Trafficking Children in Tennessee

Imagine being a 13 year old girl or boy whose family has betrayed you in some way, maybe by sexual, emotional, or physical abuse, or through neglect.  Now imagine an older teen girl or guy, befriends you, acting like they really care about you, and you are starved for attention.

Then, all of the sudden, your life changes dramatically.  You are driven or flown to another city, conscious or unconscious, then used and sold as a sex slave.  You have become a prisoner of a sick, big business, called human sex trafficking.

Trafficking happens all across our nation, here in Nashville and throughout Tennessee. Selling bodies crosses all lines, including socioeconomic, racial, religious, age and geographic boundaries.  No longer is this something that happens to someone else. This happens here. 

A  state-wide victim advocacy non-profit organization, You have the Power, has partnered with several other community groups and private parties to spotlight this ever-growing, inhumane system by creating a documentary film called, No Girl’s Dream. No child asks to be sold into a life full of violence, fear and entrapment. This nightmare can damage their lives forever.  

Recently, spokespeople from End Slavery Tennessee, The Hannah Project, and the TBI reported horrifying statistics like 1 in 3 runaways are enslaved with 48 hours of leaving home.

The good news is that several groups have gathered to create more powerful laws that seek to punish those who buy and sell people in the sex industry. The courts also order “johns” to pay for and participate in a program that teaches them that what they are doing is re-victimizing kids who are already victims.  Coordinating this training is Magdalene, founded by Becca Stevens, a residential program for women who have survived lives of prostitution, trafficking, addiction and life on the streets. All men who trade money for sex need to understand that they are not paying a kid to help them have nice things.  Rather, they are supporting sex slavery.

These children have no choices, they are tortured with weapons, threatened and raped if they try to leave the system that traumatizes them.  Some who have been victimized by this system move up the ladder and become pimps, perpetuating violence just like they have received.

Only when we work together as a community, and when men and boys can challenge each other about their behaviors, can we decrease the sale of human bodies.  Men and women in power and consumers of such services need to intervene in the functioning of this monstrous business.

Let us help Tennessee and our nation become healthier places for all people, finding ways to enforce punishment and treatment for abusers and continuing to develop and fund treatment programs for victims. If you want to become involved, contact End Slavery Tennessee (http://www.endslaverytn.org), The Hannah Project Nashville, or the Magdalene program (http://www.thistlefarms.org/index.php/about-magdalene).

An exploration into a hate crime, or why do people act out?

During the past several months, it came to the attention of Vanderbilt police that someone had been stealing O&AN newspapers out of its boxes on Vanderbilt’s campus, particularly around the medical center. The boxes would sometimes be totally emptied overnight. Although this is a free newspaper, a sign on the box asks for payment after taking one copy.

This cloak and dagger story has already been written about and even talked about on TV (link to the TV piece?). Why would someone do such a thing?

When interviewed on TV, James Grady, the current editor of O&AN, (link?) described these actions as a hate crime. When asked to further explain how that term fits this set of events, Mr. Grady said that any action with the intent to target a minority is considered a hate crime. Was some homophobic person stealing the newspapers in order to achieve some goal?

Turns out that one newspaper box was videotaped and the perpetrator was finally caught stealing the newspapers. The Vanderbilt police talked with the news hound and he admitted to having done this dastardly deed, agreed not to do such a thing again, and will pay restitution for the papers he stole. The justice system is not planning to prosecute the man at this time.

I began to wonder whether this man was some right wing nut, some fundamentalist/religious fanatic who hates gay people and who might have a mission to eradicate such “filth” at least in his small corner of the world. Being a mental health provider, it is not ethical for me to speculate about this man’s intentions without clinically interviewing and evaluating him so I don’t really know why this particular man performed these acts.

