Dr. Blackwell's BLOG

A few weeks ago I reported on the case in which a Jacksonville high school was being sued by students and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for refusing to allow the formation of a gay-straight alliance within the school. Thursday, Florida Supreme Court Judge Henry Adams ruled in-favor of the ACLU and the students, forcing the school district to ensure the students’ constitutional right to meet on-campus. Aren’t you glad we taxpayers got to foot the tens of thousands of dollars it cost to bring this case to court? I don’t know about you–but I am sick of my hard-earned tax money going to pay for stupidity, ignorance, and intolerance! We must demand better from all public officials, particularly our school districts which are so strapped for precious resources in this near-depression economy that students and teachers are having to make drastic sacrifices that have major impacts on the quality of education. Having to pay a costly bill defending behavior that is unacceptable is simply that–UNACCEPTABLE!

The California Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments against California’s Proposition 8, which stripped gay and lesbian couples of the right to legally marry through a ballot initiative after the California Supreme Court deemed that unconstitutional. In response, Equality California has released the following public service announcement, which although being criticized for not being “angry enough,” makes a subtle impact depicting images of GLBT persecution throughout history, including a striking image of gay male Holocaust prisoners. Not many know that over 150,000 gay men were killed during the Holocaust through Hitler’s Paragraph 175, which proclaimed gay men as a threat to German society. Hitler also believed gay men were sterile and were therefore, of no use in construction of his “master race.” While we’ve certainly come far, we’re nowhere  near where we need to be…

Two Florida high schools in the Jacksonville-area are about ready to enter serious litigation after their school boards refused to allow students to form Gay-Straight Student Alliances (GSAs). GSAs exist to promote acceptance and tolerance among students and also serve as much-needed resources for gay and lesbian students who are dealing with issues related to their own sexual orientation. The ACLU has rightly brought-forth several lawsuits over the years against school boards for denying students the ability to form GSAs within their schools.

The vast majority of these cases have been won and taxpayers are left paying the costly bill resulting from officials’ ignorance and intolerance. The most recent case was in Okeechobee, FL. The ACLU successfully represented students who were denied their request to form a GSA within their school. The final ruling found schools must provide for the safety and well-being of gay and lesbian students and failure to allow the formation of GSAs is discrimination. That lawsuit cost Okeechobee Schools $327,000. In a time when our schools are struggling to meet the basic needs of students and the economy is in shambles, taxpayers can ill-afford to pay for these costly lawsuits that result from disgusting ignorance, intolerance, and discrimination.

Gay teens are at more risk for suicide than any other class of individual in America. It’s time taxpayers begin to stand-up against stupidity that not only costs quite a bit of money in a time where every penny is precious, but also perpetuates harm to a vulnerable group of people. Educate elected officials about intelligent decision-making and the costs we all have to pay when narrow-minded idiocy is selected over the right policy.

A study released today appearing in the January issue of the research journal Pediatrics adds yet more evidence-based data refuting the use of abstinence-only programs to educate youth about sexual activities. The study found teens who pledge to remain virgins until marriage are just as likely to have premarital sex as those who do not. Perhaps even more alarming, teens who make “virginity pledges” are also significantly less likely to use condoms and other forms of birth control when they do have sex. Many studies have shown the ineffectiveness of these programs while none have supported their efficacy; they are also based completely on a heterosexual model of sexuality.

While gay males remain at highest risk of transmitting and contracting HIV, abstinence-only programs ignore homosexuality and instead base sexual relationships as the ultimate reward of marriage attainment. Since marriage is not possible for most gay couples (and most states now have discriminatory bans in place), homosexual activity is invalidated. This also highlights the moronic conservative ideology of only providing taxpayer funds to abstinence programs. 

This does nothing but lead to more social ills and problems, including increasing already high rates of teen pregnancy, sexually-transmitted infections, and HIV. Instead, sexual education programs should be comprehensive and include education about condom use, birth control, and homosexual activities. Plenty of research does support these programs as effective. Hopefully the intelligent and progressive incoming administration will reverse the federal regulations which mandate sole funding of abstinence programs put into place by the Bush Administration. It’s time for intelligence and reality to take the place of religious-fueled idiocy.

While plenty of epidemiologic data indicate gay youth have the highest suicide risk of any subset of the population, a new research study highlights the significant role parental reaction to their child’s sexual orientation has in encouraging suicide: “…the study showed that teens who experienced negative feedback were more than eight times as likely to have attempted suicide, nearly six times as vulnerable to severe depression and more than three times at risk of drug use. One of the most startling findings was that being forbidden to associate with gay peers was as damaging as being physically beaten or verbally abused by their parents in terms of negative feedback, [social worker Caitlin] Ryan said.”

In the two-part study, Ryan and her colleagues first interviewed 53 families with gay teenagers to identify 106 specific behaviors that could be considered ‘accepting’ or ‘rejecting.’ For example, blaming a youth for being bullied at school, shielding him from other relatives or belittling her appearance for not conforming to social expectations fell into the rejecting category. Next, they surveyed 224 white and Latino gay people between ages 21 and 25 to see which of the behaviors they had experienced growing up. The responses then were matched against the participants’ recent histories of severe depression, suicide attempts, substance abuse and unsafe sexual behavior. While the results might seem intuitive, Ryan said the study, funded by the California Endowment, was the first to establish a link between health problems in gay youths and their home environments.