With a Nod to Shirley Jackson

It’s curious to think about—I’ve probably spent more time listening to this song than Schubert spent writing it. The manuscript is, if the website I stumbled upon can be trusted, a single sheet of paper. It was published some two decades after it was written. Liszt transcribed it—as he did so much else—and Primrose as well. Not surprising, if you’re a violist, you gotta do a little borrowing to fill in the repertoire.

That was a cool, cool paragraph written on the day after a bloodbath. And by cool I mean not hip but emotionally chilly, neutral, stepped-back and slightly ironic.

Which is not how the rest of the nation is feeling. People are in shock. The New Day has discovered that a little girl with connections to a town on the east side of the island was killed. Boricua Blood in the Tragedy screams the front page today.

And people are saying the usual. Evil, we are told by CNN, visited the town of Newton, Connecticut, yesterday.

Yeah?

Or was it a paranoid schizophrenic who had access to semi-automatic rifles?

I’m skipping this one. I’m assuming that if we had wanted to do something about it, we would have. I’m forced to conclude that there is something in my countrymen that wants slaughter, that relishes in the bloodshed, that thirsts to see anguished families and a weeping president and destroyed lives.

Why don’t we celebrate it?

The Spanish—a more honest people—go happily to their bullfights, and delight in seeing the bull downed in a pool of blood.

Well, we could do the same thing. Every Saturday, at random, a school somewhere in the nation is picked—will it be yours? Your children’s? Your grandchildren’s?

No matter, Friday night you will not sleep. Little children will beg to sleep with their mommies. “I’m scared, Mommie,” they’ll whisper.

Go back to bed, it will all be all right.

But you’re not sleeping either.

Because after all, it could be your child, your daughter, your sister.

Right, school chosen. Now we have to know the grade, the classroom.

Hey, do it in real time.

Add some excitement to the game.

How long does it take for the killer to walk from his home to his car? How long is the drive? How long to search for parking, to unload the guns, to pull the mask over his face?

Half an hour?

Forty-five minutes?

Right, so now we have the kids in the school. Everybody is there—teachers, principal, kids. Everybody is in their places.

Waiting for the slaughter to begin.

The media is filming. Relieved parents in other towns all across the country are cracking the first beer.

Better than Monday Night Football!

It’s old, our bloodlust. The Romans, seeing the Christians fed to the lions.

The gentry, viewing the mad raving at Bedlam.

Maybe it’s time to say it. We love to see the young butchered, the blood splattered on the chalkboard, the entails underneath the little desks / seats.

Love it.

Death and destruction and blood and tears.

Makes us feel good.

Or some of us. Because who’s going into that school?

The killer.

Also chosen by lottery.

A card-carrying member of the NRA.

Litany for the Feast of All Saints

Rest in peace, all souls,

Those that have done with care and suffering,

Those that have fulfilled a happy dream,

Those sated with life, those scarcely born...

All who have passed from this world to the Beyond,

All souls, rest in peace.

Souls of loving-hearted maidens,

Those who shed uncounted tears,

Whom false lovers deserted,

And the blind world cast out...

All who have departed hence,

All souls, rest in peace.

And those that have never smiled on the sunshine,

But beneath the moon waited, on thorns,

To see God one day, face to face

In the pure light of Heaven...

All souls that have departed hence,

All souls, rest in peace.

Music Insanely Good

OK—today’s problem: what to do about Robert Schumann.

There’s no question that something was going on, neurologically or psychiatrically speaking. The guy died in 1856 in an insane asylum. Two years previously, he attempted suicide by throwing himself in the Rhine—he then asked the fishermen who rescued him to take him directly to the asylum. He had warned his wife Clara earlier that he feared he might hurt her.

Right—so he’s not quite your average, happy guy. Nor has he been for a long time. One theory is that he contracted syphilis when at the university, and that it lay dormant until turning into its tertiary state in his last decade.

The diagnosis at the time was dementia praecox, later known as schizophrenia. But a theory more prevalent, today, is that he was bipolar, or manic-depressive.

And there is certain weirdness in the late works. Of which, I may say, I only know one; that, for reasons which should be obvious, is the A minor Cello Concerto.

