Conversion Therapy Minus One

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No Trafficking in Mockery Today

OK—the good news first, since I have spent several hours looking for anything, anything that might resemble a ray of hope. So here it is: the five black-crowned night heron chicks that were felled from their tree are fine, despite one of them having a broken mandible, And you can see them—when they’re not sleeping, which I think shows a really sweet sensibility, don’t you?—right here.

Well, maybe you can see them there, since when I checked, I got a notification that “we’re working on the bird cam;” according to The New York Times, demand for the site was so great that it crashed.

It all started when the U.S. Postal Service in Oakland, California, decided to trim some ficus trees, since they were harboring some birds who were doing what birds do; that is, going to the bathroom and not going to the bathroom. So they went out and found some hapless Mexican guy, Ernesto Pulido, who started hacking away at the trees. And one of the hacks brought down the nest with the herons, which brought Cat Callaway and Lisa Owens Viani to the rescue. One of them recorded the whole thing on her cell phone; the other scooped up the birds and took them to an avian shelter.

The best thing? Well, you can argue that most of us know that birds build nests in the spring, and that once built, the logical thing to do is to raise chicks. So wouldn’t you expect a tree trimmer…?

But we may have to excuse Pulido, who was raised in Mexico, and says he loves animals. At any rate, he’s visited the center, spoken with the staff, and, well, here’s the San Francisco Chronicle:

Pulido, a Bay Point resident, offered to pay $2,700 toward the birds' care: the $2,200 he earned from the U.S. Postal Service for the tree-trimming job plus an additional $500. He's already paid the $500 and is awaiting payment from the post office to pay the rest, said International Bird Rescue spokesman Andrew Harmon.

But that wasn't enough for Pulido. He wanted to learn more about night herons, what the center does to save them, and what the public can do to help.

He was full of questions Thursday. What's the likelihood the injured birds will survive? How long can they live in a city? What's the difference between "endangered" and "protected"? 

And in a remarkable change of the bureaucratic heart, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service let him off the hook. So Pulido, who had been reviled a week ago, is now a hero! Nice, hunh? This kind of stuff happens out there in California.

Right, then it was time to turn to Idaho, since a couple out there have come up with a tremendous idea: repave the entire highway system with solar panels. Here, from Indiegogo, is a description of their project:

Solar Roadways is a modular paving system of solar panels that can withstand the heaviest of trucks (250,000 pounds). These Solar Road Panels can be installed on roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, bike paths, playgrounds... literally any surface under the sun. They pay for themselves primarily through the generation of electricity, which can power homes and businesses connected via driveways and parking lots. A nationwide system could produce more clean renewable energy than a country uses as a whole (http://solarroadways.com/numbers.shtml). They have many other features as well, including: heating elements to stay snow/ice free, LEDs to make road lines and signage, and attached Cable Corridor to store and treat stormwater and provide a "home" for power and data cables. EVs will be able to charge with energy from the sun (instead of fossil fuels) from parking lots and driveways and after a roadway system is in place, mutual induction technology will allow for charging while driving. 

Son of a newspaper man that I am, I had to check this out, which was easily done by scrolling down the first page of the Google search on “solar roadways.” And yes, the 28-minute video debunking the solar roads was considerably less cool than the 7-minute video bunking (just did it to get a rise out of you, computer!) the idea. Certainly, there are significant costs to the project, and who knows if the idea is economically possible?

A more balanced view was offered by John Aziz, who pointed out that it’s easy to shoot down good ideas, but once in the while a crazy idea works. Want an example? Aziz points to the Wright brothers, and all the people who told them they were crazy. Here’s a bit of what he wrote:

In August 1901, after a difficult month testing their glider in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Wilbur Wright was inclined to give up. On the train back to Dayton, Ohio, he told his brother Orville that "not within a thousand years would man ever fly."