What I can do is to wonder why someone would do this. It seems that this man has had a very ill spouse who has been hospitalized for many months and that he is the only person helping to care for her during this lengthy hospitalization. What I do know about is that taking care of a loved one in a hospital for months on end can make any of us crazy-feeling and crazy-acting. The grief and exhaustion alone are enough to cause even the healthiest of us to act out in some ways, this man being no exception.

Without making light of the hate crime nature of this man’s behavior, if I had been in this man’s shoes, having to be at a hospital for months at a time, I may have wanted to eat all the ice cream in the cafeteria. Self-destructive rather than other-destructive. Or, I may have gone screaming into the night as I left my loved one, while I felt helpless about her illness and powerless to change the situation. She may have been in great pain and not recuperating well from surgery, and it is very painful to watch our loved ones suffer. Many of us do not always act appropriately when dealing with such major stress.

On the other hand, maybe this poor man was from out of town, staying night after night with his wife, sleeping poorly, eating fast food all day, worrying about finances. and being away from his natural support systems. A few years ago, when my father was in a hospital in Mississippi, I watched a hospital handle his case all wrong (in my opinion). I felt agony about his illness and also felt helpless for awhile. But, then my mother and I challenged the doctors and demanded different treatment. Things changed. But, such challenges don’t always have such good results.
The obvious guess is that this man objects to or outright hates the LGBT community and anything that reminds him of the existence of people who are very different from him. Or maybe he had unconscious fears about being gay himself, maybe he had been abused as a young child, or maybe someone molested his child. Perhaps no one taught him how similar LGBT people may be to him, even though there are also differences. Maybe he was taught all his life by his family, church and/or community that being gay is an abomination, that gay people will go to hell, or that they are predators of young children. We don’t know what this man’s beliefs are or where they came from.

What I can say is that I can get very active sometimes when faced with injustice toward any minority, when people are not being treated equally, and when there is little fairness about legal consequences for certain types of people vs. other, more privileged types. I am glad that I can speak out about my concerns and that sometimes newspapers even print what I write about in my outrage.

Maybe this guy wants to be an activist but he doesn’t use his voice to speak up. And, like many people, perhaps all he knows to do is to act out (like we all do at times) in a way that helps him to feel powerful and better about himself and the world. Unfortunately, his act was indirect and criminal, full of hate and/or fear, unproductive to say the least. That sometimes happens when there is no dialogue, when people are unable or unwilling to discuss issues about which they disagree. At times it may be easier to crucify “the other” rather than try to get to know them and work with them to create a more peaceful planet.

Let’s not crucify this man. And, also, let's not crucify each other. 

LGBT Rights in Nashville: regression and progress

By now many of us have heard that Davidson Academy, a private, Christian Nashville school, denied admission to a couple’s children - just because their parents are gay. But, this is not a battle between the Christian and LGBT communities.  These two communities have always overlapped. 

Chris Sanders, the Executive Director of the Tennessee Equality Project says about the family of Brian Copeland and Greg Bullard: "Every family has dreams of a great education for their children, so we can all understand how heartbreaking Brian and Greg's story is.  Their courage and grace give us models for starting the kinds of conversations that need to happen in Tennessee.  I believe, whether they like it or not, Davidson Academy is going to have that conversation internally and with the public now.”

This school says that they “strongly believe in a strict interpretation of the Scriptures regarding the institution of marriage.” I would imagine that this school doesn’t investigate the heterosexual behavior of their staff and the families of students but perhaps they do.

Didn’t Jesus say, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these?”  Did he add, just not  the children of a certain sort of couple?

This couple just wants their children to have a Christian education and as Copeland has stated: “discrimination and inequality [are] alive and well. ” On January 23rd, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) condemned the actions of Davidson Academy. Ellen Kahn, the Director of HRC’s Foundation’s Children, Youth and Families Program said that the school “contradicted its own Christian values with this decision - discrimination is not a Christian value.” But, there is a Christian value about loving each other. 

