On Fred Phelps and Projective Identification

I'm not entirely sure the first time I heard of Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church. For a group of about 40 people, it has had an oversized impact on the media and our perceptions of anti-gay hostilities in the United States.

The damage that those 40 people have done is immense. Their pickets has caused immeasurable pain to countless families. The Phelps clan's vitriolic creed of alienation, destruction, and hate will impact our world for years to come.

Phelps died yesterday. Many have celebrated that his presence has been removed from this world. I'm not entirely unsympathetic for those expressing a great deal of hatred toward him as a result of the pain he has brought into this world.

I also worry a great deal.

• I worry about how difficult it is to rise above our wrathful and vengeful desires. 
• I worry what it says about us when we direct the same evil Phelps directed toward us toward him. 
• I worry that we are no better than Phelps: we wish harm and destruction upon those we do not like. 
• I worry about the ways in which we have become the projective identification of Fred Phelps.
• I worry about the ways in which Fred Phelps has become a projective identification of us.

I also remember the funeral of Matthew Shepard. I remember the power of that small group of people who found another way. A group of concerned caring people gathered around the protestors from Westboro Church dressed in angel costumes. The angels turned their back to the protestors and with wings soaring up toward the sky, stood with silent power repelling the hatful projections of Westboro Church. They shielded those who came to mourn.

It's time those angels turn around and face Fred Phelps. We need to look silently toward him and see ourselves. We need to see our anger. We need to see our hatred. We need to see our own destructive potential.

We need to look at Phelps and find another way.

We need to change.

Dear Young Therapist: Consider Your De Rigueur Requirements | The Post-Doctoral Tie Incident

image credit: Nicholas Ruiz. Bow Tie #10. Assembled November 2011.
 Acetaminophen pills, multiple adhesives, plastic knife. Forest Hills, Queens, New York.

The man interviewing me for a postdoctoral fellowship unwrapped the aluminum foil encasing his dry turkey sandwich and proceeded to stuff it into his mouth.

"Do you mind if I eat? Not that you really have a choice. I'm doing the interview and have the power in this situation."

He continued to masticate and fill his office up with the seasonally incongruent smell of Thanksgiving. This was going to be a fun filled interview.

"I'd like to ask you why you aren't wearing a tie today for your interview. Before you answer, I want you to know that as a psychologist I think everything has a meaning. I hope you have thought about the meaning of why you didn't wear a tie. If you haven't, then you aren't what we are looking for in a post-doctoral fellow. We'll end the interview here and I'll wish you good day."

I had a variety of inside-thoughts that I considered sharing. They included:

• Asshole. 
• Drop dead. 
• Who the hell do you think you are? I just had fucking brain surgery, a post-operative infection, and joint damage from an adverse reaction to the antibiotics that treated my infection. 
• Your turkey sandwich is making me want to throw up. 
• I'm scared because I can't find a job. 
• Do you know who the fuck I am? 
• Am I going to fail as a psychologist?

I took a middle course and smiled politely. I noticed the air flowing in and out of my nose. I watched as my agitated thoughts floated like clouds in the wind from the center of my awareness, to the edges of my mind, and then off into places where I can no longer notice them.

Sign, Click, and Feel Good

When is the last time you watched a documentary and were inspired to make a meaningful lasting change? After watching Bowling for Columbine did you sell your guns, call your senators demanding for gun control measures, and write a check to support a local agency that serves at-risk teens? After watching Food Inc. did you start your own garden, shop from local farmers, and eschew any form of pre-packaged food made by an agri-business? 

If you made changes, were any of them changes that you sustained?

Probably not.

I recently watched and fell in love with the luscious and beautiful film Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. It didn't make me write a check to support Tsunami victims. It didn't make me board a plane for Japan to help survivors heal and rebuild their lives. It didn't inspire me to take any meaningful action that an outsider can observe, measure, and document.

Documentaries are an art form that stimulate us to have an emotional response about the human experience. They document history and teach us about it. They don't stimulate us--at least very many of us--to do anything. They stimulate us to feel something. When done well, the art form of a documentary exposes us to a new part of the human experience. In revealing something new about the world, we reveal something new within ourselves. 

I love documentaries as an art form. I love exposing myself to new parts of the human experience. I love discovering new parts of my own experience that were opened and exposed by my interaction with the documentary. 

I don't, however, confuse this with action, behavior change, or social change.

When and End to Hate Isn't an End: Boy Scouts

This Monday the Boy Scouts of America released a press statement that fired up the Internet. One would have thought gay men everywhere where pouring into streets to celebrate the end of homonegativity--or perhaps climbing up to the mountain tops to shout "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

I'm keeping my hiking boots off. I don't see any need to rush to a mountain top just yet.

Let's look at what the Scouts actually had to say for themselves. As with most things, the devil is in the details. Read closely.

"Currently, the BSA is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation. This would mean there would no longer be any national policy regarding sexual orientation, and chartered organizations that oversee and deliver Scouting would accept membership and select leaders consistent with each organization's mission, principles, or religious beliefs. BSA members and parents would be able to choose a local unit that best meets the needs of their families."