The Wright brothers' critics were hugely skeptical of them, too. After all, the notion that humans might take to the skies seemed fantastical and utopian at the time. Critics cried "Icarus!" European newspapers were derisive; a French one called the brothers "bluffeurs" (bluffers). 

Ouch—getting called a bluffeur by the French really hurts!

And as Aziz points out, we have the technology, which is more than the Wright brothers did. So reading Aziz made me remember Yeats, in his poem Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen:

Come let us mock at the great

That had such burdens on the mind

And toiled so hard and late

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the levelling wind.

Come let us mock at the wise;

With all those calendars whereon

They fixed old aching eyes,

They never saw how seasons run,

And now but gape at the sun.

Come let us mock at the good

That fancied goodness might be gay,

And sick of solitude

Might proclaim a holiday:

Wind shrieked -- and where are they?

Mock mockers after that

That would not lift a hand maybe

To help good, wise or great

To bar that foul storm out, for we

Traffic in mockery.

Well, some of the people who are not trafficking in mockery are those good folk up in Oregon, who decided to put together a far more manageable scheme to install solar panels on the side of a highway. During the day, sunlight is converted to electric power, which is sold to the electric company. At night, the electric company sells power to the road for its lights. Here, check this out from Oregon.gov ’s Office of Innovative Partnerships and Alternative Funding (sigh—if Oregon were a man, I’d marry him….):

In December 19, 2008, the nation’s first solar highway project started feeding clean, renewable energy into the electricity grid, and the Oregon Solar Highway has been operating seamlessly ever since. The 104 kilowatt (dc) ground-mounted solar array, made up of 594 solar panels, is situated at the interchange of Interstate 5 and Interstate 205 south of Portland, Oregon, and offsets over one-third of the energy needed for freeway illumination at the site.

There’s something else as well, because have you ever been to Oregon? I have, and my umbrella rotted after three days. In fact, I’ve seen more sun in London than I have in Portland. So how much energy could we generate, down here, in sunny Puerto Rico, if every house had solar panels powering the power company while we worked, and that power company powered us while we watched TV and slept? Oh, and even if we just reduced our electric bill by just a third, well, raise your hands, out there, all of you against the idea?

“Can we do that,” I asked my friend Tony, when we were talking about the idea.

And the next question?

“Well, why not?”

I don’t remember the answer, all I remember was thinking that it was the old story: something like ‘we can’t do it because we’ve never done it so we’ve all found a way to make money on one scheme, why should we find a way to save money on a new scheme?’

Something else to consider—the sun is not the only thing out there. Try standing, as I did for seven years, at a bus stop next to a highway, in this case road number one north of Caguas, Puerto Rico. News flash to you guys out there—it’s hard even to talk on your cell phone, the noise from the roar of the air pushed aside by the trucks hurling past is near to deafening. So here—from five long years ago—is The New York Times on combining solar and wind power next to our highways:

Auction documents suggest that each 10-mile stretch of the Green Roadway system could generate enough energy to power up to 2,000 homes. The installed cost would be about $2.6 million for the solar components and $4.2 million for wind, but up to 65 percent could be knocked off if federal, state and local subsidies and tax credits are factored in, the documents suggest. 

You know, we could have done this years ago, but we didn’t. So now we’re in Iraq and Afghanistan, blowing the local population away, and the rest of the world hates us. Grrrrr….

Oh well, at least the herons are OK….

Paradoxical Reaction

COURT STRIKES DOWN U.S. MARRIAGE ACT

5-4 Ruling Is a Landmark Victory for Gay Rights

‘DOMA’s principal effect is to identify and make unequal a subset of state-sanctioned marriages.’ — JUSTICE ANTHONY M. KENNEDY

I’m having a paradoxical reaction.

I should be jubilant—the Supreme Court of the United States of America has just struck down the odious Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and has ruled that the opponents of same-sex marriage in California did not have standing to sue. That, presumably, clears the way for marriage equality in California. So now it’s 13 down, 37 to go.

