of looking for ways to cut taxes and slash the social safety net, Gus Deeds and many others might be alive as I write this post.   As I have noted many times, I find it most damning that the political party that feigns fealty to Christian values is the party that  makes the Biblical Pharisees look like upstanding and compassionate people.  My thoughts are with the Deeds family and other families who have experienced horrors and loss because of the misplaced priorities of our legislators, especially the members of the Republican Party.

How Maggie Gallagher's Unwed Pregnacy and Hatred of Men Created an Anti-Gay Marriage Zealot

I have long believed that the majority of the most outspoken and vitriolic opponents of same sex marriage are in fact seriously psychologically disturbed individuals and that their anti-gay animus stems from their own personal demons and the continuing mental and emotional damage they suffered in their formative years from being raised in religious extremist homes. Some, like Robert Knight and Peter LaBarbera are in my opinion self-loathing closeted gays who hold nothing but unadulterated hatred against gays who have been able to move on in their lives and accept that God - if there is one - gay. And then there are others who seem to have been severely damaged bu their own life experiences who have funneled their rage and anger against LGBT citizens who they believe threaten a fantasy world that exists only in their own minds. Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage and hate merchant and liar extraordinaire is a case in point. Salon has a lengthy article on Gallagher and it is pretty unflattering. Indeed, one can easily conclude that her anti-gay propaganda and hate trace directly back to the fact that she got knocked up in college, was thrown over by her "boyfriend," and has been seeking vengeance ever sense. Rather than attack LGBT equality under the civil laws, in my opinion, Gallagher needs serious mental health care intervention. Here are some highlights from the Salon article:

Today, they have different memories of the relationship — how long they had been dating, how close they were — but on one fact they agree: 30 years ago this spring, months before she was supposed to graduate, Gallagher discovered she was pregnant. Then, as now, Yale students did not get pregnant — or if they did, no baby came of it. But Gallagher knew she would have this baby.

Counterfactual history is a dangerous business, but it seems fair to say that Gallagher’s was the non-marriage that changed the world. If that sophomore cad had married Gallagher, she might never have become a writer. “I don’t know what I would have done,” she tells me. “I became a writer because I had a baby and had to make money.” And what she writes about is same-sex marriage: why it’s bad for children, bad for America, simply bad.

Gallagher’s unplanned pregnancy — so great a rupture in a young conservative woman’s sense of life’s proper path, coming at so young an age — focused her politics, and gave her traditional-family conservatism a messianic tinge. I]in 1989, when Patrick was 7, Gallagher published a book that remains startling for its combination of sadness and anger; it’s hard to believe any author can sound so hopelessly disappointed before the age of 30. In a sense, “Enemies of Eros,” a jeremiad about the sorry state of sexual culture and gender relationships, must have been gestating since her son was born. Its author is sad that lifelong marriage is no longer an accepted norm; that many children do not grow up with fathers; that sex has been decoupled from marriage and parenthood. And she is angry at everyone she finds culpable for these changes, . . . .

Gallagher writes, “Men need a role in the family. What men need, loath though we are to utter the word, is a sex role.” Gallagher approvingly offers the example, drawn from a Wall Street Journal article, of one Millie Stephens, “a 28-year-old manager for Bell of Pennsylvania who earns $46,000 a year.” Her husband, Carl, a state trooper, earns $31,000 a year, and “to disguise her salary, they put all of her earnings in the bank and live off his income.” “Mrs. Stephens” also washes the dishes and irons her husband’s shirts. “I don’t mind treating him like a man,” she says.

Reading Gallagher’s portion of “Debating Same-Sex Marriage” and watching numerous clips of her debates, what surprises me is how little Gallagher talks about gay people, or even gayness. Gallagher’s opposition to gay marriage seems to have very little to do with gay people, indeed with people at all. What really excites her is a depersonalized idea of Marriage: its essence, its purity, its supposedly immutable definition.

The great trauma of Gallagher’s youth, her unplanned pregnancy and subsequent alienation from the father of her child, was rooted in failing to understand that sex and procreation are connected. It is understandable that, having grasped the truth, she is intent on emphasizing its importance. So it follows that gay marriage and, above all, gay parenthood, more than gay people themselves, presents a real challenge to her belief system. Same-sex marriage advocates offend her hard-won wisdom in two ways. First, they imply that sex and love can in fact be separate from procreation, and no less valid for it. Second, and perhaps more troubling for Gallagher, the increasingly visible column of attentive, loving gay parents — gay male parents in particular — mocks her own romantic choices.