Hold onto that thought while exploring some other news of the past week here in Nashville. Nashville Public Radio reported on January 21, 2015:  “Oral Histories Reveal Decades of Closeted LBGT Lives in Nashville.”  (Link) “For the past 7 years Nashville’s Brooks Fund has collected the stories of what it was to be homosexual in Middle Tennessee before 1970.”  Nina Cardona told a few of the tales that have been collected, noting that the Brooks Fund is continuing to collect such stories from Mid-TN’s LGBT community and that these are being archived in the Nashville Public Library. A documentary is also being made of the first 25 stories. Isn’t that a sign of progress, honoring and commemorating these people and their historical experiences? If so, then it seems that both progress and regression are happening in Nashville these days.

Having just celebrated the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., I recall his words: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”  And, even though we have many different types of people in our nation, our Pledge of Allegiance still says, “…one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”  Let’s define “all.”

Does “all” mean only the ones who think like me, look like me, worship like me, fall in love like me? Davidson Academy and other Christian schools throughout the nation will be re-evaluating their missions and their screening criteria partly because of Davidson Academy’s letter of rejection to this Nashville gay couple. What an excellent opportunity resulting from prejudice and bias even though private schools certainly have the option to select the students they want to educate.

Let’s also think about how we were raised by parents, religious institutions and schools and how we often hold onto some of the values that we learned through osmosis and role modeling, even during our rebellious phases.  I was raised in a Christian church in the Mississippi Delta in the 1960’s with compassionate and liberal parents.  I was taught that being Christian meant what Jesus preached: loving our neighbors as ourselves and calling out injustices between people and groups.

It is time for everyone to take a step back and reassess what they believe and if they call themselves Christian, why are some casting out other Christians, judging them harshly and denying them services, while they accept others? Isn’t it about time for our nation to put to rest the discrimination toward LGBT people and move into the 21st century?  We have come a long way but we still have such a long way to go.

Another factor in our town’s regressive behavior may be that many Americans are still pretty uptight about sexuality, sexual behavior, and sexual lifestyles.  Sex itself is sometimes an anxiety-ridden topic, not just a biological process but loaded with innuendo, values, beliefs, emotions, and judgment. Why can’t all adults just practice love and sex with other consenting adults?  Why does the non-LGBT population get so scared and angry about those unlike themselves?  What do they have to fear?  One size does not fit all.  Even within the Christian community, there are as many diverse beliefs, activities and opinions as there are people, all unique, all just trying to experience love, joy, faith, and community with others in their own ways.

Now that the Supreme Court has decided to hear marriage cases originating in the 6th Circuit that upheld state-level bans against same-sex marriage, we hope that the Supremes will finally make an excellent decision for the LGBT community.  I believe that denying equal rights to the LGBT community is an abomination.

Rape in 2015

Growing up as an adolescent in the 1970’s, I attended college at Sewanee, a primarily male institution that had just allowed women to enter its gates. Back then like today, some young men were aggressive, some sweet and kind. Women and men participated in drinking and drugging on campus and date rape sometimes occurred.

Nowadays, with rape so common nationally and globally, we have to wonder why men still abuse women? Why do men use their strong bodies or weapons to physically overpower women? This is not just the rape of strangers in dark alleys but rape in fancy educational settings, housing privileged kids where rape is an institutional hazard, a nightmare, and a disgrace.

The Nashville trial of young Vanderbilt men this past week illustrates that rape, or even alleged rape ruins lives. For women, men and families. However, many women still do not speak up and admit to being raped because of embarrassment and horror as well as anger toward themselves for “letting it happen” and toward a society that allows it, fearing that nothing will be done and that they themselves will be slut-shamed if they do report.

Do we need stiffer penalties and punishments to show men that women will not stand for such treatment, that rape is abominable?

Let’s also wonder about the nature of human beings wherein all genders have conflicts at times with each other and within ourselves, especially when power is involved, which is every day. Complex dynamics and messy situations occur.Who dares to think that pushing anyone to have sex with them is OK, that having sex with an unconscious body is all right? When will more women and men speak up to stop these men?

