“Consensual Conversion Therapy”
For a moment, after this psychiatrist’s question, I just stared at him, horrified, speechless. He was sitting near the back of the crowded room of about 40 adults, all of whom were looking at me, waiting for my response.
To Ban or Not to Ban
To Ban or Not to Ban may be the question for lawmakers, but the underlying issue, at least in my books, remains helping to prevent immeasurable harm while fostering lives lived in honesty and integrity, or perpetuating institutionalized hatred by turning a blind eye for the sake of maintaining a lie.
Book Pitches, or Beyond Gay Politics
“Coming out” demands so much more than telling people I’m gay, and discussing my book’s underlying issues necessitates so much more than repeating the potentially banal pitch of “conversion therapy.”
The Lie of Mental Illness
Psychopharmacology, I’m convinced, is robbing us of our humanity. Agency has been replaced with the prescription pad.
Difference Matters
All people share the same humanity, but we are also not all "the same." We are all different, and our differences must be voiced, and celebrated, seen, and never assimilated.
From Plan A to Plan D: Stop Having Sex
No longer strapping gay people into chairs and shocking them with electricity but merely “helping” them to not have sex may sound like progress, it may no longer sound like conversion therapy, and therein lies the rub. When we talk about conversion therapy we are talking about an ideology, not any one “type” of treatment.
The Writing Life: Lessons Learned Along the Way
Who will sit with me, night after long and lonely night, after I send my book out into the world, then suffer through separation anxiety? So, my book is now published, and I am lonely and alone, childless, staring at the blank page, ready and willing to birth another.
Prune Pockets
When I just can’t deal with life, or my next writing project, there are always prune pockets. Just be forewarned: one is never enough.
From Alberta’s Minister of Health
Believing that therapists won’t practice conversion therapy—that they won’t treat their gay or trans patients in an effort to “change” them—because it’s been deemed ineligible for funding seems to imply that there is a thing or product actually called “conversion therapy” that can be removed from the marketplace, like a prescription drug or a tainted food, and therefore withdrawn from public consumption. It's a lie.
In Response to An Article About Banning "Conversion Therapy"
Read their struggles. Hear their voices. Remember their legacies.
The Problem with Stereotypes
The Wizard of Oz became such a focus in my young life that, years after coming of age, I often joked with friends that I wondered if I was gay because I loved The Wizard of Oz, or if I loved The Wizard of Oz because I was gay.
Sexual Abuse ≠ Gay
It was easy, as a confused teenager, to think that sexual abuse from my childhood had "made me gay." I was raised in the 1970's to believe that Homosexuals Recruited Children. Anita Bryant's voice prevailed.
Waiting for Laws
I'm tired, and I'm mad. I can't stand the waiting. I can't wait for politicians, or committees. Bureaucracy makes me crazy. I can't stand trying to make my point that "conversion therapy" is dangerous, that it causes harm, that it hurts people, that it hurt me.
Gays Cross Borders
“Conversion therapy,” as an umbrella term signifying a vast array of therapies aimed at “curing homosexuality,” was actually created decades ago by, and from within, an anti-gay-rights movement aimed at affirming and endorsing psychiatry’s long-held belief of homosexuality as a mental illness in need of “change.”