Day of Action to Stop Mental Health Profiling 1/21/13 MLK Day

*To protest the scapegoating of people labeled with mental illness by politicians, media, gun control advocates and the pro-gun lobby

:In particular to protest the “NY SAFE Act” pushed through NY’s legislature and signed by Gov Cuomo, which expands state and federal criminal databases of people labeled as mentally ill, unconnected to any actual crime or act of violence, and expanded outpatient commitment (forced drugging in the community)
:To protest any discriminatory proposals coming out of Vice President Biden’s Task Force

*To invoke our connection to Martin Luther King Jr. and the values and traditions of nonviolence:

:We are a nonviolent community
:Many of us have been traumatized by violence and do all we can to stop it
:We are being labeled and profiled wrongly as violent, because of the actions of a few individuals
:Forced psychiatry is violent
:The new laws being enacted – in NY and likely at the federal level and in other states – will further restrict our civil liberties and constitutional rights
:We are protesting nonviolently for our civil and human rights

*To affirm and celebrate our “creative maladjustment” to a society that pits neighbor against neighbor with a duty to report thoughtcrimes and eccentricities to the state

(“Creative Maladjustment” comes from several of King’s speeches, including a 1967 speech of King to the American Psychological Association where he called for an International Association to Advance Creative Maladjustment, see http://www.psychologytoday.com/print/53556. David Oaks and MindFreedom International have taken up this call as part of the Mad Pride movement, http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental-health-global/iaacm. We honor David and wish him well in his recovery from serious injuries and surgery.)

****

On Martin Luther King Day, January 21, 2013, people everywhere are invited to hold demonstrations, vigils and any other nonviolent acts of expression and protest, to inform the public about our point of view and gather in solidarity.

Please take photos of your protest and post them.

You can use hashtags #OccupyPsychiatry #StopMHProfiling and #CreativeMaladjustment

****

Join Us On Facebook At Day of Action to Stop Mental Health Profiling
Source: CHRUSP – Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

On The Need For Resisting Corporate Rule And Plutocracy

A radio interview with psychologist Michael Cornwall sent me to wikipedia to look up ‘glass ceiling‘ after he referred to his own mad experience as meeting such a ‘glass ceiling’ for late adolescents and young adults.

In economics, the glass ceiling is “the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.” Initially, the metaphor applied to barriers in the careers of women but was quickly extended to refer to obstacles hindering the advancement of minority men, as well as women.

Notice that the elevation in this economic definition is “to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder” (i.e. wealth). One who is not working for the international corporate imperialist elite is likely to be seen, given this definition, in relative terms, as a failure.

The truth suffers when it is prostituted to business interests. Living a good life is not seen as a virtuous aim when it is also an impoverished life. Corporations control the mass media, and so they have the ability to silence dissent through commercial propaganda and neglect. When Mr. Money Bags pulls the strings, you’re out of luck if you don’t ingratiate yourself for ‘the dough, re, mi’.

There is a point at which even the objection is tempered by the degree to which corruption pervades the system. One is beholden to one institution, or the other, or else one is silent, and thereby, a complete loss. The illusion of an impartial news media has been exposed for the myth that it happens to be. You would have no news without periodically hearing from the news service’s corporate sponsors. There are, given those corporate sponsors, stories that will never make the light of day.

Value is manufactured by the global market. A global market that manipulates “supply” and “demand”. Dead artists are the prices their produce command at Sotheby’s. Stars emerge from television variety show ‘competitions’. Man woman the institution eclipse man woman the individuals. We are represented by, as was always the case, our betrayers. Nowhere is this more evident than in the electoral process where indirect democracy, given private interests, becomes even less direct all the time. All the middle men have to, after all, make a killing.

A few advance and glory at the expense of the many. Ours is less and less a world made for the mass of humanity. Starvation and plague in Africa, unrest and violence in the middle east, are the cost of civilization in the Americas and Europe. Philanthropists are people with millions and millions of dollars to give away. If they have billions, well, they can easily enough spare millions. It puts them in a better tax bracket.