Men will have a far better time in life if they respect that women have rules. Rules like, “Don’t violate my body without my permission” for any reason whatsoever. Just like when we women ask our legislators to stay out of our bodies and out of making important decisions about our bodies.

We need to respect each other and not expect anyone else to do what we want just because we want it. If we become good, decent people and look at others as being just the same and as equal as we are, maybe we will decrease the violence we tend to do to each other in all sorts of ways. Maybe if men felt better about themselves, they wouldn’t rape.

To those men who rape, drunk, high or not, please ask yourselves why you need to harm someone else in order to build up your self esteem that is surely lacking. Rape only displays your inadequacy as a man, someone who has to violate others to experience power. Only the weak, scared, angry and confused lash out violently. Raping a woman does not make you a man. It makes you a criminal, who needs help and punishment.

American Gun Violence

This could be an article complaining about police and American brutality against black and brown men and boys, or about violence in our American culture in general. Rather, this piece is about living in a society where gun violence leads to many unnecessary deaths of adults and children, and what we can do to change this fact.

I am not against all guns. I grew up in the Mississippi Delta where my family hunted and ate their kill. Now, the enormous amount of gun sales and the types of military artillery available to the public have escalated, and kids are growing up playing first-person shooter video games nonstop.

When I was a young, single woman living on my own, my father offered me a pistol for protection and asked me to learn to shoot it in case I ever needed it. When I birthed a child, I gave it back due to its dangerous presence in our home.

On December 31, 2014, an Idaho toddler reached into his mother’s purse at Walmart, pulled out her legally concealed weapon, shot and killed her with three kids watching. How will those children ever make sense of this accidental but extreme violence? The toddler shooter will never erase the visual, the horror, and the facts.

Last week, I watched a video from The New York Times: No Guns for Christmas. I paused to wonder what I can do as an individual to halt gun violence: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/opinion/no-guns-for-christmas.html? emc=edit_th_20141223&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=58340336&_r=0&assetType=opinion

I believe in nonviolent action as a way to solve problems and have written much about issues of social justice, civil and human rights, violence, women’s rights, and income equality in the past. What I can do is to speak up again.

I understand we live in the Deep South. I understand that some people love to hunt or just shoot guns for sport. At Christmastime, my brother and I used to shoot down mistletoe from trees with a pellet gun. But, viewing this video where a young black man holding an air rifle at WalMart gets so quickly and inhumanely killed, makes me not only sorrowful but full of rage. Watching a 12 year old black boy get killed by police in Ohio within only 2 seconds of visual sight breaks my heart. When will our nation directly address and resolve these issues of unnecessary gun violence? And, why is there not more recourse when police kill so irresponsibly? If we stay silent, all victims’ blood is on our hands.

Doing nothing is an action. During 2015, please get more actively involved in the solution to this problem of gun violence, working together with others to discover new ways to decrease human and police brutality and accidents. We can change this tragic trend if we commit to this action. 

'Tis the Season to be Jolly?

’Tis the season to be jolly? Unfortunately, not for everyone.

For some people, the holiday season brings along with it no joy or peace but depression and despair. I am offering some hope.

I wish that all people could be joyful and peaceful on any particular day. But, that just doesn’t happen. We sometimes ignore or neglect those loved ones and others who seem down during the holidays because they make us uncomfortable. After all, depression can seem contagious. Or, we may want to fix it for those people and we may get irritated or sullen if they don’t take our advice.

Instead of trying to talk others out of such negative feelings like being disheartened, lonely, or anxious, what if we just acknowledge or accept that they may just be feeling those ways? What if we pat them on the back, figuratively or physically, and say that we are there for them during this season supposedly full of happiness and light? Maybe then, these people might feel a tiny bit of connection with and understanding from us. Or, maybe they won’t.

