One recalls that young people have killed themselve because they perceived they had been bullied, excluded socially, mistreated by a teacher, or because some Imam told them they would receive 72 virgins if they did. Unfortunately, they not infrequently take others with them.We see the dangerous ideologies that support transgenderism as normal to the point where someone clearly with a mental illness chooses to sacrifice their life to further the cause. The online post by the boy is clear evidence that that is what happened here.
Maybe. I just don’t recall.I believe it was a Michael O’Brien. Strangers and Sojourners maybe?
What you are telling us there is a direct relationship between acceptance of homosexuality and the mental health of these confused children, and yet the suicide rate does not fall.The statistics you quote do not demonstrate that suicide now among LGBT folks is greater now than what it was in the past when they were less accepted.
LGBT kids are still bullied and many people still do not accept them as they are, especially in certain parts of the country. You say that homosexuality is “embraced by Americans in general”. So are you saying that most of the people here in CAF who are not very accepting are not part of what you call “Americans in general”? In Leelah’s case, her parents were certainly not very accepting.What you are telling us there is a direct relationship between acceptance of homosexuality and the mental health of these confused children, and yet the suicide rate does not fall.
The reality is homosexuality is taught as normal in public schools and embraced by Americans in general there is no reason to think homosexual identifying children are bullied anymore than anyone else. Actually the statistics support this with 75 percent of all college students say they support gay marriage. there is no reason to believe this number would be any lower, in fact it would be higher given children have a tendency to gravitate from liberal to conservative ideology as they get older.
Therefore, there is overwhelming support of homosexuality in America’s public schools, which is much different from 30 years ago. It has gotten so widespread that a Catholic nun spoke about the evils of homosexuality in a Catholic School and the students were outraged.
There is no support for the claim that bullying of homosexuals is the cause of depression or suicide. Case in point, the young man who is the subject of this thread never mentioned bullying and in fact said his friends supported him, as one would expect to see in all public schools in the US.
I agree. This was mental illness. Adolescence is a such a volatile, hormonally charged time for everybody, it is almost impossible to make clear-headed decisions regarding yourself and your place in the world; imagine when the confusion is taken to this extreme (and fed by unsound ideology). My guess is he was ill-served on all sides, family and friends. But honestly, living like this and not being depressed or confused seems almost impossible to me, even with all the positive support in the world. I believe instability is inherent in the condition, in addition to the problems that come from outside rejection.We see the dangerous ideologies that support transgenderism as normal to the point where someone clearly with a mental illness chooses to sacrifice their life to further the cause. The online post by the boy is clear evidence that that is what happened here.
You and smfg would blame America’s homophobic culture but the evidence shows overwhelming support of teenagers and teachers of homosexuality in general and homosexual marriage.LGBT kids are still bullied and many people still do not accept them as they are, especially in certain parts of the country. You say that homosexuality is “embraced by Americans in general”. So are you saying that most of the people here in CAF who are not very accepting are not part of what you call “Americans in general”? In Leelah’s case, her parents were certainly not very accepting.
You and smfg would blame America’s homophobic culture but the evidence shows overwhelming support of teenagers and teachers of homosexuality in general and homosexual marriage.
Therefore, it is incorrect to state that America has a “homophobic” culture, especially in public schools, where bullying happens.
stopbullyingnow.com/lgbt-youth/There is no question that Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) youth in the United States are more likely to be mistreated at school than their Straight peers. Research confirms this. For one very thorough review of this research, see the special issue of School Psychology Review, Vol. 37, #2. It is well documented that, because of this abuse, LGBT youth are more likely to drop out of school, to see school as a threatening place, and to attempt many forms of self-harm. Some have claimed that the difficulties that LGBT youth face do not result from others’ mistreatment of them, but from something inherently unhealthy about being Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, or Transgendered. However, a recent research study reported in Pediatrics : The Social Environment and Suicide Attempts in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth, by Mark L. Hatzenbuehler, PhD, makes it clear that this is not the case. Dr. Hatzenbuehler found that suicide rates of LGB youth were higher in communities and schools which did not provide them a supportive, inclusive environment and lower in communities and schools that did provide a supportive environment.
It isn’t because high schools are “homophobic”, they are more accepting than the general population. The young man that is the subject of this thread is a perfect example.
A child takes their own life and your response is “he could have moved out and chosen to live his deviant lifestyle”?What a waste of a life. From the posted suicide note it sure seems this poor boy had some serious problems and the planned suicide was the worst kind of plea for attention. His friend isn’t helping by blaming the parents. The boy was 17, he could have moved out and chosen to live his deviant lifestyle very soon.
There are two extreme solutions to these problems. Bullying people is wrong, (that should end) but we shouldn’t be treating these mental disorders like they are good things.It isn’t because high schools are “homophobic”, they are more accepting than the general population. The young man that is the subject of this thread is a perfect example.
What this does infer is that those with sexual identity issues feel threatened by the mere idea that people don’t accept them, whether it is based in reality or not, or that there is a small minority of students that are bullying gay teens.
In the latter case, since all wrong can never be eliminated it would appear there is little one could do.
However, if we allowed God back in our schools children would learn not to make fun of others, in spite of the poor decisions they make. This is the Christian way.
As it is the godless way is the complete opposite yet ironically it is the flip side of embracing homosexuality, so it can never be rooted out unfortunately. In other words indoctrinating children with homosexuality also indoctrinates them with moral relativism, where your right and my right are not the same. I am sure you are quite familiar with this concept.