As you can see, the mass of humanity are being challenged to do something about this devastating fiasco every day of the week. The corporate imperialists are only as powerful as the mass of humanity allow them to be. Right now, many more people are being robbed than are being benefited by these upper crust privateers. The religion of wealth may be limitless, but the reality of resources is quite limited. We need to reestablish some of the old antitrust laws before, after competition, a king of the mountain purple-assed baboon is the only creature left standing.

Thomas Stephen Szasz, 1920 – 2012

“I am probably the only psychiatrist in the world whose hands are clean,” Szasz told the newspaper. “I have never committed anyone. I have never given electric shock. I have never, ever, given drugs to a mental patient.”

~Update: Thomas Szasz, Manlius psychiatrist who disputed existence of mental illness, dies at 92, John Mariani, Wednesday, September 12, 2012, The Post-Standard, Saracuse, New York.

Saturday Morning I saw the close of the historic 30th Anniversary Nation Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy (NARPA) conference in Cincinnati. The grand finale of this event was a rousing and invigorating talk by Bruce Levine lambasting corruption in psychiatry, and in his own profession of psychology. He was, in fact, calling for the abolition of the profession of psychiatry on the grounds of the extent to which it was contaminated by that corruption.

Sometime during the evening of the same day, a giant among giants as far as critics of mainstream psychiatry go, Dr. Thomas Stephen Szasz, passed away.

I flew back to Florida from Ohio on Sunday, September the 9th.

On the afternoon of Monday September 10th, during a teleconference, on a facebook page I ran across a report of Dr. Szasz passing. I immediately made mention of this comment to the people who were taking part in this teleconference. We did a quick Google news search, and decided it was probably nothing more than an internet rumor. There was nothing in Google news to indicate that he had died. Dr. Szasz, although 92 years of age, had just last year presented to an enthusiastic crowd at the International Society for Ethical Psychology & Psychiatry (ISEPP) conference in Los Angeles.

Tuesday I had more than enough reliable reports to conclude that he had expired. First there was an announcement on the ISEPP facebook page, and a link was provided to the article that sparked that announcement.

The New York Times on Wednesday reported on his death with an article that quoted E. Fuller Torrey and Edward Shorter, by no means friends of, nor friendly to, Dr. Szasz and his ideas. Vera Hassner Sharav, president of the Human Alliance For Human Research Protection, uses the occasion to voice his differences in opinion from those expressed by Dr. Szasz rather than emphasizing any places where they might have been in agreement.

Usually when you are remembering a person, you turn to his friends rather than his enemies. Although it is curious that the New York Times should turn to Dr. Szasz’s enemies when remembering him, certainly Dr. Szasz’s legacy neither begins nor ends with the New York Times.

I think it goes without saying that some segments of the mainstream mass media are as corrupt as the psychiatrists they quote. A much more just and balanced appreciation, The Passing of Thomas Szasz, can be found in The New American.

Dr. Szasz’s distinctive voice, and his singular presence, will be sorely missed by many.

Florida Agency Reviews Deaths At Private Run State Facility

I found the story in the San Francisco Chronicle, (Department of Children and Families) DCF reviews deaths at GEO-run state hospital.

Three gruesome deaths at the privately run South Florida State Hospital triggered an investigation that revealed concerns that employees were overmedicating patients and failed to call the state abuse hotline after a patient died in a scalding bathtub, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

GEO pulls the strings of Rick Scott, our present governor, being a big time contributor to his election campaigns. If Governor Scott is good to his friends, well, GEO must be considered one of those friends.

GEO runs three other facilities in Florida: the Florida Civil Commitment Center in Arcadia, which treats sex offenders; and mental health facilities in Indiantown and Florida City for patients who aren’t competent to stand trial or have been found not guilty by reason of insanity.

What is this about? 3 deaths within the scope of 2 months, unreported, and in one instance, with accusations of a cover up.

1. Aug. 2011, Lois Espina, head slammed through a wall, or so it is thought.
2. Jun. 2011, Luis Santana, found dead in scalding bath skin sloughing from his body.
3. Jun. 2011, James Bragman, known to be suicidal, breaks from his attendant, and leaps off a roof.

None of the three deaths were reported to the state abuse hotline, which triggers a formal investigation. The new contract will include a fine if the facility doesn’t report all deaths to the hotline, [DCF Secretary David] Wilkins said.