What does this really mean? It means that if the Boy Scouts make this change, troops that are in areas that are already supportive of gay youth will continue to be supportive of gay youth. Young gay men can be scouts and adult gay men can be scout leaders. Great. Fantastic. Progress. 

The fine print also means that troops that are in areas that don't support gay youth will continue to be unsupportive of gay youth. In fact, 70% of Scout troops are chartered by religious organizations. Who honestly thinks that those religious groups that busy themselves with pray-away-the-gay charlatan therapy will suddenly start accepting gay youth into the scouts? 

Come on. Raise your hand if you think this will happen. 

Anyone?

I didn't think so.

Holiday Greetings: What if Jesus was Gay?

"What if Jesus was gay? Would you still be afraid? Would you torture and tease? Would you open your mind? Would you make him cry? Would you beat him the alley? Would you tell him to burn and rot?"

This little gem of a song, by Bryan McPherson, was recorded at Club Passim in Cambridge around the time same-sex marriage became legal in the Commonwealth on May 17, 2004. It's worth a listen this holiday season.

In listening to Bryan's song, I can't help but to think about how so many people make the conscious effort to bring hate and sorrow into the world. The choice of how are you are in this world is totally up to you.

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. 

-- Viktor Frankl

Choose wisely.

Happy Holidays.

The Seven Blunders of Man

I recently followed a link on Twitter to a blog called Lists of Note. This was a list worth repeating.

Shortly before his assassination, Mohandas Gandhi gave his grandson Arun Gandhi a piece of paper with a list of seven blunders that human society commits. Gandhi saw this list as the source of violence in the world.

What do you think? More importantly, how might things change if you made a commitment to working toward these things?

• Wealth without work
• Pleasure without conscience
• Knowledge without character
• Commerce without morality
• Science without humanity
• Worship without sacrifice
• Politics without principles

Shit Homophobic People Say

Sometimes people say the darnedest things. Here are a few stellar examples. How does any of this make anyone feel good, or elevate anyone to be more, or  move our society forward toward a place of peace, compassion, and justice?

Really now. People say the darnedest things.

On Honor Killings, veracity of facts, and people in glass houses

So this evening I came across the following tweet:

stacyhyatt Stacy Hyatt 

3000 Women Have Been Killed LAST YEAR, in Great Britain Alone, as #Muslim.Honor Killings : youtu.be/vOqAVTZY1Ok #Sharia #Islam

39 minutes ago Favorite Retweet Reply

Honor kills are a horrible. I have no room in  my life for violence against women (or men) in any form. I've sat in my office with Muslim women who escaped terrible violence (or are enduring terrible violence) as well as with Muslim women who have never known violence.

My attention, of course, was drawn to the exaggerated spewing of hate from the 700 Club that you can find in the link shared by Stacy Hyatt. The xenophobic-baiting gets me every time.

I did a little fact checking. Interestingly, the Guardian reports that the murder rate in England and Wales was 619 in 2010. Seems like someone has their facts wrong. I listened to the 700 Club clip--what was actually reported is that there were 3,000 honor attacks in Britain. Honor attacks are not quite murder, though both are pretty horrible things. I dug a little deeper and discovered that the actual number of honor attacks, as reported by the BBC, is 2,823.

Okay. So they aren't murders, they are attacks. There aren't 3,000 of them, there are 2,823. Some of you might say I'm quibbling about details. I think accuracy matters. Careful attention to details like this helps me judge whether or not anything else someone is saying has any veracity.

Why do I care? I care because I see our media covering the extreme and ignorming the mainstream. I'm also tired that 37.8 percent of our population who voted in the 2010 election speak for the other 62.2 percent (this doesn't really belong here, but I'm annoyed about it and just had to say it).

Back to our regularly scheduled program.

From all reports, violence against women in Muslim countries is pretty horrific. However not every Muslim women is abused. Those interested in domestic violence in Muslim countries might check out the website Women's Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality.

This really isn't the point. It's not about who is experiencing violence and who is not. It isn't about what kind of violence is worse. What really got my goat about this whole kerfuffle was two fold: inaccurate information being shared and an emphasis on 2,823 dramatic crimes with no attention paid to the millions of other women (in the United States and the world, many of whom are not Muslim) who suffer violence.

Our own country has abysmal statistics about violence against women. Before the folks from the 700 Club and the Stacy Hyatts of the world run to the street corners casing aspersions against the entire Muslim civilization, they need to look inside their own house.

People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Let's look at our glass house, also known as the statistics about domestic violence in the United States. Click here for the full report

• On average more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States. 
• In 2005 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner.
• In 2008, the Centers for Disease Control and prevention published data collected in 2005 that finds that women experience two million injuries from intimate partner violence each year. 
• There were 248,300 rapes/sexual assaults in the United States in 2007, more than 500 per day, up from 190,600 in 2005. 

None of this is okay. We all need to own the violence perpetrated in our communities. We all need to be part of the solution to this violence.

UPDATE: January 14, 2012

Someone on Twitter, Abdul-Azim Ahmed, sent me this reference to crime statistics in the United Kingdom. To put the honor attacks in perspective in terms the general crime rate, click here. 