I should be jubilant; I’m not.

I’m pissed.

I’m pissed that four out of the nine justices are so fucking behind the times that they cannot see an elemental principle here. I’m pissed that we have to celebrate this damn victory at all. I’m pissed that there ever WAS a fucking DOMA and that we had to spend all of our time and energy and money to defeat it.

You know, I’m pissed at the amount of time and energy I have had to devote in my life to come out, to face rejection (most of it imagined, very little of it real), to deal with my own internalized homophobia, to learn how to speak out.

“You’ve had the hardest struggle,” said Eric, the week my mother died. We were talking about our lives, our three lives (my other brother included).

Damn right I did, Eric. We all flocked to your two weddings, you didn’t have the grace to congratulate me, even acknowledge mine. I got married in a city clerk’s office, and it was just Raf and I. For very good reasons, Franny and John and Jeanne weren’t there. But I was happy, in a way, that it was just the two of us. Because that’s the way it had been for so many years.

Until you live it, there’s no way to understand the insidious pressure against a gay marriage. A very nice woman has invited me to attend a party at a restaurant celebrating the 75^th birthday of her husband, whom I know, but whom Raf does not. Well, it was a quandary—I really couldn’t call her up and say, “hey, can Raf come?” I couldn’t call her and say, “I don’t go places without my husband.” So should I go, or should I invent an excuse?

I decided to go, but not before realizing that my parents would

1.     never have been in the situation

2.     never have chosen for one person to go, the other to stay home

Consider—would I have invited the woman to a dinner on Saturday night, and not invited as well her husband? Don’t think so—I would have sucked it up and paid for the extra plate or not invited her at all.

“How long have you been together,” asked a guy recently, and why did I think there was something smug, condescending about the question? Am I really that prickly?

So why wasn’t I surprised when his jaw dropped on hearing that it’s about thirty years now? He was expecting, what—two?

I made a decision years ago—I was damned if I was going to be a victim. I hate people who whine and bemoan their fate and complain. I have had incredible luck—I’m male and white and middle class. I had tremendous parents. I’ve had more luck in life than most people, and I have no right to complain.

Maybe it was this that did it to me:

“In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us,” Justice Scalia wrote in his dissent. “The truth is more complicated.”

Yeah? This is a slap in the face on two levels. We are accused of being simplistic, unable to see the more complicated truth that Justice—sorry, I’m demoting you now—justice Scalia (that cap by convention only) can see. And we are accused of saying that those justices who don’t go along with us are hateful.

You know, I think some things are pretty simple. Great, DOMA is dead, but will I get Raf’s social security, or he mine? Not unless we move to a state where my marriage is recognized. So we're going to have years of more struggle, when we should be doing other things, like helping the 2.8 million LGBT kids get off the streets.

And no, Scalia, I don’t think you hate me. You don’t know me, and guess what? If you did, you’d like me. If you spent a month in my home, you would have voted the other way.

Or maybe not, who knows?

“And so you are one of those rare men who approve of the education of women,” said a don to Lord Peter Wimsey, in one of Dorothy L. Sayer’s novels.

“You should not permit me the right to approve or not,” he returned.

Exactly—and now I get it. That’s why I’m pissed. There’s no particular joy in this—not for me, not now. I’m back fighting as I have for so many damn years a bunch of people who have the power to affect my and my husband’s lives in significant ways. What we have had to fight and struggle for they take for granted. OK—I’ll be happy later on.

Right now?

I’m pissed.

Et In Terra Pax

At first I dismissed it as typical hype, and worse, another example of a vexing condition from which we suffer. But first let me tell what prompted it all.

The New Day, or El Nuevo Día, as everybody else calls it, is the island’s largest newspaper. And today, it took the sensible step of telling us all how to cope in the event of nuclear fallout or rain.

Well, I remember the t-shirt from the sixties, which had more succinct and trenchant instructions. “Close all windows,” the t-shirt counseled, “sit in the middle of the room, put your head between your legs, and kiss your ass goodbye.”

