srparedon – editorials (archive)

December 2002

Turn to the back of this magazine and you’ll find dozens of personal ads from prisoners. And every month hundreds of readers respond to these ads, marking them as some of the most popular ads in the personals section.

From time to time, we get a letter or call from a reader upset that his prisoner penpal turned out not to be the lean 28-year-old advertised, or that he was asking for money, or that he was actually incarcerated for life and thus unlikely ever to be able to share in the romantic dreams outlined… Continue reading →

November 2002

In the mid-1980s, some psychotherapists began peddling “repressed memory therapy” (RMT). According to them, sexual abuse was often so horrific that victims would banish memory of it from their consciousness, sometimes for decades. Only with the help of a therapist trained in RMT could patients troubled by a wide-ranging host of symptoms get at the source of their woes; almost invariably, RMT practitioners found that their patients had suffered sexual abuse at the hands of a male authority figure. That a patient did not initially remember such abuse was taken as evidence of how terrible the… Continue reading →

October 2002

Open the pages of many gay newspapers and you’ll find ads from therapists offering help to those afflicted with “sexual compulsivity.” Guys are told that seeking out multiple, anonymous sexual encounters signals the inability to form rewarding, intimate relationships. Working with a sex-as-addiction model, such therapists laud their clients’ efforts to avoid the parks and toilets and rest stops where they’d previously gone for their “fix.” Getting guys into courtship-before-sex, one-partner-at-a-time behavior is seen as success, a move towards more “mature” relationships.

Undoubtedly, some guys who cruise anonymous sex venues do feel shameful. Throughout their… Continue reading →

September 2002

Baz Luhrmann’s delightful film Strictly Ballroom teaches the lesson of the Spanish proverb vivir con miedo es como vivir en medias: “a life lived in fear is a life half lived.” The movie’s hero learns that slavish conformity to the safe, “strictly ballroom” repertoire robs dancing of its vitality. His father’s failed example teaches him that dancing only becomes worthwhile when one finds the courage to dance ones own steps.

Luhrmann’s film is popular among gay people because many of us spent years in the closet, terrified of doing anything not “strictly ballroom.” Only by… Continue reading →

August 2002

Do a web search for the terms “pedophile priest” and “tip of the iceberg” and you will get hundreds of hits. In story after story, press and prosecutors routinely employ the iceberg cliché, warning that for each case of abuse so-far reported, hundreds more wait to be discovered. According to some estimates, half-a-million Americans have been raped by their priests.

Such high numbers reflect, in part, wishful thinking by attorneys and therapists eager to cash in as hundreds sue the deep-pocketed Catholic Church. But given that sexual shenanigans with the local priest are routine in… Continue reading →

July 2002

You do not have the right to remain silent. Anything you say– and anything we imagine you are thinking– can and will be used against you. If you can’t afford a lawyer, it doesn’t matter since you do not have the right to speak to an attorney.

Thus says a five-to-four majority of the US Supreme Court in McCune v. Lile.

In earlier decisions, the same court majority has sanctioned incarcerating people not charged with any crime (thus voiding habeas corpus protections), has authorized further punishment for those who’ve served all their time… Continue reading →