These deaths hardly break the surface when it comes to what’s wrong with Florida’s mental health facilities. Let’s hope these incidents send a strong message to people enduring that mental health system, the mental health system here is oppressive, hierarchical and ultimately harmful. People trapped within that system need empowerment and choice. It’s time to pressure the state government to change it’s policies and practices with regard to people in distress.

Mad People Are Everywhere

An associated press headline today read, Colorado shooting suspect was brilliant science student. Don’t you know the authorities are going to start looking for signs of “mental illness” in this (sic) brilliant science student. They can’t attribute his acts of violence to “mental illness”, or blame “the mentally ill”, if they don’t do so. Any defense team in the country is going to be scrambling for the most handy excuse available for what is absolutely inexcusable.

Another irony is that the major this (sic) brilliant science student was reportedly dropping out of in college was neuroscience. Apparently, at some point or other, the mad student had his sights set on becoming a mad doctor.

As the organization MindFreedom International posted on its front page recently in a story about Mad Pride Celebrations throughout the world, Mad Pride 2012 in 5 + Nations “We Are the 100 %”. 99 % of the world’s population may make under a certain economic figure every year, but 100 % of the population are nuts.

The legal definition of insanity has typically been given as ‘a danger to oneself or others’. Ironically there are few people more dangerous to themselves or others on earth than politicians, and allegations of mental infirmity can destroy a political career. These ladies and gentlemen, in other words, fill the bill, but they’re not crazy as long they haven’t come under “the care”–another one of those funny words with the exact opposite of its dictionary meaning–of a psychiatrist.

Every soldier in a wartime situation is insane under the legal definition of insanity. The thing is, the legal definition of insanity is a ruse, they don’t lock mad folk up because they’re dangerous, they lock them up because they’re different. We don’t, as a rule, have another path for the person who doesn’t fit the mold to take. Some of the unwanted ones are thought of as “defective”, and given to the loony bin.

Few shining examples of upstanding humanity ever graduated cum laude summa from the loony bin. Perhaps you’ve heard the mantra, “I think I can’t, I think I can’t, I think I can’t”. The loony bin is not the railroad track to success, it’s the other railroad track, and so a lot of its boarders resign themselves to the trappings of defeat. When you’re mode of operation is the logic of the casino, that happens. The world is divided into two irreconcilable camps, the lucky and the screwed.

The lord of random chance is not the lord of an inhabitable environment. You need a lot of people who are a danger to themselves or others if the lord of random chance is to have his way. Actually random chance is never so random as it may seem because the house has to win. This is a win scored for the politicians who run the national casino. Expanding on a theme, the owners of the house include politicians, their bankers, and the corporations that have bought them.

If you’re going to support a small number of big rollers, you need a large number of losers. These losers are the poor suckers who vote for, and who work for, the big rollers. They are, in a word, insignificant in the big rollers view, and very dispensable. In the world of big rollers, big rollers are the only things that count. I think there needs to be some kind of reappraisal so that monetary gain, and corruption, are not the highest value around. The community of people at large should not be dissolving, the way it is today, into shantytown wastrels and the service industry for a tiny colony of rich people.

Why, you ask, should we turn things around in such a dramatic fashion? Alright. Let me start with the example of a movie theatre in Colorado where 12 people died and 58 people were wounded. I kind think of this kind of thing is the result of bad city planning. Massacres of this sort are becoming more and more common. I think these massacres are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to humanity’s mistreatment of humanity. When you build places that are good for people, people are good to people. When they are good to people, they don’t shoot them. All the people, not just the upper crust.

The Church of Biological Psychiatry and its Discontents

The collusion of business interests, academic stuffed shirts, and a media elite has ensured that the public gets the views of compliant converts to the Church of Biological Psychiatry much more frequently than it hears from non-compliant, and completely recovered, survivors of psychiatric human rights violations and oppression.

The goody two shoes of psychiatry are multiple, and the deception is deep. Your step and fetch it wierd Aunt or Uncle Tom of the treatment world is not the only animal around. She or he is just the media‘s, and the media that is courting psychiatric industry interests and corporate drug company money, darling. Drool on yourself for the camera, dear.

The Church of Biological Psychiatry includes a loose confederation of interested parties seeking to ward off funding cuts, independent examination, criticism and free thought. These parties include mainstream psychiatry organizations, torture advocacy organizations, institutions of high education, law enforcement officials, and pharmaceutical manufacturers, plus a bunch of dumb hacks that don‘t know shit.