OK, maybe not as well as Clara did. She was, as you remember, not a lazy girl. She was certainly one of the finest pianists of her time (once, on tour with his wife, Schumann was asked, “oh, are you a musician too?”). She bore eight children, two of whom died in infancy. She cared for Schumann until the end, and was with him when he died. In addition, she composes, and composes well.

So she knows a thing or two, our Clara, or rather Robert’s Clara. And she brings a critical eye—or ear—to anything she hears of plays. So what’s her take on the cello concerto?

Clara Schumann's evaluation of this work, written on October 11, 1851, a year after it was composed, is still valid today. "I have played Robert's Violoncello Concerto again and thus procured for myself a truly musical and happy hour," she recounted. "The romantic quality, the flight, the freshness and the humor, and also the highly interesting interweaving of cello and orchestra are, indeed, wholly ravishing -- and what euphony and what sentiment are in all those melodic passages!"

This, taken from a Kennedy Center program note for the piece.

To me, it’s a work that really requires the right cellist. Whereas the piano concerto pretty much runs itself, the cello concerto is quirky. Lyrical, yes. The third movement is playful, indeed. And the second movement is moving.

But the first movement?

My first reaction is that it’s all over the map. Oh, and where in the world is it going? Because the moment you settle in for a nice tender phrase, the cellist slashes out a D Major arpeggio—a whiplash of energy. And then he goes back again.

There are cellists who can play it, make sense of it, make you like it. Yo Yo Ma, to my surprise, is one. He gets the lyricism, he gets the energy, he can mold the two.

The surprise, here, was listening not to Ma but the recording of the Andante movement of Clara Schumann’s Trio opus 17. And seeing, of course, the photos of the great pianist and composer herself.

I’ll listen to it, again. But I think my reaction will be the same.

There’s music that just misses the jumping off point, the point where you say, “WHAT! What did he just do!” It can be an unexpected modulation, a chord sequence that’s off the chart, a melodic line that’s so unbearable—and so devoid of the bar-line—that you can’t sing it. (That was my experience of the second movement of the Barber Violin Concerto—it drove me crazy until I realized what it was….)

There’s also music that has all the craft, all the skill, and abundant talent. You listen with pleasure. You know that you are in good hands.

What I heard in Clara’s work is a composer in full command of her abilities. But not a composer who will surprise you.

And Robert?

Next to his wife’s work, he both suffers and shines. For all the times he seems to drift aimlessly, there are moments when the score flashes as if doused with gasoline…

…lit by a spark of genius.

Phooey on Culture

Yes, I said that.

I thought, having spent most of a lifetime trying to learn the cello, that I knew what culture was. It was no big mystery, in the fifties and sixties.

Culture was sitting behind Mrs. Steenbock’s beehive hairdo on Saturday nights as the Madison Symphony, unseen but at least heard, played Beethoven. Or going to the Elvehjem and seeing oil paintings.

Well, Wal-Mart taught me many things, including what culture is.

They were, in fact not so much big as incessant on it. The company cheer was everywhere—I once organized a little spontaneous cheer at the coffee machine in the lobby. There were five of us waiting to stick in the fifty cents that the machine turned into coffee, and nobody was much doing anything. “The cheer,” I exclaimed, “we can do the cheer!” So we did.

In addition, we routinely provided the formulaic answer to the question, “¿Cómo se siente?” or “how are you feeling?” (The answer, by the way, was “Super Bien, u, ah, ayi, YES!”)

And there were people who got it, dug it, loved it. My boss told me the story of how stunned she was, two weeks into her life at Wal-Mart, to be at an outdoor restaurant with a group from Sam’s Club. The manager of the restaurant mentioned that he shopped at Sam’s, and said, “hey, what is that thing you guys do every morning with the shouting and the clapping?” And yes, the group stood up and did all THREE cheers for the patrons in the restaurant.

And Sam—that would be Mr. Walton—was big on culture. If we can keep our culture, he said, then the business will take care of itself.

In the end, it got ridiculous. Culture, I used to tell them, is not a cheer or a recited mantra produced on cue. It’s more about the actual rules that govern the company and the way people interact. And it doesn’t matter how many talks you give about the ten-foot rule, if the president doesn’t say hello to the rest of us (and he didn’t)—that’s the culture.

So now—trawling for anything to write about today—I read the interesting fact that the president of Zappos is ardent about the company culture that he will FIRE anyone who doesn’t fit.