A better statistic to know would be what the suicide rate is for transgender folk who go through with surgery as compared to those transgender folk who do not go through with surgery.There are two extreme solutions to these problems. Bullying people is wrong, (that should end) but we shouldn’t be treating these mental disorders like they are good things.
lifesitenews.com/news/former-johns-hopkins-head-psychiatrist-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solutio
In this article it says people who go through surgery to change their sex have higher rates of suicide than the general population. It doesn’t look like surgery and other stuff is the solution.
"McHugh says that Johns Hopkins “launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not.”A better statistic to know would be what the suicide rate is for transgender folk who go through with surgery as compared to those transgender folk who do not go through with surgery.
"McHugh says that Johns Hopkins “launched a study in the 1970s comparing the outcomes of transgendered people who had the surgery with the outcomes of those who did not.”
"Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as ‘satisfied’ by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery,” he explained.
Thus, says McHugh, “we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a ‘satisfied’ but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.”
McHugh, who is also known as a prominent Catholic who served on President George W. Bush’s Presidential Council on Bioethics, has written about the Johns Hopkins study before. In a 2004 piece for First Things, he concluded that medical and psychological professionals “have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.”"
From the article
McHugh, an eightysomething self-described “orthodox” Catholic, who shut down Johns Hopkins’ pioneering Gender Identity Clinic in the 1970s after a single study suggested that some trans people continued to suffer from adjustment challenges after surgery, has a storied history of using his credentialed respectability to peddle the worst, most discredited, myths about gay and transgender people. He has called homosexuality an “erroneous desire,” filed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court in opposition to marriage equality, casts transgender women as “caricatures” of real women, and has argued that the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal is the result not of covering up pedophiles but of insufficiently rooting out gay people. In short, he is a dinosaur from an era when psychiatrists relied on narrow, clinical assessments to assert broad generalizations about a whole class of people based on studying the small number who came to them because they already had mental health problems.
Still, it’s more effective to debunk his claims than to censor the op-ed. Genetics researcher Mari Brighe has done a great job of this over at TransAdvocate, so I’ll simply summarize her capable take-down: The single study McHugh cites for opposing gender-confirming surgery is nearly 40 years old, and he misreads its conclusions, failing to note that its authors explicitly state that “no inferences can be drawn as to the effectiveness of sex reassignment” in improving the lives of transgender people; McHugh ignores a growing (though still small) body of evidence suggesting that medical transition has a positive impact on the wellbeing of transgender people; and he ignores the most obvious reality that would explain why post-operative transgender folks might still struggle with mental health challenges: the ongoing prejudice, stigma, discrimination, economic instability, and violence they face as transgender people. None of this is helped by McHugh’s careless and groundless generalizations.
slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/06/16/the_wall_street_journal_displays_shocking_ignorance_about_lgbtq_issues.htmlMore research is needed. But anyone interested in the truth about transgender experiences should read Brighe’s response, along with other transgender voices like this one in the New York Times, and not rely on the biased assertions of someone clearly incapable of even-handedly processing new information.
She wrote about it herself on her Tumblr, how her “therapy” was being shamed into thinking she was supporting a grave evil by being a woman. That’s pretty much the definition of anti-trans conversion therapy – trying to force someone to “convert” to become male, which is impossible for a woman to do.-They could have been “counselors,” or they could have been actual counselors; and there is no reference in the article or the girl’s note about conversion therapy
Her parents relented a slight amount towards the end of her life. She was completely socially isolated for a long period of time.-The girl obviously wasn’t house-locked given that the street artist claims to have known her since this last summer and saw her enough to form a friendship
No, but using it in order to keep her from having any outside conduct of any kind in vindictiveness over her gender is abuse.-Taking away phones, internet usage (i.e. social media), and grounding isn’t actually abuse.
I think it is clear that they abused her, especially after her mom tried to play off the suicide as an accident on Facebook.-The only place I saw any reference to any of this was in the linked note in the article. Given her state of mind and her clear dislike for her parents, I don’t think it alone is enough to conclude that they abused her
Do you really think this is an appropriate analogy?If an individual, even a minor child as in this case, decided that he identified as a paraplegic, should the Church allow for surgery to make said child a paraplegic if it is required for the person’s mental well being? If the child’s parents refused to consent and the child committed suicide, would they also be “at least partially responsible” for his death?
He was a boy who felt like a girl, his DNA will always make him male, wanting to be something you can never be is not healthy.She wrote about it herself on her Tumblr, how her “therapy” was being shamed into thinking she was supporting a grave evil by being a woman. That’s pretty much the definition of anti-trans conversion therapy – trying to force someone to “convert” to become male, which is impossible for a woman to do.
Her parents relented a slight amount towards the end of her life. She was completely socially isolated for a long period of time.
No, but using it in order to keep her from having any outside conduct of any kind in vindictiveness over her gender is abuse.
I think it is clear that they abused her, especially after her mom tried to play off the suicide as an accident on Facebook.
Are you sure they have allowed surgery for this particular mental disorder? I heard trying to change your sex is considered self mutilationWell, the Church actually allows for the surgery in cases where it is required for the mental wellbeing of the individual. And while She affirms that people cannot change their gender, the Church does not mandate that our gender is infallibly linked to our birth genitalia.
So this is not a clear-cut issue whatsoever, unlike what uber-conservatives try to present it as in the Church. Either way, child abuse (aka conversion therapy) should never be legalized by a state for any minor. The parents and “counselors” involved in this child’s life are ultimately at least partially responsible for her death. You cannot put a child through continuous abuse and expect them to be fine.
Again, we as a society need to change.