| Yawning
Bread. 23 May 2008
Cuba holds anti-homophobia event
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Featuring shows, lectures, panel discussions and book presentations, it was said to be the largest gathering of GLBT activists ever seen in Cuba, but what was really stunning was the presence of senior government figures, including the head of Parliament, Ricardo Alarcon. Clearly, it was a government-backed affair. To leave no one in any doubt, state television broadcast the film Brokeback Mountain during prime time the night before (Friday). This award-winning film explores the devastation that homophobia, social and internalised, wreaks in human lives. (Can you imagine Mediacorp broadcasting Brokeback Mountain in Singapore?)
For 14 years, Mariela Castro, 46, a teacher and mother of three children, has headed the National Center for Sexual Education with the support of Cuba's Communist Party. In 2007, she also took charge of the Cuban Women's Federation, which her mother had led until her death. Defending equal rights for Cubans, of all sexual orientations, does not represent any great ideological U-turn, since the 1959 Cuban revolution led by Fidel Castro had championed principles of equality. Thus the new campaign has to be seen in this light as, "the freedom of sexual choice and gender identity [are] exercises in equality and social justice," Mariela Castro said.
Socially however, Cuba is still conservative, and Mariela Castro herself said that gay activists should opt for subtle ways to chip away at deep-seated homophobic attitudes. Much of this can also be traced to the lingering influence of Catholicism in the former Spanish colony. However, if there is one thing communism gets right, it's the proper place for religion in affairs of state -- none. Particularly in respect of religious organisations that try to usurp power for themselves. On social matters, communism tends to be scientistic, sometimes excessively so. In the past, communist countries often saw sexual variation as medical problems and this attitude, together with a puritan streak when it came to matters of social discipline, usually meant quite intolerant and atrocious treatment of gay and lesbian citizens. But when the scientific understanding of sexual orientation and transgenderism is updated, there can be surprisingly swift adjustment of official attitudes. In China, for example, the main policy obstacle for gay people was for a long time, not any law (there weren't any specific ones), but the clause in the psychiatric diagnostic manual that made homosexuality a mental illness. As soon as the professionals got better informed, after China's opening up in the 1990s, they removed this clause. Since then the state has not seen homosexuality as any kind of transgression, though lower level officials still act on their own prejudices from time to time. Thus there are the occasional gay talk-shows on Chinese television. Even so, China is a laggard compared to Cuba. * * * * * This strident anti-gay stance was all too noticeable in a forum last week (15 May 2008) organised by lay Catholics in Singapore, in which Father Paul Goh, a clinical psychologist, was one of the speakers. Not only were the theories he spouted long-discredited, but his attempts to explain why "same-sex attraction", as he called it, was a psychological illness – I noticed he avoided using the word, but everything else he said pointed to that contention – were so plainly illogical, the intelligent listener would be left mystified. Did this man really believe the absurdities he was putting forth? I made some notes as I listened to him and I shall deal with four broad points that he raised. Maladapted Firstly, Goh said the homosexual persons are maladapted to society. They are "not mentally healthy... in the sense of maladaptiveness". He came back to this at another point in his talk when he detailed how this maladaptiveness could be discerned. Homosexuals, he said, felt a "strong emotional dependency on some members of the same sex", perhaps as compensation, he postulated, for their inadequate socialisation towards the opposite sex. This already implies that homosexuals are poorly socialised, something which he tried to convince the audience about too. Continuing, he said homosexuals had a strange need "to seek emotional support from persons of the same sex... and intense need for intimacy with and warmth of the same sex." It seemed never to have occurred to him that that is almost the very definition of homosexual orientation. It is only a "maladaptation" if one insists on assuming that everybody ought to be heterosexual. It's like saying there is something psychologically wrong with Cambodians because they prefer to speak the Khmer language instead of Chinese. The result of this abnormal seeking of emotional bonds and intimacy with members of the same sex, said Goh, would often be sexual intimacy, describing it as if it was another spiral down into irredeemable mental illness. "Giving in to homosexual wishes," he soon added, "creates a sexual addiction." In other words, homosexual persons have this horrible habit of repeatedly choosing to have sex with partners of the same sex. This regularity of choice is labelled an addiction, like how Cambodians are addicted to speaking Khmer. 'Pretend' scientific basis Secondly, and coming back to the claim that homosexuals are poorly socialised, he cited the work of Gerard van den Aardweg, PhD, which he said, established that male homosexuals often come from families with dominant mothers and weak or absent fathers. Vice versa for lesbians. As anyone who knows anything at all about sexual orientation would know, this is an utterly discredited theory. There is absolutely no scientific support for this view, and when Goh said, in an attempt to buttress the credibility of his source, that Aardweg had been researching since the 1960s, I challenged him to cite the research paper and the date. Instead, he waved a book written by Aardweg based on his treatments since the 1960s. The book was published in the 1990s, according to Goh. A book is not a peer-reviewed paper. Anybody, including Hollywood celebrities, can write a book. A quick Google search I did after the talk did not lead me to any peer-reviewed scientific paper, published in a reputable journal, for Aardweg; instead just about every website that referenced him was a Christian one. A Czech-language entry in Wikipedia even described him as one of the proponents of the view that homosexuality is treatable -- something that major professional bodies around the world consider false. Association with crime, paedophilia and fetishism Thirdly, Goh tried the smear of association with crime. People with homosexual tendencies, he said, are often involved in crimes such as molestation, rape and incest. And then he tried to link criminality with psychological illness. When these felons are examined, he suggested, some underlying psychological disorder may often be diagnosed, such as paedophilia, and "transvestic fetishism". It's so obviously a crazed attempt to throw everything into the pot, I really don't think I need to tease it apart. Conflating Gender Identity Disorder with homosexual orientation Fourthly, he kept conflating Gender Identity Disorder (GID) with sexual orientation. For a so-called clinical psychologist, this is shocking. They are two separate issues and he should know that. GID means a situation where someone with a male body feels female and vice versa. On the other hand, homosexual persons are just like heterosexual persons in that, other than those with GID, they feel very comfortable with their sex. They are very clear in their minds that they are male or female, and fully in accordance with their anatomical bodies. GID is associated with transgenderism, not homosexuality. * * * * * Why do these people give such
intellectually pathetic speeches? Why are they so obsessed with trying to
prove that homosexuality is wrong? What is it about religion that turns
some of its adherents into unthinking spouters of gibberish? Perhaps clinical
psychology has an answer for that. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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Last Saturday, 17 May 2008, hundreds gathered in a convention centre in
Cuba's capital, Havana, to mark International Day Against Homophobia
(IDAHO). Even more surprisingly, it was led by Mariela Castro, the
daughter of the country's President, Raul Castro. She's also the niece of
the iconic Fidel Castro, who recently retired from the presidency.