The God of the Church of Biological Psychiatry goes by the name of chronic and irreparable “mental illness”. The Church of Biological Psychiatry asserts that a certain percentage of the population have been chosen to express the genes fashioned expressly by this God of Madness. Here, “mental illness” is a noun and never a verb. Furthermore, “mental illness” is possessive. If it’s not what you are, it’s what you have, and it’s not what you do.

The belief in “mental illness” genes has not put us one iota closer to developing a “mental illness” litmus test. After all this time, this “mental illness” bug or defect, just like the Gods of the Greeks, the Romans, and the God of the Christians, has eluded capture. Converts and evangelicals alike, despite being certain that “mental illnesses” are caused by defective, inferiority, or submission genes, readily admit that they don’t know the source of “mental disturbances”.

The great God “mental disorder” demands further research and development into the potent capacity chemicals have to maintain, contain, and otherwise control the more unruly select among his flock. Without these pills and potions they would be lost forever. Sorry fuckers who can’t cope with the world outside of an institution. These chemical compounds were created expressly in order to correct the mistakes of nature. The church has an expression for its solution to these mistakes, “In pharmaceuticals, and the profits they pull in, we trust.”

For decades a small but growing band of heretics have defied the dictates and decrees of the Church of Biological Psychiatry despite, if not total silence, irritation on the part of the illuminati. You must know your place, the clergy preach, and that place is either in receiving treatment, or in providing treatment, or in agreeing with everything we say. Stay tuned, although evangelicals and corruption have guaranteed that the Church of Biological Psychiatry is growing at a much faster rate than heresy, there is no room for improvement in the perfect doctrine.

We Need More Liberties For American Citizens, Not Fewer

I generally don’t think anybody should be forcibly treated in a psychiatric hospital, but I make an exception in the case of David Vognar. I think Mr Vognar, and another Huffington Post blogger mentioned previously, DJ Jaffe, might be able to benefit a great deal from forced mental health intervention. Mr. Vognar claims to have been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. Mr. Vognar has apparently not spent much time imprisoned in a state hospital, or he wouldn’t have written a Huffington Post blog post like the one he did recently calling for an expansion in the use of involuntary treatment on people labeled “mentally ill”. The post bears the leading, and extremely prejudicial, heading, We Need to Expand Involuntary Treatment for Severe Mental Illness. I happen to vehemently disagree with Mr. Vognar on this issue. I don’t think we need to expand the federal penitentiary system, one of the largest in the world, in this country either.

If Mr. Vognar and Mr Jaffe were confined to a state mental hospital for the length of their lives, I think it would be fair to say that a great number of the rest of the people on this planet could sleep more secure. If Mr. Vognar and Mr. Jaffe were subjected to a perpetual regimen of mind snuffing pharma-tortures, and seizure inducing mini-electrocutions, as well as the complete suppression of their personal opinions, I have no doubt that the world as a whole would be a much better place in which to live. Intolerance and hate crimes are a plague, and the best way to deal with this plague is by putting the worst offenders out of commission. Mr. Vognar and Mr. Jaffe are too ‘seriously disturbed’ to ever be ‘cured’. They are, like I say, ‘seriously disturbed’, and to suggest that they could change their behavior in any way, shape, or form is merely to “stigmatize” them. They, being “sick”, don’t have the control necessary to manage such a transformation. We should therefore, out of the kindness in our hearts, imprison them in a state hospital for the duration of their days. Understand that this is a preventive measure, by detaining them in this fashion we have prevented the detention of a great many more people in coercive *cough* ‘care’.

Turning the tide

I continue to be amazed at the numbers of people who have had their freedom taken away from them in the name of medicine, and who are not up in arms over this little excursion by medicine into tyranny. I am equally amazed at the numbers of people who have been erroneously taught that harmful treatments are beneficial.

Medicine could not brutalize people so without the intercession of law. There is this loophole in the freedoms and rights we as citizens have been granted called mental health law. Our politicians have defined, and legislated against, what are termed “illnesses” of the mind. Medicine has a partner in its totalitarian posturing.