To Puerto Rican eyes, this seems crazy. Perhaps because in Puerto Rico, you can only be fired for cause—because you did something wrong—and not at will. But there’s something else as well.

We are—sorry—much more cynical than the average gringo. You guys up there are horrified when a politician gets caught with his hands in the cookie jar. Down here?

Most of us don’t even lift an eyebrow.

So somehow it’s a little easier to imagine people buying in to a corporate culture in Iowa, say.

And Zappos does take it seriously. 480 pages seriously, in fact. That’s the size of the annual company Culture Book, an unedited affair derived from the employees themselves. Everybody hired has to spend a month in the customer loyalty program, which included two weeks of talking to customers in the call center. And of course, there’s the 2,000$ offer to quit that’s made in the first week after the training.

OK, now we come to core values. Zappos, like Wal-Mart has ‘em. And here they are:

Deliver WOW Through Service

Embrace and Drive Change

Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

Pursue Growth and Learning

Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

Do More With Less

Be Passionate and Determined

Be Humble

Hey, pass me the Pepto-Bismol, would you?

Nor am I the only person to say this. Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a book about it—Smile or Die—and the billion-dollar motivation industry that caters to corporations with glum employees.

Everybody’s gotta be happy—or in Zappos’ terms, fun and a little weird. But she points out that a culture that enforces one mood only may have a problem when the mood doesn’t fit the situation.

Remember the banking crisis four years ago? Ehrenreich argues that everybody jumped on the bandwagon, everybody was a team player, everybody was thinking positively. What was needed, of course, was a Cassandra—somebody screaming that the situation was crazy.

As well, constantly forcing yourself into a positive mood erodes your ability to detect your real mood. A deadening of the affect takes place.

I saw it all the time on the faces of the Wal-Mart people. I’ll do a lot to keep this job—sit in a cold, arid environment, cope with demanding bosses, make impossible budgets.

Just don’t ask me to smile! 

Just Gale

It’s December 12, the old year is ending, and comparisons are inevitable. Where am I now, versus where was I a year ago?

Answer—much better off.

Financially, no. But in every other way, yes. A year ago I was still reeling from the loss of a job. Today, nothing would compel me to go back to where I misspent seven long years.

Because for those seven years, I was on autopilot. I had no time to think, much less to write. One small thing—a need to visit a store, a phone call—could upset the rigid and delicate structure of the day. A pebble was a colossus.

And if the day got upended, then everything fell apart and it was scramble scramble scramble to put it back and then go on and watch out because maybe there’s another pebble and if there is wait I think there IS a pebble oh SHIT I can’t go through another disruption to my day.

Feel the tension in your shoulder?

That’s where it got me, in those days of waiting for the end. I would go down to Amilda, in Sam’s, and she would sigh and open her desk and give me the patch that smelled of Ben-Gay and I would stick it on and struggle through the rest of the day.

Relaxation was something that was structured, as well. Or at least scheduled. There was no “hey, let’s go to the beach.” That had to be planned, and every day had something in it—something to do. Something, usually, I HAD to do.

When all that goes away, it’s like experiencing the world after the big bang. There’s a lot of time, a lot of space, a lot of nothing. What to put into the nothing?

A structure.

Another structure.

So I learned—every day begins with a trot. But I learned as well—sometimes the interruption is as valid as the trot.

Which is why I was talking to Gale, yesterday. She’s one step up from homeless—living in a housing project that she describes as “crack hell.” And she’s a bit worried—three people have died recently on her floor. Is it the huge puddle of water that accumulates after every rain, a perfect breeding pond for mosquitoes and then dengue fever? Nobody, of course, bothers to unclog the drains….

Gale looks to me like a bipolar who is currently on a slight manic phase. Pressured speech, restless movement, emotional lability, and some pretty fantastic stories.

How the government ripped her off of 75,000 dollars. Her daughter, who is bedridden in a hospital in New York and whom Gale cannot see because if she does, she’ll freak out, and the daughter can’t handle that.

So I generally give Gale some money, because I respect what she does. She combs the beach every day looking for shells, coral, interesting vegetation or indeed any object. Then she glues them together into an interesting, occasionally beautiful object, and tries to sell it.

‘Another thing to dust,’ I think. So I give Gale the money and refuse the object.