It's Time: Marriage Matters (and so does equality)

The road to equality is long and its obstacles can seem insurmountable. Not today. "It's time", 1,225,000 views and counting....

From GetUP! Action for Australia

Unhate now, Dr. Ablow

Celebrity psychiatrist and Fox News commentator Keith Ablow apparently has a problem with spreading a pro-compassion message. He has himself all stirred up by a recent ad campaign from Benetton.

Through their UnHate Foundation, Benetton is asking us all to "stop hating, if you [are] hating. Unhate is a message that invites us to consider that hate and love are not as far away from each other as we think. Actually, the two opposing sentiments are often in a delicate and unstable balance. Our campaign promotes a shift in the balance: don't hate. Unhate."

Let's look at the campaign.

In what seems to be a bit of a gay panic, Ablow writes "the only psychological interpretation of such ads that makes sense to me as a psychiatrist is that the corporate leaders at Benetton literally believe that homosexual sex between world leaders--or at least homosexuality as an orientation--would lead to world peace."

You watched the video, right? There were some same sex kisses going on--the one that tickled me most were the two women lovers, dressed in a way suggesting they were Muslim, stealing an intimate moment to kiss. Beautiful. Transformative. A message that inspires me to be more than I am.

Where do you suppose Ablow is coming from in his critique? Let's read more.

"They have tipped their collective hands as a company and indicted marital fidelity, faith and heterosexuality, labeling them the real sources of hatred and suffering around the globe. In the collective mind of Benetton, if religious leaders and political figures would just have sex with one another all would be well.

Ablow has really gone off the reservation here. There is a lot in his argument that is just poppycock. Men kissing, in and of itself, is not homoerotic. Men kiss all the time. Women do, too. I'll be returning home for the holidays soon: I'll be giving my father a kiss. There isn't a speck of homoerotic interest there. When I am reunited with close friends--male or female--I'll give them a kiss. I won't be disrobing and bedding them on the spot. A kiss isn't always about sex. A kiss, often times, is about love. It is about compassion. It is about caring for a friend so much that you wish to enter their space and touch lips to  lips (or lips to cheek) and share an intimate moment of the beauty that is human connection.

I'm not exactly sure where Ablow is getting into the motif that marital fidelity, heterosexuality, and faith are the sources of hate. Do you see this in the video? The images of world leaders kissing are shocking, yes, but do you see these images the same away as the celebrity psychiatrist does?

I don't. I see Ablow offering up a hateful spectacle he puts out in the world veiled under the guise of psychiatry. I see Ablow pandering his unexamined viewpoints to the world. I also see Ablow engaging in an awful lot of cognitive distortions. Check out this list and see if you can name the distorted styles of thought employed in the Fox opinion piece.

In his gay panic, Ablow is busy seeing homoerotic imagery hiding in every dark corner, leaping out at him from every closet door, and destroying the universe. I'm no sure he really bothered to investigate the campaign, explore his own reactions to the imagery used, and reflect upon how his responses reflect pieces of his world view and pieces of his own internalized system of homonegativty and heteronormativity.

I have this to say: Get a grip, Ablow. Get a grip. This spectacle of small minded hate is an embarrassment to your profession. You are on the wrong side of what humanity is about. You are peddling fear, hate, and small mindedness. You encourage us to be less than what we can be.

You forget, Dr. Ablow, that connection, love, and compassion, transforms that which what we are into a thing of beauty and peace.

Ablow closes his Fox news celebrity psychiatry opinion with this: "If you are heterosexual, if you are a leader who believes your position demands decorum, if you are a person of substance who believes you should be valued for your mind, not just your sexuality, if you think that countries and religion deserve respect, not ridicule, you were attacked today by Benetton. You felt it. And you shouldn't be talked out of your outrage."

Ablow has a larger message. It is rooted in his world view. He uses his platform as a celebrity psychiatrist to push his personal agenda--an agenda that is apart from his profession of psychiatry--and apart from the larger group of healing professionals around this country.

It seems that this celebrity psychiatrist is saying here that gay and lesbian people do not deserve respect or decorum. Do you hear that in his words? Do you hear how in his words he robs people--all people--of the transformative power of compassion? Do you hear how in Ablow's words he creates a world of us versus them? Do you see how he treats those he considers "other"?

I hear it in his words. Those words don't belong in the field of psychiatry. They don't belong in the field of psychology, either. How must it feel to sit in the office with Ablow, expose your inner world--your fears of being different or unloved--and have him respond with a system that further turns you into the category of the other.

Shame on him.

I'm reminded tonight of the words of a psychologist who deeply influenced my work. In a letter to her patients shortly before her death, Irene Stiver wrote:

"It has become even clearer to me that love is what it's all about. Not only at this time, but throughout our relationship, I have felt your love and deep caring for me. In turn, I hope that you feel my love for you. My hope is that you will hold onto this love and build on it in your life. Thank you for the privilege of being part of your life." 

Do you see outrage here, or do you see love? 

Choose love.