Should medicine and government be taking away the freedom of people who have violated no laws? This is a question that is all too often left unasked. The excuse used is that a person who is outside of his or her senses may commit an act of violence. If they do so, that’s why we’ve got laws. We haven’t even determined the probability of this improbable violent event happening.

Obviously, nobody is going to “cure” “disease” by enacting legislation. “Disease” doesn’t tend to respond to legislation. When that “disease” is not a real “disease” at all, but is a matter of conduct, the impetus behind the legislation is not to “cure” the “patient”, the impetus behind the legislation, as in the criminal justice system, is to get the “patient” off the street.

Legislators and doctors should have better things to do with their time and energy than torturing people under the guise of treating them. A person who has been subjected to this torture will do whatever he or she can in such a situation to avoid torture. Calling torture therapy is merely a way of obscuring the facts. If we call the torture victim “sick” then that sleight of tongue excuses it? I don’t think so…

Treating people for conjectured and theoretical “disease” against their will and wishes should be outlawed. This is especially true when the primary form of treatment used is damaging in itself. I’m referring to those drugs the mainstream media seldom ceases to call by the misnomer “medication”. These drugs are debilitating, and the mainstream press should be a little more precise in its use of language.

More and more people have reason to express their chagrin and outrage at this situation as time goes on. More and more people are being seriously injured before, after, and during hospital imprisonment. I hope the realization is slowly beginning to dawn upon them that they don’t need imprisonment, torture, and ill health. I hope the realization is slowly beginning to dawn on us that we must repair the damage done to people, democracy, and the truth by this abuse.

In numbers there is power, but you start with a small number to get to a larger number. Harming people is not right. Harming people is not good, even when it is done on a large scale. Harming people is not therapeutic. Harming people in the name of helping them against their will and wishes is not the way to treat anybody. If somebody lies to you, that doesn’t mean you have to lie to yourself. The time has come to fight back and win.

Ignore History At Thy Peril

How do you dialogue with psychiatry when psychiatry doesn’t dialogue with you? You don’t. This leaves psychiatrists rehashing things the psychiatric survivor, mental patients’ liberation, movement dealt with many years ago…as if we had not done so. We, in this case, means people who have endured or survived psychiatric treatment, or perhaps mistreatment is the more apt way of putting it.

This psychiatrist, H. Steve Moffic, M.D., makes an effort to come up with a name for discrimination against people who have had psychiatric labels attached to them. The story in Psychiatric Times bears the heading, Psychism: Defining Discrimination of Psychiatry.

I don’t think by today that there can be any question that there is significant discrimination and prejudice directed against those who are deemed to have some sort of significant mental problem. Many times, that has resulted in trying to keep such people out of mainstream society, whether that be hospitalization, not being able to live in certain neighborhoods, and not being hired for work.

Brilliant deduction, Sherlock! We ex-patients have been saying the same thing for years and years on top of years. When did you first reach this astounding conclusion, sir?

From here he adopts the personal pronoun “we”. An editorial we would presume to speak for everybody. As for this “we”, the “we” he would be speaking for is the “we” of people he treats, we, using the editorial we, will call this “we” the benevolent dictatorial “we” instead. Tonto adds, “He speak like him ownum turf, Ke-mo sah-bee.”

Now we may be seeing more and more of that in our field as the antipsychiatry movement of Scientologists seems to be expanding to former patients and their families who felt they were hurt by psychiatry. While some anger and criticism is surely warranted, the vitriol and call for the end of psychiatrists seems to border on hate speech, as described in the recent Psychiatric Times blog of Ronald Pies, MD.

Families that have lost loved ones to psychiatry might feel they have reasons for identifying with the Church of Scientology. Likewise they might feel they have reasons for not identifying with the Church of Biological Psychiatry. This is not an issue for me. The Church of Scientology is no more open and transparent than is the Church of Biological Psychiatry.

Mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors marched on the APA convention in Philadelphia this May. We had to be adamant. We had some psychiatrist come outside who thought we had something to do with Scientology. We didn’t have anything to do with Scientology, and we didn’t want anybody to think we did. Cult, church, or organization–legimate or illegimate–we were in no way connected with Scientology, nor it’s front group, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. Apparently these guys only read themselves.