So we were chatting, yesterday, because just giving the money didn’t seem enough. She’s lonely and depressed—went into the Old City a night or two ago, but the bright lights and party spirit made her feel more alone. And since she doesn’t speak Spanish—she’s got an accent that booms Long Island—she’s even more alone.

“Call me,” she says, “I’ll clean your house. It would be an honor to clean your house. I love to work….”

I consider this briefly. At this point on the spiraling curve downward to pure chaos, only a manic could reverse the trend in this house.

This is now my pebble. A near-homeless person scrambling to get by whom I, having more money than she, give money to because…

…well, she needs it.

As much as she needs to tell me that the cops are abusive—they see people robbing people and they KNOW they’re robbing people and she TELLS THEM they’re robbing people and what do they do?

Nothing! Stupid idiots! “No comprendo,” she imitates.

She’s had to pull a knife twice, just to protect herself.

The pebble of Gale would have entirely upended my day in those Wal-Mart years. First of all because I didn’t have five minutes to spend talking to a person.

‘I can’t believe that that woman waits until the bus comes to a complete stop and then she looks around like she’s never seen a bus stop and then of course she has to take 25 years to look around for the door to exit and does she get it—NO!—she goes out the front and not the back which is totally my pet peeve people trying to get on the bus but can’t because stupid idiots, and oh my God now she’s kissing everybody on the bus and showing pictures of her grandchildren to the bus driver and doesn’t she realize SHE HAS WASTED THIRTY MINUTES COLLECTIVELY OF OUR TIME!’

Or how about this.

‘No, you are not gonna put that sauce in a stupid little sauceboat because in the first place it will take 8 million years to find the damn sauceboat, and then you will have to rinse it, and then I will have to dry it, and I don’t have time, and then the ladle will have to be washed as well as the little dish that goes UNDER the stupid little sauceboat and I woke up at 5:30 and I’m tired AND I DON’T HAVE TIME FOR A SAUCEBOAT!’ 

So—if I didn’t have time for a sauceboat, did I have time to listen to a lady down on her luck (also probably down on her Lithium….)? A lady from whom the government stole 75,000$? 

I have time, now, and generally use it well. I spent, for example, an hour looking at Laurie Anderson on YouTube. Well, that would have appalled me, those years ago. But now?

Well, it’s interesting to hear music I don’t like, but in a sense admire. I certainly think she’s an interesting person. And like all people from the “dear” suburbs of Chicago (“Winnetka, dear,” or “Highland Park, dear,” they always responded—the “dear” took some of the sting off) she doesn’t open her mouth.

And it’s interesting to ponder the question.

I think she’s right. I think we may not have a society anymore. Looking at my life as it was, there was no point in which I interacted with people as people. They were units—the cashier who took my money, the driver who guided the bus, the student who had to be taught.

And I, of course, was a unit too.

Until the day when I was bumped off the treadmill, feel rudely on my ass, and picked myself up and looked around me.

There’s a woman worse off than me out collecting flotsam and jetsam and she’s hungry and I’m in her path and I have the five bucks she needs. And should I let her into my house because what if she breaks something? And as well, she may be OK now, but what if she gets REALLY manic? Do I really want her to know where I live? But what can I do for her?

She’s no longer a pebble.

Is she a problem?

Or is she just Gale?

St. Vincent

Wonderful what the Internet can do.

Consider it—you’ve wondered often and on for years about that “St. Vincent” in Edna St. Vincent Millay. But by the time you’ve summoned the energy to find your keys to go to the library to look it up, life has intruded.

The telephone has rung….

The cat puked on the floor!

And it’s occurred to you—why bother? Who, beyond Edna (long dead), cares?

Now, of course, you’re sitting in your favorite chair. The iPad (that wonderful aPple product) is on your lap. And you have the answer in seconds.

Well, Voracious Reader, I can now tell you. Yes, she was named after the hospital in New York City.

Not the only mystery about her. She was a tomboy—OK, incipient dyke—and went by the name of Vincent in her teens. Principal of the school didn’t buy in, and called her any female name beginning with “V.” Mother was a nurse who divorced her husband on the grounds of “financial irresponsibility.”

Well, she gets started early, our Vincent, when her poem “Renascence” gets fourth place in a national competition, though the first place winner said hers was better, and the second place winner gave his prize money to her. Lives in Greenwich Village, has affairs with both men and women, is an outspoken feminist. A wealthy benefactress hears her poetry—as well as her piano playing—and sends her off to Vassar.