Well, the New Day acted more professionally, today; they gave several intelligent pieces of advice. We should all have an emergency plan, including a meeting point in the event that a disaster happens when we are not at home. We’re supposed to have cash on hand, food for at least a week, water, extra medicines, insurance policies and identification documents. Then, we maintain ourselves informed—sorry, these Latin constructions are creeping in to my English—as well, of course, as tranquil (¿bíjte?).

Now then, in the event of an evacuation, we should have sleeping bags—time to run out to Wal-Mart—and also cages or carrying cases for all animals. Oh, and remember, you’ll need to check out whether the shelter will accept animals.

This is, you understand, just slightly surreal. We have four cats, one of whom is virtually impossible to put in a cage. And don’t even think about putting more than one cat per cage. So am I really supposed to go and buy two sleeping bags (in Puerto Rico? It’s early April and the temperature is already in the high 80’s) and three more cat carrying cases?

Somehow, it reminded me of Jack, my father, who got it into his head in the early ‘60’s that nuclear attack was imminent, and so he had to be prepared. Which meant that he got up one Saturday morning, headed down to the basement, and began beating the hell out of one of the walls with a pick ax. Then came the backhoe, and in a month’s time we had our bunker—a room about ten feet by twenty feet, with two single beds. Since there were five of us at the time, it wasn’t exactly certain how this arrangement would work—would we sleep in shifts?

Another problem, which Johnny—of course it would be he—pointed out, was that it wasn’t much of a secret around the neighborhood what we were up to; nobody could really believe that the backhoe was there for the garden, could they? So what to do about the neighbors, their children in their arms, who come running to our house when the A bomb hits? Would we let the Goodriches in, but not the Baumans?

And what was the point, asked Johnny, of the little stove pipe in the corner of the shelter that communicated with the outside? Was Jack really going to open that up, all the better to breathe in radiation-laden air?

Jack covered the pipe with a piece of plywood the next day.

So now the New Day has fulfilled its mission—in the event that a madman in North Korea decides to unload a missile on South Korea or Guam we readers are informed and ready to take necessary procedures to safeguard life and property. Oh, and fear not, because in the event of an disaster, the government—which barely works in normal times—will activate the emergency management team, and everything will be well under control. Wow!

The New Day did point out a few more things. Yes, it’s unlikely that North Korea will do a direct strike on the financial district of San Juan. But if it zaps South Korea, it may well contaminate the entire region, and guess what? We get a lot of our food from there.

Then there’s the little problem of radiation in seawater. In fact, a month ago fishermen off the coast of California pulled up a tuna contaminated with radiation. One wonders—how did they know? Are Geiger counters standard equipment on fishing boats nowadays? Or was the tuna merely glowing?

Oh, and the BBC reported that the Japanese nuclear reactor, Fukushima (always loved that name), had reported a leak yesterday. Well, that seemed sufficiently important to check out, and I’m happy to say it’s not true. In fact, Fukushima may have had THREE leaks since Saturday. And here’s what one writer for the BBC said, after touring the plant last March:

The scale of their task is daunting, and it will decades before anyone can truly say the Fukushima disaster is over, and the threat from the plant contained.

There is still a reactor—Number Three—that is so highly radioactive that no one can go into it. So how are they getting the rods out? By using remotely controlled cranes. Another reactor—Number Four—still has 1500 spent fuel rods, and the building may collapse if there’s another earthquake. And there are thousands of tons of highly contaminated water sitting in tanks that now, apparently, are leaking.

“Puerto Rico is an island surrounded by mirrors,” goes an old saying, “and when on occasion we look out to see the world, we can only see ourselves.” That’s what occurred to me this morning—a crisis is imminent a world away, and The New Day was worried about how it might affect us. In fact, it’s not improbable that the crisis happened two years ago in Japan, and anything North Korea does will only make it infinitely, infinitely worse. 

