"I believe I owe the gay community an apology for my study making unproven claims of the efficacy of reparative therapy. I also apologize to any gay person who wasted time and energy undergoing some form of reparative therapy because they believed that I had proven that reparative therapy works with some 'highly motivated' individuals."

- Dr. Robert Spitzer, who organized and began the “Ex Gay” movement.




Dr. Spitzer,

Quite frankly, your apology means little to nothing to the hundreds of thousands of gay people you murdered. The ones who went through shock therapy, a torture device in which young men were strapped to a chair with electric wires attached to their scrotum as pictures of naked men and women passed in front of them. If they reacted in any way that resulted in "homosexual behavior" they were given a shock to their testicles.

Or how about the women who were used as human pin cushions drawing vile after vile of blood putting some in anemic comas?

Or how about the gay people you frightened so severely, that they eventually ended up killing themselves? Because of the fear you instilled in the general populous, gay people were labeled: "mentally ill", or "sex fiends". And who can get a job, or an apartment, or find love when their a known sex criminal?

So your apology sir, means nothing. Your apology needs to be dumped in a river and sunk to the bottom with an anvil tied to it's feet. You're a murderer and should be legally and morally charged as one. And by the way, as your apology drowns in the muck and scum of a filthy pool of distilled water surrounded by old moss and dead plants, do us all a favor:

Tie the anvil to your own feet, and jump in after it.

Sincerely,

Alexandra Billings
(Transgender and happy, in spite of your lies)

Sometimes the interweb is glorious place. I have no idea who this is but one of my good friends posted it on my Facebook page and I’ve watched it now almost 10 times in a row. It’s the last week of school and I really should be studying something interesting, but I simply can’t stop watching this guy.

I can’t find any information on him except that he has a You Tube channel, which is truly hilarious and he’s promised to make a video a day until the end of the world…in Mayan Terms.

I really hope he keeps that promise.

People ask me constantly about Viewpoints and what it is and what it means, and all I have to do now, is point them to this video. It’s almost a step by step instructional, without the annoying Suzanne Sommers commentary.

Every character is defined and means something. There aren’t two people who are the same and yet, everything he’s doing is ALL him. At no time does he pretend he’s someone else. He doesn’t ty and fool us in any way. Viewpoints isn’t about Becoming Another Person (a term I absolutely hate), it’s about releasing what’s already in you. It’s about surrendering completely to what’s happening to you and going forward into the next thing. Much less complicated, and much less bull-shitty.

Watch his Gestures and his Shapes. His hands devour the air. They scratch when he’s Hattie, they beat the floor when he’s Tomei, and when he’s Dench, they command the room…and his neck-towel. The Shapes he makes with his body are uncanny: if there was no sound whatsoever, you could tell simply by the shape of his body who he was. There’s that hilarious Linda Hunt Limp, and that brilliant Patty Duke crunch, and when he goes into Jennifer Hudson, everything happens to him. His entire being is involved.

This is an actor who is taken away to another place. He allows himself to be transported by his dreams and his imagination. He combines a technical skill with dream-like precision and it all combines to separate each and every character he portrays. This is an artist who knows how to find his joy and surrender without having to think and dissect and talk about stuff. He isn’t Acting these women, he IS these women.

And I need to meet him.

Recently, a North Carolina Pastor by the name of Sean Harris got into some trouble when a video surfaced of one of his many sermons on gay people and being gay. In this, most likely the Greatest Hits Section, the Pastor tells his followers to:

"...give them a little punch..."

and that if a boy is:

"...doing the limp wrist, you walk right up to them and Crack that wrist!"

He also tell them that if their daughters start to:

"...act a little too butch, you reel them in. You say Oh no sweetie. Your'e not going to act like that. You'[re going to walk like a girl, talk like a girl, and Smell like a girl..."

The offensiveness is almost to absurd to even discuss, and when you add to the fact that he's talking about children, it crawls deep into a hole I can't even begin to imagine. This man is more likely mentally ill that anything else. I'd say that without any equivocation, except the fact that once he was found out, once this video went viral and the world stood up and took notice, and he was bombarded with e mails from all over the world, he then apologized. Truly mentally ill people don't always know that what they've done provokes responses. They simply act, and then it's over. But this man knows he goofed. He assumed he was speaking solely to the people who obey, trust and believe in him, and what happened was, outside of his cocoon, the world at large got a peak into the dangerous and otherwise insane world of Pastor Harris and his twisted version of morality.

This was unexpected.

And a person who actually suffers from an actual illness would keep on the track they started. They'd simply look at what happened, and then continue to move forward. Mr. Harris however, has been pummeled with judgment.