For Gallagher, the principal problem with gay couples is not the act of sodomy: It’s that they cannot be a mother and a father. Gallagher believes that what is best for any child is to be raised by its natural mother and father — what happens when Marriage succeeds — and any law that honors an alternative arrangement is thus harmful. Adoptive parents may succeed in raising a child well, single parents may succeed, but they are both inferior to biological mother and father, the paradigm that Marriage has always supported, throughout history.

Gallagher is unwilling to make any predictions of what doom will befall families after the legalization of same-sex marriage. She just has faith that marriage, the central institution of good child-rearing, will be weakened if same-sex couples are allowed its prestige and protections. When I ask her if any kind of evidence could change her mind, she says that in theory such evidence could exist, but it would be awfully hard to come by: “Yes, you could produce the evidence that children are just as well off in same-sex couples, and that the change isn’t bad for the institution of marriage as a whole.

And even if somehow the evidence showed, conclusively, that same-sex marriage were good for children? Gallagher would still be dissatisfied: “Nothing could make me call a same-sex couple a marriage, because that’s not what I believe a marriage is.”

Gallagher’s people are dying off; her enemies are breeding. Meanwhile, the repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy proceeded without incident last year: a non-event that surely bodes well for same-sex marriage, one more aspect of gay men’s and lesbians’ full inclusion in civil society. One prominent ally of Gallagher’s told me that the “fight is over.” There will be minor victories to come, but “we’re going to lose,” the ally said.

Those would seem to be the hard facts, the evidence on which pure thought would operate. But for Gallagher these facts are temporal, contingent and ultimately meaningless.

At the risk of sounding crude, Maggie Gallagher - who by the way NEVER uses her Hindu husband's last name when shaking down the weak minded Christianists - committed what her Church describes a sinful act, got herself pregnant in college and made what she obviously sees was a huge mistake. Sadly, she's never gotten over it and now seeks to inflict her bitterness on the the world at large and on gays in particular. Compounding the problem is her brainwashing - and likely self-loathing due to her unwed motherhood - associated with her Catholic upbringing. Having been raised Catholic myself, I know only too well the mental health damage the Church can do. Therefore, in my opinion, Gallagher needs to get serious mental health care to exorcise her personal demons and get out of everyone else's life. She's screwed up her own and now wants to screw up the lives of others.

Michele Bachmann's Holy War

Rolling Stone has a lengthy piece on GOP loon and Christofascist Michele Bachmann (seen hiding while spying on gay rights activists at left) . The picture that it paints is none too pretty. In my view, Bachmann is a clear and present danger to constitutional government and in some ways I find the woman even more frightening than Sarah Palin. The big question to me is one of whether or not the trained circus dogs in the main stream media will break loose of their leashes and advise the general public as to just how looney tunes Ms. Bachmann is in fact. So many bad things have happened - e.g., the Iraq War - and continue to happen - the GOP threats to the poor and unemployed while seeking further tax cuts for the obscenely wealthy - because the MSM no longer does its job. Investigative reporting - as opposed to mindlessly parroting sound bites from the GOP and the Christian Right - seems to be a lost art. Here are a few highlights from the Rolling Stone article (read the whole article):
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Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and, as you consider the career and future presidential prospects of an incredible American phenomenon named Michele Bachmann, do one more thing. Don't laugh.
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It may be the hardest thing you ever do, for Michele Bachmann is almost certainly the funniest thing that has ever happened to American presidential politics. . . . .
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But don't laugh. Don't do it. And don't look her in the eyes; don't let her smile at you. Michele Bachmann, when she turns her head toward the cameras and brandishes her pearls and her ageless, unblemished neckline and her perfect suburban orthodontics in an attempt to reassure the unbeliever of her non-threateningness, is one of the scariest sights in the entire American cultural tableau. She's trying to look like June Cleaver, but she actually looks like the T2 skeleton posing for a passport photo. You will want to laugh, but don't, because the secret of Bachmann's success is that every time you laugh at her, she gets stronger.
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In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy . . . .
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Bachmann's story, to hear her tell it, is about a suburban homemaker who is chosen by God to become a politician who will restore faith and family values to public life and do battle with secular humanism. But by the time you've finished reviewing her record of lies and embellishments and contradictions, you'll have no idea if she actually believes in her own divine inspiration, or whether it's a big con job.
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Young Michele found Jesus at age 16, not long before she went away to Winona State University and met a doltish, like-minded believer named Marcus Bachmann. After finishing college, the two committed young Christians moved to Oklahoma, where Michele entered one of the most ridiculous learning institutions in the Western Hemisphere, a sort of highway rest area with legal accreditation called the O.W. Coburn School of Law; Michele was a member of its inaugural class in 1979.
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Bachmann was mentored by a crackpot Christian extremist professor named John Eidsmoe, a frequent contributor to John Birch Society publications who once opined that he could imagine Jesus carrying an M16 and who spent considerable space in one of his books musing about the feasibility of criminalizing blasphemy.
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Bachmann says she believes in a limited state, but she was educated in an extremist Christian tradition that rejects the entire notion of a separate, secular legal authority and views earthly law as an instrument for interpreting biblical values. As a legislator, she not only worked to impose a ban on gay marriage, she also endorsed a report that proposed banning anyone who "espoused or supported Shariah law" from immigrating to the U.S. (Bachmann seems so unduly obsessed with Shariah law that, after listening to her frequent pronouncements on the subject, one begins to wonder if her crazed antipathy isn't born of professional jealousy.)
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The woman is truly crazy and in my view, her followers need some serious mental health intervention (as does Bachmann herself). Perhaps we need to ship her to Iran or Saudia Arabia. She wants a religious extremist government,? Then let her live under one for a while.