Blacks have racism, woman have sexism, Jews have anti-semitism, etc. Why not come up with an “ism” for people who have done time in the mental health system?

Perhaps the lack of such an “ism” indicates a discrimination and prejudice even more intense or ingrained, so much so that there is not even a term to rally around. Such a term could be psychism. This is a term that is so unused that we can easily adopt it as our own. In theosophy, I found it used on rare occasions to refer to spiritual awakening. Spiritual awakening is indeed what we need, isn’t it?

Where has this man been for the last few decades? Language has long been a major concern for people in the psychiatric survivor, mental health consumer, and ex-patient Mad Pride movement. We’ve even started to sit down with the likes of him. People in this movement have come up with the terms mentalism and sanism to describe prejudice and discrimination directed against them for this very reason. These terms are part and parcel of that discrimination of psychiatry we term psychiatric oppression.

We don’t need a psychiatrist to link our struggle to the struggles of African Americans, women, gays, senior citizens, children, disabled people, homeless people and other often disenfranchised and marginalized peoples. We’ve been a part of those same struggles for many years. If this man took any real interest in the history of the people he treated as a group, he would know these things. Apparently it’s a history lesson he desparately needs.

Straight Bias Is Not Impartiality

If you’re going to write an article about bias, try not to make it biased. The subject of this Opinion Piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer, misleadingly titled, Don’t repeat biases of the past, authored by Jonathan Zimmerman, while claiming to castigate bigotry, would actually have us repeat the prejudices of the past.

Why do we regard one trait as changeable, while the other one is supposedly cast in stone? The question came back to the news this month, when prominent psychiatrist Robert Spitzer renounced his famous 2001 study claiming that some gays could become straight via so-called “reparative therapy.”

Mentioning protests in California and Philadelphia against such “reparative therapy”, Mr. Zimmerman says:

Methinks we doth protest too much. As the gay community has taught us, every human being has the right to determine her or his own sexual identity. By dismissing self-described “ex-gays,” then, we risk repeating some of the same bigoted tactics that have been used to condemn homosexuals themselves.

Considering that 20 % of US citizens are on psychiatric drugs, considering the multi-billion dollar drug companies that are profiteering on death and dying, considering the creeping medicalization that is making artificial invalids of vast swathes of the American public, methinks we doth protest too little. In fact, I was out there with other protesters protesting the American Psychiatric Association, and its labeling bible, at their annual convention in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Mr. Zimmerman, by the way, doesn’t identify himself in this article as an “self-described ex-gay”, but he does go to the heart of the problem.

Yet ex-gays say otherwise, insisting that they — not the psychiatrists — are the best judges of their own mental health. And that’s an exact echo of gays, who were stigmatized as “sick” by the same profession until the early 1970s.

Before the early 1970s homosexuality was listed as a psychiatric disorder in the psychiatrists label bible, the DSM. Heterosexuality was never listed as any such disorder in this label bible. The trans-sexual impulse and inclination, under the guise of gender identity disorder, is still listed as a “sickness” in this catalogue of “disorders”.

If anybody thinks sexual orientation is not set in stone, he or she is free to change their orientation. Betwixt homosexuality and heterosexuality you’ve got the bi-sexual identity as well, and that one Mr. Zimmerman leaves completely untouched. Some people claim to have physical affection for members of both sexes. Is Mr. Zimmerman suggesting this passion is a “sickness”?

My own view is that sexual experimentation is going to happen, and no amount of what amounts to moralistic preaching is going to stop it from happening. We have enough problems with those politicians who wish to look beyond their wives for satisfaction, comfort, solace, support, and/or relief.

If anybody wants to consult a mental health professional about changing their sexual preference they are free to do so. The idea that there must be a special therapy for people who want to change their sexual preference is ludicrous. Nobody is trying to change the sexual preference of heterosexuals, for instance. The implication would be that heterosexuality is wrong, and homosexuality is right. You have always been free to change your sexual orientation if you want to do so. The question here is, if you don’t want to change your sexual orientation, should you change it anyway? I leave that one where it belongs with the specific individuals who happen to be so afflicted, disturbed, curious or smitten. To state the matter in more precise terms, homosexuality is not a “disease”, nor is heterosexuality the “cure”. It would be misleading and prejudicial for us to treat them as such.