Watch his apology. He takes responsibility only for getting caught, and nothing else. He denies enticing violence on LGBT kids, when in fact, that was at the heart of his speech.

Maybe what I mean by mentally ill, is in actuality: Mentally Sad.

The people walking out aren't walking out because they're insulted. The people walking out, are walking out to prove a point. They knew what Savage was about, where he stood, and everything he's saying in this lecture, is what he's been saying on national television for the last decade. So they arrived knowing what they were in for. They were simply waiting for the right time to make their televised point. Just sitting through his story, through his text and waiting, coiled and ready, to walk out of the room. Visible and noticed.

And just so we're clear: If we're going to follow the Bible and have it be the only religious book that guides us ethically, morally and spiritually, then we have to get together on exactly what the rules are.

And I mean, exactly.

At the end of this video he asks us to share this with our friends.

So...that's what I'm doing.

Here you go, friends.

As I stood in the middle of the parking lot, I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. Pulsing. Throbbing. I’d never heard anything like it. I was twitching and rubbing my hands together and there was a fear in me that shook me to my core. The sun was white hot, and even though I was bare foot, my feet were sweating and itchy. I was 14 years old, and I was waiting patiently for Paul Baruka, the bulky, be-freckled sworn enemy of mine throughout the sixth grade. In a matter of minutes, more and more people began to gather around me and form a large circle, as if we were getting ready for some sort of ritual. A kind of offering. A sacrifice.

That day, I’d been in the lunch room, along with the 75 other screeching adolescents, sitting at a table with my one pal Carmen, and his sports buddies, eating and laughing and trying my best to do what I thought boys were supposed to do. I could never quite figure out what it was I was actually supposed to be doing. How I was supposed to act. My voice, my walk, my thoughts, my dreams, my love for Judy Garland: nothing I did ever seemed to go very well. I was wrong all the way around, and I could never really figure out how to fix it. How to be right. And admittedly, there was a small corner of me that wept for the kids who’d never been privy to Garland’s “Carnegie Hall” album. They always seemed a bit empty in the eyes for me.

By the age of thirteen, I’d already been slapped, pushed, slammed into walls and lockers, chased, spat on, and called every name from “Fag” to “Freak”. The abuse was strangely normal by now, and when it didn’t happen, on those days when I was left alone, I caught myself constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting for something to happen. I’d hold my breath as I walked down the hall, I’d clench my books to my chest so hard, I’d lose my breath. Befriending Carmen, who was one of the athletes at Jane Addams Jr, High, was the best thing that could have happened to me. Although he couldn’t follow me around every minute of every day, the times when he stuck by me, I was ten feet tall. He was my pal, and the bullies knew it.

And so, as we sat in the small corner of our lunch table, a tall, lanky boy who was all neck and arms, slithered up to me and kneeled down to whisper in my left ear:

“Paul Baruka’s going to kill you today after school.”

And he left.

Paul Baruka was usually in charge of the nightmare that became my Jr. High years, and eventually followed me into High School. Paul was mean looking and had huge fists and a voice that cracked when he spoke. Paul Baruka hated me and he made sure I knew it.

“What did that guy say, Scott?” Carmen said leaning in to me.

“He said Paul Baruka was going to kill me today after school. He said, Kill Me.” I repeated it because I believed it. I believed he was actually going to kill me. “I mean, if he was going to actually kill me, don’t you think he’d do it right now instead of waiting until after school? It sounds so punctual.”

Making Carmen laugh was one of the great joys of my life. And laughter was really the only defense I had. I’d never learned to fight and because my parents divorced when I was five, my father lived in California and my step father was rarely around. My brother thought I should be put away in a Gay camp, and my mother was busy teaching and drinking. Carmen was my only touch with the masculine world and the only guide I had.

He put his hand on my shoulder and said very softly:

“That aint gonna happen, pal.” And he flashed a smile. “I’ll go home with you today and make sure it doesn’t happen.”

But I knew this challenge. It was a gender war. This wasn’t something you avoided or postponed or ignored. This was a battle that I was ordered to show up at, and if I didn’t, it would merely be pushed back to another time. As much as I loved Carmen for his protection and as much as I wanted to run away or escape or make it disappear, or tell an adult, the more I knew none of that would make the slightest bit of difference. It was 1974 and Being a Boy meant Fighting a Boy. That was the rule.

The problem was: I Was Never Really A Boy.

So there I stood, as the crowd gathered, and as the sun got hotter, waiting for Paul Baruka and his freckles.

And finally, Paul emerged, red faced and thick, like a Gladiator who’d been out in the sun too long. I had no idea how this was supposed to go, nor did I know what to do, so I continued to stand and shake as the sun did the mambo on my face.