Same-Sex Relationships Increase Gay Teen Self-Esteem

Another study is out which, like the UVA study on gay parenting, confirms what intuitively is merely common sense - gay teens who have affirming same sex relationships have increased self esteem and suffer from less internalized homophobia. The study also found that gay teens trying to have opposite sex relationships were not positively benefited by the process. The teen years are bad enough without the burden some of us suffered and/or continue to suffer being in the closet and feeling isolated and unable to be truly open and intimate with anyone. And struggling to pull off a relationship with someone of the opposite gender, at least for me, intensified the feelings of being a freak and increased the self-loathing inculcated into me by the Catholic Church growing up. The message of the study is that schools and society need to be more accepting of gay teen relationships. Here are highlights on the study from Health Canal:
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ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Involvement in a same-sex relationship boosted self-esteem in teen males and lowered internalized homophobia in teen females who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, a new University of Michigan study shows. Surprisingly for the same teens, having an opposite-sex relationship had no affect on self-esteem, depression or anxiety.
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Dating in adolescence is critical to developing sexual and social identities, says Jose Bauermeister, assistant professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. It's even more salient for gay, lesbian and bisexual youth because there is such a stigma attached to their sexual orientation.
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Studies have shown that these teens may suffer more psychological distress, victimization, physical threats and violence than heterosexual youth. Gay, lesbian and bisexual teens who conceal their sexuality, often have a lower self-image or internalized sense of homophobia—which can lead to depression and anxiety.
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The protective effects of same-sex relationships are different for young men and women, says Bauermeister, who oversees the SPH Sexuality and Health Lab. A same-sex relationship is protective in that it reduces internalized homophobia for girls even after only one relationship. For men, a same-sex relationship is protective in that it raises self-esteem, but the relationship must be prolonged. . . . Opposite-sex relationships did increase internalized homophobia in boys
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"Providers and caregivers of (gay, lesbian and bisexual) youth need to create supportive environments where kids can talk about and support their sexual identity, which may include their dating experiences with same-sex and opposite-sex partners," Bauermeister said. The paper, "Relationship trajectories and psychological well-being among sexual minority youth," will appear in the journal Youth and Adolescence in August.

Nebraska Poised to Throw Gays Under Bus to Appease Catholic Conference

In what may turn out to be another case of Roman Catholic religious based bigotry trumping legitimate medical and mental health care knowledge, the State of Nebraska - concededly not somewhere I'd never want to visit - is poised to potentially allow licensed mental health counselors to turn away LGBT patients. Why you ask? To please the Nebraska Catholic Conference. That's right, a group that continues to make excuses for child molesters and which grovels before a morally bankrupt Church hierarchy is outraged that Catholic counselors might have to have LGBT clients. Thus, the Conference wants counselors to allowed to dump gays as patients - without even making an appropriate referral - so as to protect the counselor's religious sensibilities.

