Victoria Brownworth

 

Writing about Pride Month often seems a variation on those elementary school essays “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” 

I think of Pride as a time not just of celebration but of reflection–serious reflection. As an historian, activist and journalist, Pride makes me think not so much about how far we’ve come, but about all those things not yet achieved.

It’s easy to focus all one’s attention on those acronyms–DADT and DOMA. They do tend to stop one cold when we start thinking about civil rights. But if we had marriage equality and military equity tomorrow, we’d still have to address other, less obvious elements of Pride.

Months ago, when I first saw Colin Firth’s Oscar-nominated performance in Tom Ford’s adaptation of Christopher Isherwood’s “A Single Man,” I thought about how fortunate I was to have come out as a teenager soon after Stonewall. I never went through life in the closet, but I’ve known myriad people who have.

In “A Single Man,” Firth’s character, George Falconer, is emotionally tortured. Jim, his partner of 16 years and the love of his life, is killed in a car wreck. Instead of being able to grieve his loss, George must hide it. There is no societal recognition of what these men were to each other anywhere. None. The alleged “single” man–really a widower–leads a half life because his real life is hidden.

The film is set in the 1960s, but what is most shocking about it is how little has changed in 40 years. Many queers still live hidden lives of quiet desperation and self-loathing more than 40 years after Stonewall. One reason for this is because “Pride” is neither endemic to nor intrinsic in our culture–while homophobia is both.

In 1973, right after I graduated from high school, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) finally dropped homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.[1] That was a couple of years late for me. I had already been incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for being a lesbian when I was 15. Being queer was a mental illness that therapy and drugs would change–or at least that was the theory at the time.

I was not the only teenaged lesbian in the place, nor was I the only lesbian I knew who would end up there. Two of my best friends from high school got incarcerated for being queer just as I had been.

As I got older, I met more and more lesbians and gay men who’d had the same experience of forced “treatment” in mental hospitals for being queer.

How often does this still happen? It’s slightly more difficult to put your teenager in a mental hospital than it was when I was a kid, but only slightly. Laws now protect adults from “inessential” incarceration in mental hospitals, but parents can still do what they want with their children under the guise of helping them. A 72-hour hold can easily turn into lengthy reparative therapy.

Reparative–the very name makes clear how wrong its proponents find being queer–therapy or conversion therapy asserts that sexual orientation can be changed. (Although I’ll note that there are no groups espousing that heterosexuals change their orientation to queer.)

NARTH, the NationalAssociation for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, asserts: “We respect the right of all individuals to choose their own destiny. NARTH is a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality. As an organization, we disseminate educational information, conduct and collect scientific research, promote effective therapeutic treatment, and provide referrals to those who seek our assistance.” [2]

NARTH will be holding a convention and “training institute” in Philadelphia Nov. 5, 6 and 7, 2010 in Philadelphia. The group has such a large following that it is now publishing its journal in Spanish as well as English and doing global recruiting.

One member of the NARTH board, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, has appeared on the “Dr. Phil” show “debunking” the idea that sexual orientation is innate. [3]

NARTH presents itself as a scientifically based organization. Its director and board of directors are doctors, Ph.D.s and MSWs. They argue the “science” of how same-sex attraction is just a psycho-social misfiring that can be corrected with therapy.
 That was the “science” in 1971, when my parents put me in a mental hospital to “cure” me. The cure didn’t work. Nor did it work for the many friends, acquaintances and colleagues of mine over the years who’ve had similar experiences.

Yet 31 years post-Stonewall and 27 years since the DSM revised its pathological depiction of homosexuality, society remains stuck in a time warp. In the larger society as well as portions of our own community, the assertion that same-sex sexual orientation is a choice—not something as immutable and thus unchangeable as the color of one’s skin—continues to be promulgated. There is no convention nor training session anywhere in America this year for the “conversion” of blacks and Latinos to being white. If there were, the outrage would be universal (even, one presumes, among racists).

Where is the outrage over the lie that lesbians and gay men have chosen to be queer and thus can just as easily and readily choose not to be so? Or should do so?
Can we have a true celebration of something called “Pride” if a percentage of our own queer demographic continues to want to “cure” itself? What of all those kids growing up lesbian and gay who are being sent the same message kids of my own generation were sent–that being queer is anomalous and that anomalies are wrong? Will they end up in psych wards because their parents were repeatedly told their child could be “fixed” or end up in psych wards because the pressure to be “normal” was just too great and they attempted suicide, because many of us did that as well?

Pride is about learning to accept ourselves for who we are–queer. For some of us that journey was completed years ago. For others still in the closet or still trying to “cure” themselves, the homophobic message that we are not fully realized people if we are queer continues to haunt. Every week another politician or public figure is caught in a queer scandal. Why? Because so many of us don’t accept ourselves or each other if we are not straight.

“Pride” is a double-edged sword. We can have our celebrations, but we also must recognize that the work begun at Stonewall is far from over. With Pride comes responsibility–the responsibility to continue to fight these damaging misrepresentations of who we are as we once fought the DSM pathologizing of our love for each other. Forty-one years after Stonewall, we are still being denied not just our civil rights and equal standing in society, but we are still being told we can–and should–choose to be something other than who we are.

Celebrate Pride–but keep on fighting, because the battle for our full personhood has yet to be won.—VAB
 
1. www.psychiatryonline.com/DSMPDF/DSM-II_Homosexuality
2. http://www.narth.com/index.html
3. http://www.narth.com/index.html