What the hell?
You know, maybe I should be delighted by Bush's new "health care reform." Domestic partner benefits are already considered taxable income. Maybe I should be thinking, "Finally. Straight people are getting a taste of their own medicine." Maybe I should, but I can't. In part because wishing misfortune on others just isn't me. In part because I'd be willing to bet domestic partner benefits will still be exempt from the tax credit.
When Bush's proposal was described to me yesterday, my jaw hit the floor. This is seriously the best Bush can come up with? What does taxing insurance premiums have to do with doing something about lowering medical costs? What does it do for the poor who aren't paying a whole lot in taxes to begin with; who don't have medical coverage and aren't getting the current tax benefit in the first place? Am I the only one who sees Bush's ludicrous "health care reform" as a boon to insurance companies? According to The Washington Post:
Advocates said the proposals would hold down health-care costs by motivating people to seek plans that cost $15,000 or less, and would help put basic insurance within reach of about 5 million of the uninsured (Lee, 2007).
This makes me so angry I'm having a hard time being coherent. Shopping for cheaper health plans doesn't mean getting a better deal. It means doing without. What they are really saying is people should be looking at less comprehensive health plans, opting for the newest offerings for the "price conscious consumer" (read unable to afford anything else): catastrophic medical insurance. Catastrophic medical insurance basically means paying for your basic medical costs out of pocket because the deductibles are so high they're hard to hit. Translation: people shouldn't be spending so much time at the doctor's office and if they have to pay for it out of their own pocket maybe they'll think twice about going.
Yeah. That's going to help the uninsured. If they can't afford medical insurance, they sure as hell aren't going to be able to pay for medical care out of pocket. Or you'll end up like my sister and her self-employed husband who have to budget and schedule medical treatment for their children, including one son's hernia surgery, because even hernia surgery doesn't meet the deductible requirements for their catastrophic medical insurance, the only thing they can afford.
Unless of course you're making enough money that affording insurance isn't a big deal, or your healthy enough that it's easy to come by. Bush's plan will make sure that the only people who have good health coverage are the ones who don't need it. Insurance companies will finally no longer have to pay out all that money for those pesky sick people.
One of my professors, who also has a private practice, made the observation in class yesterday, "I'm not getting paid anymore than I was six years ago. I'm not the reason heath costs are going up."
A walk down memory lane.
People often talk about when it was they first realized they were gay. I have explained elsewhere that I didn't figure it out until I was around 20. That I couldn't put a name to it doesn't mean there were not experiences prior to that time that would have tipped off most any other individual who was in possession of something even resembling a clue.
Of course, hindsight being 20/20, one can look back on one's life and say, "Man you were dense." My earliest "gay memory" would be around the age of ten, maybe eleven. My dad and I are both fans of science fiction movies, so he had taken me to see 1978's latest addition to the genre: a disaster of a movie called "Starcrash." It's only thanks to a friend and IMDB that I even have a name to put with the train wreck. All I could remember about it was that Christopher Plumber played in it; something, I am sure, he wishes I would forget.
The double feature of this incredibly awful movie—yes, I'm dating myself. Did I mention we were not at a drive in? Anyway, the double feature of this incredibly awful movie was another incredibly awful movie: "National Lampoon's Animal House." Now what possessed my father to stick around and watch the first few minutes of "Animal House" with a ten year old I've never bothered to ask. Not sure that I really care.
Early in the movie, we meet one of the main characters with a towel around his waist. In the course of the scene he turns his back to us and drops said towel and proceeds to get dressed. I still vividly remember how the sight of that bare male tush grabbed the attention of a ten year old kid sitting toward the back of the theater. My dad got a up a few moments later and I was disappointed because I was hoping I would see it again.
The name that goes with the bare bum is Tim Matheson. I looked over his filmography and didn't see anything else that I might have remembered him in. He seems to have done a lot on television, but I don't watch much TV. So, for old time's sake, here they are: the buns that launched a thousand fantasies...or something like that.
Either the version shown in theaters in 1978 was slightly different from the DVD release or my attention was absolutely riveted. I did not remember there being anyone else in the room with Mr. Matheson.
Sad but true.
Another example of a double bind is a teacher who urges his students to participate in class but gets impatient if one of them actually interrupts with a question or comment. Then a baffling thing happens. For some strange reason that scientists have yet to decipher, students tend not to speak up in classes in which their comments are disparaged. When the professor finally does get around to asking for questions and no one responds, he gets angry. ("Students are so passive!") If any of the students have the temerity to comment on the professor's lack of receptivity, he'll probably get even angrier. Thus the students will be punished for accurately perceiving that the teacher really wants only his own ideas to be heard and admired. (This example is, of course, purely hypothetical.) (Nichols, 2007, p. 14)
I actually got a good laugh out of the last line of this paragraph in one of my text books for this semester. I had a professor exactly like that last semester. No one bothered to point out the contradiction in her request for student feedback and her behavior upon the receipt of said feedback. After the first few times she ignored raised hands until she had finished her spiel, we just gave up. We're not talking about finishing a sentence here. Sometimes 10 - 15 minutes would pass before she would ask for questions. She'd have moved on to a completely different topic and there didn't seem to be much point. Then there were the times where she was flat out wrong: trying to suggest that the superconscious is like the super-ego, for example. Not. When we told her she was incorrect, she couldn't even admit to having made a booboo, much less that she was wrong.
Fate has conspired against me, and I have her again this semester. By the time I got registered, hers was the only section left. There are twelve of us in the class. The other sections are packed. Can't imagine why. The other professors have suggested that people could transfer in to our section so that they could enjoy a smaller class size.