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Personally, in my view, the better solution would be to yank the licenses of Catholic counselors and/or facilities that cannot put aside religious based discrimination and focus on medical/mental health fact as professionals. This would provide far greater protection of the public from religious based lunacy. As for the counselors who lose their licenses, perhaps some of the bogus "ex-gay" ministries that employ quacks can hire them. If this proposal goes through, I guess it will only be a matter of time before shamans and witch doctors can be licensed as physicians in Nebraska. Here are highlights from the Freemont Tribune:
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Rules changes for Nebraska's licensed counselors have been held up for more than a year over concerns about conflicts between religious convictions and sexual orientation. Jim Cunningham, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, says psychologists, therapists and other licensed counselors should be able to refuse to treat or refer clients because of religious or moral convictions. But, he says, the proposed addition of sexual orientation to anti-discrimination rules makes it unclear whether that's allowed. "Our concern had to do with services that we would not be able to provide because they would promote or enhance or validate conduct that is contrary to our religious beliefs," Cunningham said.
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"We believe that a therapist has the right to refuse service based upon religious or moral convictions," said Terry Werner, director of the Nebraska chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. "However, they absolutely must provide a thorough and comprehensive referral. Anything less than that, in our minds, is in violation of our code of ethics and is not in the best interest of the client."
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Psychologist James Cole, who's on the board of the Nebraska Psychological Association, said the referrals Schaefer is suggesting would meet the needs of the counselor, but not of the patient, who could be dumped on someone without the expertise to help with a specific problem. Cole said the referrals wouldn't be limited to conflicts over sexual orientation, but would also apply to things like gender identity and opposing religious beliefs. "The whole thing opens a Pandora's box on abuse," he said.

Cuccinelli Targets UVA Papers in Climategate Salvo

Candidly, it's a bit frightening that Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccineli is on the lose and not under the supervision of mental health professionals. As if Kookinelli hasn't engaged in enough wacko behavior since taking office a little over a mere three months ago, now he is targeting the University of Virginia - historically NOT a wise move in Virginia due to the influence of UVA alumni - seeking to recover close to $500,000 in state grants used for climate change research. The sad reality is that Kookinelli is a ultra-far right loon who shares the alternate universe of the teabaggers, climate change deniers and birthers - and perhaps the closeted self-loathing of Ted Haggard if stories I heard on Saturday evening prove true. Some of us tried to warn Virginia voters as to the true level of insanity of Cuccinelli, but unfortunately no one seemed to listen. The Hook, a Charlottesville publication has the latest on Kookinelli's latest insanity. Here are some highlights:
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No one can accuse Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli of shying from controversy. In his first four months in office, Cuccinelli directed public universities to remove sexual orientation from their anti-discrimination policies, attacked the Environmental Protection Agency, and filed a lawsuit challenging federal health care reform. Now, it appears, he may be preparing a legal assault on an embattled proponent of global warming theory who used to teach at the University of Virginia, Michael Mann.
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In papers sent to UVA April 23, Cuccinelli’s office commands the university to produce a sweeping swath of documents relating to Mann’s receipt of nearly half a million dollars in state grant-funded climate research conducted while Mann— now director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State— was at UVA between 1999 and 2005.
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UVA spokesperson Carol Wood says the school will fulfill its legal obligation, noting that the scope of the documents requested mean it could take some time. Mann had not returned a reporter’s calls at posting time, but Mann— whose research remains under investigation at Penn State— recently defended his work in a front page story in USA Today saying while there could be “minor” errors in his work there’s nothing that would amount to fraud or change his ultimate conclusions that the earth is warming as a result of human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.
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“Mike is an outstanding and extremely reputable climate scientist,” says UVA climate faculty member Howie Epstein. “And I don’t really know what they’re looking for or expecting to find.”
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One former UVA climate scientist now working with Michaels worries about politicizing— or, in his words, creating a “witch hunt”— what he believes should be an academic debate. “I didn’t like it when the politicians came after Pat Michaels,” says Chip Knappenberger. “I don’t like it that the politicians are coming after Mike Mann.”
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Making his comments via an online posting under an earlier version of this story, Knappenberger worries that scientists at Virginia’s public universities could become “political appointees, with whoever is in charge deciding which science is acceptable, and prosecuting the rest. Say good-bye to science in Virginia.”
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I - and I suspect many others - wonder how long it will before Cuccinelli does something so over the top that an up swell occurs seeking his removal from office.