Here she is—a dish!

Also a nice magnolia tree….

She wins the Pulitzer in her early thirties, and then marries, though both she and her husband had lovers throughout their marriage. They buy a big farmhouse in upstate New York, and a 800 acres island off the coast of Maine.

In the process, she may have settled down, a bit. She supports the Allies vigorously in World War II, and pays for it. Wikipedia reports that “Merle Rubin noted: "She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism."

She dies young—fitting for the poet who burnt the candle at both ends—after falling down the stairs in her big house. Her sister Norma and husband move in, and become friends with a 17-year old Mary Oliver. Oliver stays for seven years at the house, and helps organize Millay’s papers.

Oliver goes on to become a major poet and wins the Pulitzer herself.

She seems to have had it all. The respect of her peers: Thomas Hardy—yes, the English novelist and poet—said that there were two great attractions in the United States, the skyscraper and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recognition—always nice to have a Pulitzer! Love in many guises.

And enough money for a little island.

For all her merriness, there seems something dated and sad, now, about Millay. The adventuresome, outspoken girl has somehow become an older, historical woman. The dyke has become an icon….

I cannot but remember

I cannot but remember     When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows

Go down across the sky,

And turn from the window

With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves

Were brittle on the ground,

And the wind in the chimney

Made a melancholy sound.

She had a look about her

That I wish I could forget—

The look of a scared thing

Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

And the warmth of fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember

When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

Monday Morning Musings

It’s curious when the structure of a second language works its way suifficiently into you that your first language seems strange.

“I am very sick,” said the note that Raf left on the stove last night.

And he was. I was woken at 5AM by the sound of it all—an alarming and unsettling way to begin the day.

And several hours later, I’m uncaffeinated or perhaps precaffeinated and wondering—what does that mean?

In Spanish, he would have written, “estoy muy enfermo.” (Actually, in good Puerto Rican Spanish, he would have written, “estoy bien enfermo.”)

There are, you see, two verbs in Spanish for the verb “to be” in English. And if Raf had written, “yo soy enfermo?”

He would have confessed—I’m one sick dude.

The verb ser—as in “soy enfermo”—is used to denote permanent characteristics, natural states. The verb estar is used to denote passing, temporary states. Soy feliz—I’m a happy kind of guy. Estoy feliz—right now I’m happy.

Well, I knew all of this because Ofelia had told me, those decades ago when I was putting my three words of Spanish together and seeing looks of blank confusion on the faces of my auditors. And she—a better teacher than I—gave me a very nice example. Listen carefully—a person says estoy casado—I’m married.

Not a good sign. Clear implication—right now I’m married….

Soy casado—you must meet my wife!

What Ofelia didn’t tell me, but what I figured out later, is that this all comes from Latin—duh!—and gets into Spanish, Portuguese, and Catalan. The verb ser in modern Spanish comes from esse in Latin. The verb estar in Spanish comes from the Latin stare.

Stare has the literal meaning of to stand. And it can be used that way—think the Stabat Mater, Mary standing by the side of the cross.

But it can be used more figuratively—“as things stand now” or “let’s see how that stands….”

These verbs, by the way, are copulas or copulative verbs. Of course, when I learned them—in a gentler, more refined time—nobody would have used the term. “Linking verb” was the term used. (Though it might be kind of fun to make the experiment, slide up to a babe at the bar, and whisper, “Hey, baby, you wanna link?”)

And the development of the ser / estar distinction took place late. Here’s a page—thanks, Wikipedia!—from Cantar del Mio Cid. Check out the third line, which reads Es pagado e davos su amor. Today it would be Está satisfecho, y la da su favor. (He is satisfied, and gives you his favor.)

The other curious factor is location. Notice that the three languages that develop the copulae are in the remote backwater of the Iberian Peninsula. Everybody else—with a few exceptions—generally continues to use their verb to be as did the Latin.

Well, it isn’t much of a post, this. I’ve not added anything significant to your day. But I did remember a poem with the “thus in the winter stands a lonely tree.” And that haunted me for a bit.

Looked it up, and here it is:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why

BY EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

Under my head till morning; but the rain

Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

Upon the glass and listen for reply,

And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

For unremembered lads that not again

Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

I only know that summer sang in me

A little while, that in me sings no more.

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."