Paul threw his book in the dirt, and raised his clenched fists in front of his chest.

“Ready, Faggot?”

I wasn’t sure if that was an actual question or if it was one of those snappy Bully quips I was supposed to just take in, so I said nothing and repeated his gesture.

That was the last thing I remembered.

The next thing I knew I was spitting dirt and blood out of the corner of my mouth as I stared at 4 pairs of dirty Keds High Tops. I was lying on the left side of my face, and a tooth was dangling out of my mouth. I don’t know how it happened, but as I lay there, and the crowd dispersed with murmurs of “boring”, and “what a Homo” trailing off in the distance, I suddenly felt a familiar hand touch the small of my back. I turned my head, blinked a few times, and threw the rays of the hot sun, like some strange Hallmark movie, Carmen’s face loomed over my head. He reached behind me, and straightened me up. He then grabbed my books, my sad back pack, and the extra change that apparently flew out of my pocket, and hooked me onto his shoulders as I limped alongside him spitting blood and sand all the way home. We didn’t speak. We didn’t talk about what happened. We didn’t discuss it. Not ever. But from that day on, Carmen never let me walk home alone again.

The violence never stopped. In fact, it got bigger and larger and with heavier objects, and all of it happened in school, in front of teachers. Occasionally an adult would stop me and ask me what happened as I was covered in red paint or was trying to pull semi-cooked marshmallows out of my hair. But telling on Paul Baruka and his gang would only make things worse, and I knew that. At that time bullying was part of growing up.

I realize now, as I realized then, that the love affair I was having was one sided. I didn’t care. When I was with Carmen, I was free. I was protected. I was worthy and smart and pretty and I could do anything and I didn’t have to be afraid of the dragons on the way home. It was my first real love and I took my first real breath.

But there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of my people in the Transgender community who right now are standing in the middle of the parking lot waiting for a Paul Baruka to step in the middle of the circle with clenched fists and filled with rage, and there’s not a Carmen in sight. They’re alone. They’re abandoned and expected to participate in a ritual no one should be born into. They’re there and they’re real and they’re screaming to be heard. And there are people who hate them simply because they hate themselves, and some of them don’t make it and they’d rather die than have to face the center of that circle. It’s still happening, alive, awake and fierce.

And it needs to be stopped.

Friday April 20th is the National Day of Silence in honor of the LGBT kids who are still living in the middle of their own silence. You can get information here. Please pass the word.

And…to the ones still waiting in the center of the circle:

Keep your life intact. Nothing is worth leaving the planet for. You are worthy. You Are Enough. You are powerful. Know that. Feel that. Live in that. And the thing the bullies hate the most, the water that drowns them fastest, the bow and arrow that keeps them farthest away, is the honoring of your own voice. The acknowledgment of who you are. Tell someone. Find a teacher, a principal, a friend, a parent, a sibling, and tell someone. There are people who will hear you, receive you, come toward you, be with you. They’re there. I promise. But you have to speak. You have to breathe big and huge and let your voice out and say No and not give up and not give in and grab on to your hope and your magnificence. Please stay present. The Universe is waiting to hear you, and if you’re not here to proclaim who you are, there’s a tear in the plan, and other people suffer.

Don’t Be Silent. There’s a Carmen inside all of us.

Anything is possible.

This poor, poor old man and his unending psychotic ramblings. There's now something very sad about Robertson, for me. I can't help but break just a little inside when I see him. His hunched Shape and his slurry Tempo. He reminds me of those forgotten senior citizens sitting alone in a corner drooling and weeping while distant nurses force feed them jello and pumpkin pie off plastic plates.

And then I re-watch this clip, and I'm speechless.

Completely and utterly speechless.

"Last week, the student body at Cypress Ranch High School came together to create a anti-bullying video to the song “Who Do U Think U R?,” a song written and sung by student Kaitlyn K. The project was filmed and performed entirely by the students in Cypress, TX."

-From The Advocate

This video is extraordinary for a number of reasons, not to mention the main one being that everyone who's lip synching is walking backwards. As easy as that sounds, give a whirl sometime. I ask my students to change their Topography occasionally, and very few of them ever walk backwards for a long period of time. For me, this is the heart of this video. It's unfamiliar, and courageous behavior. This is what this song and all these teenagers, are all about. Using their voices, and finding their power.

And from me personally, thank you Cypress. From all the former kids who were bullied. We never forget. Every once in a while I'm still terrified to walk down the halls of my own University, It suddenly hits me, and something happens to my gut. But now, I'm able to hold my head up because of this new generation. These people are smarter than we were and kinder than we were. And it shows.

Watch the video. You won't forget it.