From Aversion to Conversion

For those of you who don’t know, the cause of LGBT has come along way in recent years. In nine states plus Washington DC, folks who can wear each other’s clothes (barring differences in size, of course) can marry. That is, I think, big news.

Some of us, however, have been content to stay behind. In fact, burrow just a bit deeper into the past. No, let’s be honest. There are folks who are so intensely threatened by gay people that they would do anything up to a public stoning to be rid of us.

In the 1970’s, when I first began to deal with being gay (I had known since childhood) a crucial event had just taken place. Drag queens in a bar in New York got raided. Did they run? Nope—they stayed and fought.

Stonewall—the first glimmer of light into what was hitherto an utterly dark picture.

So I didn’t do what I would have done a decade earlier. I didn’t find a shrink, pay him or her 100 bucks an hour, and embark on the question of what my smothering mother Franny (many good qualities she had, that mother of mine, but smothering? Nah!) or my distant father (closer to the mark!) had done.

I went to the library and read.

Any book published in the previous five years had a message—it’s OK, you’re OK, hang on. Anything older than ten years was completely the opposite—you’re sick, seek help.

So I came out, dragging a lot of other people out as well. No, not other gay people, but other people who came to understand—being gay was no big deal.

On the day of my mother’s memorial service, I found myself at a table with the wife of my cousin, who was busily chatting with Raf. They were getting along like a house afire—virtually calling each other sister!—talking gardening, recipes, fashion. Having a wonderful time!

The same woman who homeschooled her children to keep the filth of evolution out of their innocent ears. Whose daughter had once written in the Christmas letter, “Mom is having some health issues but she and the Lord are resolving them.”

One felt a bit sorry for the Lord.

So we’re all in a better place, right? Thirty years ago, I would say to Raf, “hey, your Mom called today….”

“She say anything this time?”

“Nope, complete silence again….”

She would call every half hour, not say a word, and then, when Raf picked up, would speak.

“Mami, Marc said you called,” said Raf one day, tired of it all….

Right. Last week I cashed the birthday check she had written out and given me, with many kisses and endearments.

Well, I’m sorry to report that the progress has been less than 100% pervasive. And a federal judge in the state of California has upheld temporary injunction on a ban on conversion therapy.

Conversion therapy?

Yes, it’s still going on, still practiced, and no—nobody respectable believes in it. Here’s a choice description of the therapeutic methods, drawn from a lawsuit in November in New Jersey.

The therapy techniques described in that lawsuit included having participants strip naked in group sessions, cuddling and intimate holding of others of the same sex, violently beating an effigy of their mothers with a tennis racket, visiting bath houses "in order to be nude with father figures," and being "subjected to ridicule as 'faggots' and 'homos' in mock locker room scenarios."

It’s almost impossible to know which is greater—the ridiculousness of the techniques, or the sadness of men who would willingly consent to them, so horrified are they of their sexuality.

But wait—it’s not people willingly choosing to undergo this “therapy.”

The California ban applies only to minors under the age of eighteen.

Kids.

Dragged to the camp or the counselor’s office by their parents.

Here’s the judge’s reasoning:

U.S. District Judge William Shubb ruled Monday that the ban Gov. Jerry Brown signed earlier this year could offend the First Amendment rights of therapists to express their opinions about homosexuality.

And here’s mine:

The guy who cuts my hair has a license. The person who sprays perfume on ladies in Macy’s has a license. The person who drives me in his taxi has a license. When in God’s name are we gonna get rid of quacks who are messing around with the most vital thing any of us possess—the mind? 

Fifty years ago, it was aversion therapy—people looking at homoerotic images and receiving electrical shocks in the nether regions. Or being given emetics, so as to associate looking at men with puking.

It’s as wrong as it is vicious. Don’t believe me? Here’s the big boy himself, Sigmund Freud, on the subject:

"I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual...it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted."