Additional information documenting the fact that the
American Psychological Association has been seized by homosexual activists who have little regard for science or the democratic process:
A.P.A.'s Society for the Study of Gay Issues Urges Psychologists To Become Political Activists
"May 7, 2004 - The Division 44 Newsletter, (Spring, 2004) published by the American Psychological Association's Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues, urged gay psychologists to become activists in supporting gay marriage and domestic partnerships. Judith Glassgold, the president of Division 44, also urged gay psychologists to oppose any attempts by conservative groups to de-fund sexual orientation or sexuality studies conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
In her editorial, Glassgold says that Division 44 has contacted the APA's Public Policy office to urge them to lobby against President Bush's Defense of Marriage Amendment. In addition, she has encouraged gay psychologists to build allies inside the APA and also with outside gay, bisexual, lesbian, and transgendered communities.
She noted that Division 44 is building relationships with Division 19, the Military Psychology section of the APA in order to "oppose unfair and discriminatory policies together."
Dr. Glassgold also observed that the Executive Committee's meeting in Chicago (March, 2004) was to be devoted to a discussion of military issues, family protections and rights, as well as transgender issues.
Transsexual Psychologist Urges Change In DSM
In a separate article in the Division 44 Newsletter, a male-to-female transsexual doctor, writing under a pen name, expressed his hope that someday the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would be changed to normalize transsexualism.
Madeline H. Wyndzen states: "As a psychologist and transsexual, I find that the mental illness label imposed on transsexuality is just as disquieting as the label that used to be imposed upon homosexuality." He said he looked forward to the day when his children will think that it was "unfathomable that I was once diagnosed and treated for 'Gender Identity Disorder.'"
Heterosexuality "No Longer Normative"
Division 44 head Dr. Glassgold wrote a second essay in the newsletter which dealt with the use of psychoanalysis and other philosophies to "reformulate" psychoanalysis and reorder society's view of reality.
According to Glassgold, "Psychoanalysis has evolved and modern psychoanalysis no longer sees heterosexuality as normative and no longer views sexual and gender varieties as pathological; as a result, psychoanalysis and LGBT psychology do not have to be at odds, and can actually be allies."
Glassgold says that psychoanalysis, united with postmodernism and social constructionism, "provides very powerful theories to understand reality; however this potential has yet to be fully realized."
She continues, "Social change as well as new and fluid models of gender and sexuality can evolve from psychoanalytic understanding. Some of the strengths of modern psychoanalysis are its rejection of predetermined goals, its embracing of psychic creativity, and respect for an individual's agency in self-realization."
American Psychological Association related replies in this thread: 121, 240 and 242.
American Psychiatric Association related replies in this thread: 46, 139, 213, 232, 237, 239, 241, 243, and 246.
As further documentation, consider this exchange between Freepers Lentulusgracchus and Clint N. Suhks:
To: Clint N. Suhks
Actually, I wonder if a majority of the American Psychological Association don't agree with you. You're aware, I'm sure (I can send you a link or an article), of how the gay movement rolled the APA in the early 70's and got homosexuality deleted from the APA's diagnotic manual as Step One of their bustin'-out move to get out of the shadows and into the Clinton White House.
Looking at survey data from the APA membership, it would appear that a majority of the older members still believe that the origins of homosexuality are psychological as well as genetic.
The younger members have been propagandized assiduously for over 30 years by homosexual APA members who have taken care to dominate the appropriate committees and control its message on homosexuality, both to the practice and to the public. But the older members still aren't buying it. That refusal to change professional opinions despite all the propaganda and eyewash that's been thrown out there is damning, AFAIC, of the APA/gay message.
80 posted on 07/22/2002 5:06 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus
To: lentulusgracchus
homosexual APA members who have taken care to dominate the appropriate committees and control its message on homosexuality
Ah yes, the self-serving division 44 where the inmates are running the asylum. I did an impromptu check on their members, out of 15 investigations, 10 were openly homosexual. Division 44 is in charge of making APA policy on homosexuality, there’s a conflict of interest when the committee is disproportionately homosexual.
84 posted on 07/22/2002 6:58 PM PDT by Clint N. Suhks
To: Clint N. Suhks
Thanks for the data, and I suspected some high proportion of gays on the 44 Committee (I believe I've noticed a reference to that group on their site).
David Ehrenstein, a gay fascist propagandist and Hollywood film critic (and self-appointed persecutor of magazine editor Andrew Sullivan), has written a book on the overthrow of the APA. He of course took another point of view, but in between his agitprop-terrorist fulminations on Salon's "TableTalk", his pride of authorship led him to divulge the method by which the APA was turned.
It seems that the principal investigators of homosexuality were, some of them, themselves gay. Gay-rights spear-carriers went to these people and offered to "out" them if they failed to see the light and support the new position rallying around the famous study that laid down the new rationale you outlined for "discovering" that homosexuality was not a paraphilia and not a disorder, if other mental-health criteria were satisfied.
So in short, major support was gathered for the DSM-3 rewrite via plain old blackmail.
Ehrenstein was eloquent in his disgust for gay psychiatrists who were engaged in psychotherapy work on other gays to attempt to reorient them. He said that he felt that it was a) hypocritical of them and b) deeply cynical of them to accept pay and emoluments for doing what the straight community wanted done "to" other gays.
Ehrenstein is a gay essentialist who believes it is the duty of the gay psychiatrist or psychologist to assist the embryonic gay in his development and self-realization. Ehrenstein didn't share his opinion of the practice described by the street phrase, "skinning some chicken".
96 posted on 07/24/2002 7:20 AM PDT by lentulusgracchus
Documenting the pro-homosexual activism in the American Academy of Pediatrics: An excerpt from
reply 62 in the thread "
Professional Pediatrics Group Discourages Gay Parenting:"
... When it comes policy on homosexual issues, the politically correct American Academy of Pediatrics toes the homosexual agenda line. And as I posted in reply 46:
professionals in one field, such as medicine, often rely on the "expertise" of "professionals" in other fields, such as psychology, when making policy or issuing statements to the general public.
That is indeed true as I will show later. However, beyond relying on the professional positions of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, there has been an infiltration of pro-homosexual activists in the American Academy of Pediatrics, albeit not to the degree that both APA's have been infiltrated. This infiltration has led to AAP taking positions on homosexual parenting that are not based on science, but on political social agenda.
Since you expressed concern with the founding date and the basic tenents of the American College of Pediatricians, let's first look at who they are and why they decided to form their professional organization:
Pediatricians' Groups Differ On Attitudes Toward Homosexual Parenting : A new group is formed to counterbalance the AAP's social activism.
"... However, a new group--the American College of Pediatrics (sic), a Tennessee-based alternative organization headed by Dr. Joseph Zanga--has just responded by requesting that its fellow organization reverse its stand.
Zanga's group was formed by 100 dissenting members of the AAP. His organization disagrees with the AAP's point of view on gay parenting, as well as numerous other social issues.
In a recent interview with NARTH, Dr. Zanga said that the policy statement did not have the support of the AAP membership as a whole. In fact, the position paper--entitled "Co-Parent or Second Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents" -- was released to the public despite the objections of one-third of the committee which drafted it, he noted.
Zanga is still an active member of the larger AAP. In fact, he chairs its Bioethics Committee, which, he says, objected to the release of the position paper, citing what it felt were numerous flaws in the research and its foundation in "very weak science."
Because there was considerable opposition within AAP membership ranks to the pro-homosexual stance of the policy, Zanga says, the AAP commissioned a "technical report" to investigate its decision, authored by Boston pediatrician Ellen Perrin.
In that report, Perrin herself questioned the reliability of the studies used by her organization to measure the effects of same-sex couples raising either biological or adopted children, saying "The small and non-representative sample [of children raised by same-sex couples] studied," she said, "and the relatively young age of most of the children, suggest some reserve [concerning the policy statement]."
Although most ACP members retain their membership in the larger pediatrics group, Dr. Zanga said he and his fellow ACP members "do not want the media, the government, or the public to think that all pediatricians agree with the AAP's policies on controversial issues..."
The Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health is the division of AAP which issued the policy position paper on homosexual parenting. The position paper's technical report was written by Dr. Ellen Perrin, M.D. and Professor of Pediatrics at Tufts-New England Medical Center, and the Director of the Division of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics and the Center for Children with Special Needs.
Consider the following (excerpted) documentation, starting with the actual AAP position paper:
Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents
AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS
PEDIATRICS Vol. 109 No. 2 February 2002, pp. 339-340
Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health
"The American Academy of Pediatrics recognizes that a considerable body of professional literature provides evidence that children with parents who are homosexual can have the same advantages and the same expectations for health, adjustment, and development as can children whose parents are heterosexual.1–9
On the basis of the acknowledged desirability that children have and maintain a continuing relationship with 2 loving and supportive parents, the Academy recommends that pediatricians do the following:
Be familiar with professional literature regarding gay and lesbian parents and their children.
Advocate for initiatives that establish permanency through coparent or second-parent adoption for children of same-sex partners through the judicial system, legislation, and community education..."
TESTIMONY OF PROFESSOR ELLEN PERRIN, MD, SUPPORTING H. 3677
"I am Dr. Ellen Perrin, Professor of Pediatrics at Tufts-New England Medical Center, and the Director of the Division of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics and the Center for Children with Special Needs. I speak to you today as a recognized expert in child development. One of my areas of special expertise is in the development and well-being of children whose parents are gay or lesbian.
I have reviewed hundreds of articles and books, and written and published a good deal myself about what happens to children whose parents are the same sex. I am considered to be the pediatrician most expert in the country on this topic.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a report last year that summarized three decades of research on the well-being of children raised by gay or lesbian parents. I was its primary author. As a result he AAP adopted a formal policy which stated that children who grow up with “gay or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual..."
In the on-line Special Report article "More and more American children are growing up with same-sex parents" By Dan Gilgoff, U.S. News & World Report / USNews.com (http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040524/misc/24family_2.htm), Ellen Perrin, professor of pediatrics at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts-New England Medical Center was quoted:
"If we could break down some of society's gender stereotypes, that would be a good thing."
Note that Ellen Perrin is also affiliated with the pro-homosexual American Psychological Association:
APA Journals: Families, Systems, & Health -- Editorial Staff:
... ADVISORY EDITORS...
Ellen Perrin Worcester, MA
Examining the Research Literature on Outcomes from Same-Sex Parenting: How sound is the American Academy of Pediatrics' statement endorsing same-sex parenting?
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced in early February, 2002 “a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.”1 Based on this, the AAP supports “legislative and legal efforts” to allow homosexuals to adopt their partner’s children.2
However, the AAP received strong reaction from its membership. An email memo from the lead author of the AAP’s Technical Report to select members of the Academy on the issue laments:
…the AAP has received more messages – almost all of them CRITICAL – from members about the recent Policy Statement on coparent adoption than it has EVER received on any other topic… This is a serious problem, as it means that it will become harder to continue the work we have been doing to use the AAP as a vehicle for positive change.3
1) Reasons for Caution within the AAP’s Own Report
There are a number of details in the AAP’s own Technical Report that raise serious questions about their conclusion that “children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay or lesbian parents fare as well as in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.”4
Ellen Perrin, author of the AAP’s Technical Report, was co-author of a 1994 study published in Pediatrics in Review entitled, “Children of Gay and Lesbian Parents.” The study explained, “Unfortunately, the research to date has limitations, including small sample size, non-random subject selection, narrow range of socioeconomic and racial background, and lack of long-term longitudinal follow-up.”5..."
Additional documentation:
Examining the Research on Homosexual Parenting
"The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced on Feb. 4, 2002, "a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual."1 Based on this, the AAP states it supports "legislative and legal efforts" to allow homosexuals to adopt their partner's children.2
Many in the media have used this statement from the respected AAP as a discussion-closer on whether heterosexual parenting is good or bad. The AAP says the gender of parents doesn't matter, so the media figure it must not really matter, either. The members of the AAP know better..."
Note the interprofessional soceity cooperation and support in the following excerpt from the American Psychiatric Association:
Pediatricians Support Adoption By Gay Partners
"Noting the considerable body of professional literature to support its position, the American Academy of Pediatrics releases a statement that gay men and lesbians should be allowed to adopt their partner’s children.
The country’s largest organization of pediatricians has come out strongly in favor of allowing gay men and lesbians to adopt their partner’s children.
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published a policy statement in the February issue of its journal Pediatrics "emphasizing that in light of data showing that children of gay and lesbian parents function just as well emotionally, cognitively, and socially as children of heterosexual parents, courts should stop using sexual orientation as grounds to deny members of same-sex couples the right to adopt their partner’s children...
Consistent With APA, AACAP
Fassler noted that the AAP’s policy statement is consistent with positions on same-sex issues already adopted by APA and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP). The AACAP statement points out, "There is no evidence to suggest or support that parents with a gay, lesbian, or bisexual orientation are per se different from or deficient in parenting skills, child-centered concerns, and parent-child attachments" when compared with heterosexual parents. It also states that there are no outcome data showing that children raised by homosexual or bisexual parents show more instability or developmental dysfunction than peers raised by two heterosexual parents.
Fassler said that the Council on Children, Adolescents, and Their Families "welcomes this action by the AAP" and plans to add it to the agenda for its May meeting.
To help their recommendations become reality, the AAP urges pediatricians to "become familiar with professional literature regarding gay and lesbian parents and their children..."
See also: Adoption and Co-Parenting of Children by Same-Sex Couples: New Position Statement Adopted by the American Psychiatric Association
Pediatrics Group Endorses Homosexual Adoption... But New Policy Places Children at Risk
On February 3rd, The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a policy statement endorsing adoption by same-sex couples, saying they can provide the same emotionally healthy family life as heterosexual parents. The academy is urging its 55,000 members to take an active role in supporting laws that allow gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals to adopt the children of the individuals with whom they cohabit.
But this new policy is based on politics, not science. Sadly, although AAP policy carries significant weight in our nation's courts, it is not in the best interests of children, whose interests the AAP claims to represent.
Studies demonstrate that there is, in fact, a difference between non-heterosexual and heterosexual parenting. Children raised by non-heterosexual parents are placed at risk. They are more apt to experience gender and sexual confusion; they are more apt to become promiscuous; they are at greater risk of losing a parent to AIDS, substance abuse or suicide. They suffer more depression and other emotional difficulties. They are also more likely to engage in same-sex behavior.
Furthermore, non-heterosexual couples are less stable than heterosexual couples in their relationships and they are more likely to separate. Research reveals that promiscuity is virtually the norm among male non-heterosexuals. Violence is substantially higher in non-heterosexual relationships. The list of risk factors continues.
Nature created male and female to be complementary to each other in myriad ways that enhance not only the couple's relationship, but the healthy and stable development of the children they produce. It is well known that fatherlessness is responsible for many of the ills of children in our society. There are few bodies of research where the evidence is so clear: children need both a mother and a father. Homes with a married mother and father are, all things considered, far better for raising emotionally stable children.
Perhaps the time has come for rational, reasonable people to insist that organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics either base their policies on science, or else label themselves as political organizations and relinquish their tax-exempt statuses.
And maybe it's also time that federal, state and local governments discontinue reliance on professional organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics when they need accurate, dispassionate, scientific information.
It's also time that the American people insist on truth, not politics, from all of our professional organizations.
Copyright © NARTH. All Rights Reserved.
Updated: 30 September 2002
No Basis: What the Studies Don't Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting
The Pediatricians Are Wrong
For documentation of homosexual activism in both the APA's, see the following replies in scripter's "Homosexual Agenda: Categorical Index of Links (Revision 1.1)" thread:
American Psychological Association: 121, 240 and 242.
American Psychiatric Association: 46, 139, 213, 232, 237, 239, 241, 243, and 246.
Documenting the Queering of Elementary Education:
"Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling, Edited by William J. Letts IV and James T. Sears, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999, 291 pages"
An excerpt from:
Book Review - Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities in Schooling
Progressive Perspectives
Vol. 4, No. 1, John Dewey Project on Progressive Education, Spring 2002
College of Education and Social Services, University of Vermont
"Queering Elementary Education is unique because as it's title suggests it does not apologize for the stance that it takes, nor does it wallow in the problems of being homosexual in a heterosexist society. It is a book all educators should read whether they are elementary school teachers, administrators, or college professors. It challenges assumptions about how we view education and how we view caring for children. Edited by William J. Letts IV and James T. Sears, it offers many perspectives on the various aspects of elementary education and the myriad ways it is heterosexist.
In the first chapter James T. Sears proposes several ideas that appear throughout the book: speaking the unspoken by teaching about queer issues in elementary school, homosexuality as part of the human condition, and asserting that heterosexism and homophobia are acquired or learned beliefs. Bickmore asks, "why discuss sexuality in elementary school?” and answers “given the amount of (mis)information about gender relations and sexuality that flows freely these days in public spaces, media and peer groups, elementary educators could not prevent children from acquiring sexual information even if they wanted to do so"(p. 15). These concepts as well as others are discussed in various ways throughout the book..."
An excerpt from:
Queering Elementary Education - Book Review By Jack Nichols, GayToday.com
"Probably no other title in the pantheon of liberationist literature will evoke more controversy than Queering Elementary Education. If there was an unseemly uproar over Daddy's Roommate and Heather Has Two Mommies, just wait till the Religious Reich spies this august tome on some thoughtful teacher's shelf.
Its editors, both educators, have provided what some see as a companion volume to the award-winning film, It's Elementary. They take it for granted that children in the earliest grades have already been introduced "through schoolyard and media" to the concept of same sex love and affection, that most remain confused about it and that it is best to begin demystification processes early in life rather than allowing mistaken perceptions to take root.
It's Elementary's producer, Debra Chasnof, exults: "What a relief to finally have such a thoughtful collection of essays and research to back up what we've found in schools across the nation... an examination of the ways children's lives are hurt by homophobia and an inspiring array of strategies educators can use to turn this problem around."...
The American Pediatric Association recently called for the teaching of sexuality to begin by the middle of elementary school. Dr. Sears requests that Queering readers remember that "by the time boys and girls have become teenagers they have well-developed gender and sexual scripts: how boys and girls should behave, who makes up a family, and so on. These become our cultural straightjackets that cultivate the homophobia and sexism we see in the adult world."
( EdReform's note: the pro-homosexual activism in the American Academy of Pediatrics is documented in reply 284 in this thread )
"Rather than focussing on reducing such prejudices, shouldn't we consider how not to instill, foster, or intensify these prejudices in the first place?" he asks. Queering Elementary Education begins with "Foundational Issues" answering queries such as "Why Discuss Sexuality in Elementary School?".
The book's second section deals with children's sexual and social development, including supposed effects of being taught by openly gay teachers. Part three looks at possible curriculums, examining and critiquing the "heteronormative nature of elementary school science." Part four deals with family ties while the final section examines educators and their allies..."
Here are some excerpts from Queering Elementary Education that were posted in reply 16 in the thread Congress Needs to Hear From Public re:Marriage Amendment:
In one chapter, a woman describes how she and her male lover have raised their daughter "queerly" by taking her to "gay pride" parades and teaching her the intricacies of masturbation while she is still a young child.
tuesday afternoon: Is that actually in the book? It totally blows my mind that would be in a book about educating children.
It is indeed in the book, and it doesn't even scratch the surface of the way that daughter has been raised. However, I have to tell you, the stories that unmarried, 'identified as heterosexual' Australian sociologist Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli tells about her biological daughter Stephanie are difficult to believe. Even if the essence of the accounts are true, I have never heard of a 1st grade child who was so well-versed in psychosocial pretzel logic.
Nevertheless, here are excerpts from chapter 7 (page 71) of Queering Elementary Education, "My Moving Days": A Child's Negotiation of Multiple Lifeworlds in Relation to Gender, Ethnicity, and Sexuality." (Bold and bracketed text is mine; Italics apparently are from Pallotta-Chiarolli's previously published works.)
...[O]ur child is "queerly raised." She travels within and between multicultural and multisexual world as well as undertaking geographical journeys: to and from Adelaide, where she was born, raised principally by Italian migrant grandparents while we worked full time,...to and from Sydney, where her father lived for two years while she was three and four and where she attends queer events with her parents' friends; and to and from Melbourne, where her father is now primary care-giver supported by a network of multicultural and multisexual friends as my work takes her away at regular intervals....To be "queerly raised" is to interrogate the taken-for-grantedness of such fixed categories and the way society divides people into "normal" and "abnormal," "natural" and "unnatural," according to their locations in these categories...[it is] to thrive in the destabilization and disruption of normalizing discourses of family, gender, and compulsory heterosexuality. It is an upbringing that encourages stability in mobility, security in change, clarity in ambiguity.
...this chapter explores the kinds of understandings, negotiations, and dilemmas "queerly raised" children experience...For example...How does a child respond to AIDS phobia at school when HIV-positive persons, and griveing over AIDS-related deaths, have been a part of one's life since birth?
Here is an excerpt from Steph's story [for show-and-tell] entitled "My Moving Days":
I go to Sydney sometimes especially at Mardi Gras time and have fun with Mum and her friends. We go to interesting shops and restaurants. I was in the Mardi Gras one year pretending to be Alan and Malcolm's daughter. I wore my purple fairy costume and waved a wand and the gay flag. Lots of people took pictures and I was on the news...I love my life. It's exciting.
[Stephanie] interrogates defintions of Truth, Reality, Purity, and Identity constructed by dominant social discourses, thereby revealing the Truths, Realities, Impurities, and Identities that these discourses say do not exist at all or exist only in forms they can control and distort as being "wrong" or "strange."
Getting ready for school one morning, seven-year old Steph asks, "What's artificial insemination?" I ask, "Were you interested in what Uncle Matteo was saying last night?" I had been chatting to a gay Italian friend, Matteo about his daughter, a baby he'd had with a lesbian and his plans to have another. Steph had been sitting with us silently listening.
Steph nods. "If they don't have sex, how can they have babies, that's all I wanted to know, really. At school we learned that it takes a man and woman who are married to each other to have a baby, but Uncle Matteo is gay and he isn't married. But I know he's had a baby."
I explain how many gays and lesbians are now becoming parents without having sex with each other. And this leads to a chat about women's decisions about having sex and babies, and that leads on to how women should never let anyone explain their sexuality. And this leads to a conversation about what else was missing from the "sex education" lessons in school -- the clitoris! We talk about the book Steph has at home showing where the clitoris is. The question comes: "But why didn't they show it in the book at school? I looked for it but the teacher acted like nothing was there. I know it's there." Steph has been taught that it is the clitoris that gives her pleasure when she masturbates.
Steph picks up her schoolbag. She's ready for another day at school, and as we head out the door, she says with a scornful snort, "They don't say all the truth at school but I know it anyway."
..."Queerly raised" children are agents. People are, and always have been, active agents in the constitution of their unfolding social worlds...Their personal world is "an emergent, situated, negotiated one where considerable variation becomes possible."
When Steph [was] three, I am tucking her into bed one evening and am about to read her a children's version of The Swiss Family Robinson. "No, I'll read it to you," Steph says, which means she'll tell the story through the pictures. There is one picture where the parents stand in the middle of their sons, one son next to his father, and two, with arms around each other's shoulders, next to their mother. Steph describes the family, pointing to the people as she goes: "This is the father. This is the first son," pointing to the boy on his own. "This is the second son" -- and then to the third son next to his brother -- "and this is the second son's boyfriend."
...A "queerly raised" child can "travel" between these "worlds" and inhabit more than one of these worlds at the very same time.
One evening, as we wait for [now ten year old] Steph's computing class to begin, three girls around twelve years old come cheerily in to collect some material for their next class. They look confident and speak assertively, arms and hair swinging. I notice Steph has taken my hand and is squeezing it. I look across and notice a faint shy blush on her ace. "What's up, Steph?"
Steph is still staring at the girls. She whispers, "Which one do you like?"
"All of them. They look like nice, smart young women."
Steph persist (sic). "No! I mean, which one do you like?"
"Which one do you like, sweetie?"
Steph nods her head toward the long-haired girl in jeans and T-shirt who's doing most of the questioning in articulate computer-speak. "Do you like her too?"
"Yes, I do," I reply.
Steph smiles slightly, pleased, still not taking her eyes off the girl.
"What're you feeling, Steph?"
Steph smiles shyly. She shrugs and looks at me with embarrassment. I squeeze her hand. "It's okay, Steph. She's gorgeous, and if you think that, that's fine. Enjoy those feelings, there's nothing wrong with them."
In the meantime, Steph also has crushes on two boys. Getting out of the car one afternoon with a friend who's come to play, she looks at the houses across the street and declares, "I wish Peter and Anthony lived there. Then I could see both of them."
Her friend looks scornfully at her. "You can only love one person."
"Who says?"
"That's the way it is. Unless you're a lesbian."
"If I was a lesbian, I'd want Peter and Anthony to be girls. Anyway, maybe I'll love no one. Maybe I'll love girls or boys, or both. Maybe lots of both!" And she laughs cheekily as her friend remonstrates.
...Steph's writing and experiences of agency exemplify children's great potential to demonstrate and transcend categorical limitations, oppressions, and the splitting of concurrent realities inherent in the heteronormative, Anglocentric, and phallocentric need to homogenize, categorize, and simplify... ...As I write this chapter...[o]ne of Steph's friends, a girl in her early teens, has now confieded to Steph and to us that she thinks she is a lesbian. She can't tell her own parents, she says. She can't tell anyone else at school. Steph has now become her confidante, and we can hear them chat into the night during sleepovers...
An excerpt from 'Queering the Schools':
"... As for teaching aids, a 1999 book, Queering Elementary Education, with a foreword by GLSEN executive director Kevin Jennings, offers essays on “Locating a Place for Gay and Lesbian Themes in Elementary Reading, Writing and Talking” and “How to Make ‘Boys’ and ‘Girls’ in the Classroom”—the scare quotes showing the queer theorist’s ever present belief that categorizing gender is a political act...
Two videos come particularly highly rated by gay activists and educators as tools for making primary school queer-friendly. Both films strive to present homosexuality in a favorable light, without saying what it actually is. It’s Elementary, intended for parents, educators, and policymakers, shows how classroom teachers can lead kindergartners through carefully circumscribed discussions of the evils of prejudice, portrayed as visited to an unusual degree on gays and lesbians. In That’s a Family, designed for classroom use, children speak directly into the camera, explaining to other kids how having gay and lesbian parents is no different from, for example, having parents of different national backgrounds.
GLSEN even provides lesson plans for the promotion of cross-dressing in elementary school classes. A school resource book containing such lesson plans, Cootie Shots: Theatrical Inoculations Against Bigotry for Kids, Parents, and Teachers, has already been used in second-grade classrooms in California. A children’s play in the book features a little boy singing of the exhilaration of striding about “In Mommy’s High Heels,” in angry defiance of the criticism of his intolerant peers:
They are the swine, I am the pearl. . . .
They’ll be beheaded when I’m queen!
When I rule the world! When I rule the world!
When I rule the world in my mommy’s high heels!..."
Related replies posted in this thread: 55, 141, 147, 152, 155, 161, 163, 188, 216, 256, 266, and 271.