Call me crazy, but I just don't see that happening.
There are no words.
This is infuriating:
Clergy in New Jersey cannot be required to unite same-sex couples in civil unions, the state attorney general said in a decision that quieted the fears of some religious groups opposed to same-sex ceremonies.
Attorney General Stuart Rabner's legal opinion, sent Thursday to the state registrar of vital statistics, came less than a month after the state became the third to approve civil unions for same-sex couples.
Patrick R. Brannigan, executive director of the New Jersey Catholic Conference, which lobbies on behalf of the state's Roman Catholic dioceses, said Thursday he had feared Catholic clergy could also be accused of hate crimes when they denied requests to perform civil union ceremonies.
Rabner's opinion puts that to rest, he said. "It recognizes our right to practice our faith," Brannigan said.
Forcing clergy to perform civil unions in contradiction of their beliefs has never, never, ever been on the table. Not once. Not for a moment. It has always been about our government treating us like full citizens of our nation. Bullshit like this is nothing more than deliberate pandering to fear and bogeymen by individuals who claim charity and the pure love of Christ hold sway over their hearts and minds.
Let me reiterate once again: most gay and lesbian folk don't give a rats ass about your precious religion. We want no part of it. Those who do continue with their faith in a religion that does not welcome them or respect them as whole children of their god most likely wouldn't do anything that would cause a schism in their church.
Remember those homicidal urges I was talking about? Someone needs a good beating.
I prefer to call it sublimation.
Over the last couple of years I have noticed that my anger tends to flare up at the slightest provocation. Most often I am simply bugged by some frustrating event, such as an anomalous bug in code that is resisting discovery and extinction, or some moron on the road who has obviously disengaged brain and/or backbone before turning the ignition key, or getting caught in a tangled web of university and health insurance bureaucracy that prevented me from getting registered for this semester in a timely fashion. None of these events, however, seems threatening or insulting enough warrant the homicidal urges that seem more than willing to jump to the fore at such moments.
Sometimes I think it's just the result of my being—shall we say—emotionally constipated most of my life. Now that my emotions aren't so buried anymore, I sometimes feel like a teenager (toddler?) trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Still, one of my clients that I am seeing as part of my practicum is an adolescent boy who came in for anger management problems. We've spent time talking about anger being a secondary emotion, that there is usually something going on underneath that we are using anger to protect ourselves from. Most often what is going on is some emotion that makes us feel weak, frightened and/or powerless and anger literally is our own little Incredible Hulk that gives us the fortitude to overcome, or is at least enough of a distraction that we can remain in denial. We've also talked about how whatever set us off is sometimes just the grain of rice that tips the scale and the anger we feel is about other stuff that's out of sight, if not out of mind.
I hardly think it fair that I not be willing to submit to the same self examination that I ask of my clients. In fact, I tend to think that's what makes a good therapist: someone who is as willing to deal with his own issues as he expects his clients to be. I recently spent a fair amount of time pondering the source of these flare ups (while soaking in a hot bath). No matter where I start, I always seem to end up at religion.
Every frustration I have with respect to my current life leads, directly or indirectly, back to religion: social norms that still make it unacceptable to hold my sweetheart's hand in public, efforts to marginalize gay and lesbian Americans into second class citizens, my family's ability to accept my partner so long as we don't appear to be a couple, my frustration with the virtual impossibility of being a father to my children who only visit. I often say that I harbor no ill will toward the church (in my case the LDS church) and by extension to religion in general, but I begin to question now if that is truly the case. It seems the reality is that I'm pretty pissed off.
I still don't believe that outright hostility is the proper expression of these feelings I have. I have not seen one single instance where that has proven an adaptive response. On the contrary, in every case I can think of it has been downright dysfunctional, if for no other reason that the only person who would be harmed is me. I do also make an attempt at being a fair minded individual. I realize that the practice of religion is as diverse as the practice of culture. It is no more useful to stereotype someone as "a Mormon" than it is to stereotype someone as "black."
I end up in conversations with myself about possible explanations for behavior and policy (okay, fine, belief) that I witness. Since the Mormon tradition is the one with which I am most familiar, it is almost always the topic of discussion.
"How can someone claim to have direct access to the mind of God and be so completely wrong on this subject?"
"Maybe it isn't the right time."
"The right time? There has to be a right time to do the right thing?"
"Look at what the Episcopal church is going through. Church leaders are going to avoid that situation like the plague. You know if Gordon came out tomorrow and declared he had received a revelation about the admission of homosexuality the church would be in an uproar. There are too many people who couldn't handle it and would leave."
"So? Let 'em go. Who needs them?"
"I don't know. Maybe they're concerned about splinter groups forming. My guess is it would be the most staunchly radical folk that would leave. Look at all the grief Colorado City has caused over the years. The last thing the church leaders would want to cope with is another fundamentalist splinter group."
"I'm not conviced. Excommuincate them. Disavow any association. Just like they've been doing for decades with polygamists."
"I guess. Maybe they think it's better to keep them in the fold where they can keep an eye on them and have some measure of control."
"So the bigots are managed at the expense of gays and lesbians who want nothing more than to be accepted in their families and religion of origin. Sounds a bit like casting your pearls before swine to me."
"Well, maybe they feel some responsibility. The church wasn't all that gay friendly from about the late 50s until about 2000 or so. There is some evidence they were downright hostile. Maybe they're trying to undo what they've done."
"So what you're saying is they have their balls caught in a vice of their own making and I'm supposed to feel sorry for them."
"Ummm...."
"Yeah. Not gonna happen."