We cannot talk anyone out of their feelings. Not children, not parents, not friends. Life just doesn’t work that way. Yes, we would love for others to feel better. We also wish we could help them, but trying to tell a hopeless or depressed person that they just need to count their blessings and be grateful for what they do have, is like sticking in a knife and twisting it. That kind of talk often prompts them to feel worse. We, then, have to deal with our own feelings of being powerless to change their lives for them.

We psychotherapists have full offices at this time of year. Those without loved ones often feel terribly alone, and those who do have a support network can sometimes feel bad too because of conflicts within that group, maybe feeling excluded, rejected.

Those of us who do experience joy, peacefulness and hope can surely be available to help those less fortunate. But, how?

I recommend to all who know anyone who may be suffering around this time of year: Get in touch with just one such person. Tell them that you are thinking about them. Ask them how they are doing, and be prepared to listen if they want to tell the honest truth. Then, look deep inside yourself and see if you can remember a time in your life when you were feeling down, angry or upset. Did anyone reach out to you during that time? You can draw upon your own compassion for those in pain, even if their behavior is obnoxious at times. Respond to them with love and caring, or just listen and reflect their feelings. Know that you may have added just a tiny bit of meaning and connection to their experience during these often troubling holidays.

'Tis the season to be giving.

Marriage equality will not solve sexual orientation discrimination issues: Study finds economic vulnerability in states that allow discrimination

With growing acceptance nationwide toward marriage equality, the state-by-state approach as it regards employment non-discrimination and other forms of inequality for LGBT people has created a "good news, bad news" scenario for many, including those of us in Tennessee.

Good news: Marriage equality has gained traction and momentum in the last few years, a movement on the cusp of positive transition throughout the nation.

Good news: The Federal government has just announced protections for transgender workers, according to LGBTQNation, stating that:“The U.S. government is now interpreting federal law to explicitly prohibit workplace discrimination against transgender individuals. The Department of Justice says transgender individuals are covered under Civil Rights Act of 1964.” Progress is being made.

Nashville mayoral candidate Megan Barry agrees this is a good thing, and also acknowledges the bad news for Tennesseans. "I’m happy to see that the federal government will protect transgender Americans from employment discrimination by state and local agencies," she told me. "However, we still have a long ways to go to eliminate all forms of discrimination in the workplace. No person should ever be denied employment based on their race, religion, national origin, gender, or because of whom they love.”

Good news: Discrimination of LGBT people has decreased over the years and many Americans are happy about that change.

Bad news: Over half of the states in our United States have not passed non-discrimination laws.  How the new Federal ruling affects states will soon be determined.

A new report from the Williams Institute finds that “LGBT Americans in the 29 states without state laws that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation consistently see greater disparities than in the 21 states with such laws, including less social acceptance, greater economic vulnerability, especially among African-American LGBT workers, and wider household income gaps.” The report maintains that with the legal landscape of rights and protections for LGBT Americans shifting from state to state, LGBT Americans are suffering. We live in one of those places, the South. This may come as no surprise, but what we do about this is what matters.

Many LBGT people do suffer in the South. Think about the studies that illustrate the health disparities between African Americans and white Americans. African Americans have higher health risks than white Americans on average. Friends of mine in the Civil Rights Movement talk about the breaking of the spirit of those who are oppressed, those different from the majority, those who have less power and presence in our government. Breaking people’s spirits leads to serious physical and emotional health problems, to rage, apathy, depression and despair. Productivity decreases in workers, suicides increase, and families are torn apart.

Good news: Because of these disparities, the Human Rights Campaign has endorsed a federal LGBT non-discrimination bill to address discrimination in credit, education, employment, federal funding, housing, jury service and public accommodations for all Americans.

Perhaps if this bill passes there will be fewer differences between states in terms of how LGBT people are treated and respected. We can hope that the nation and our leaders respond affirmatively to this bill. Please speak to your legislators and other leaders about all of these issues.“Viewing gender identity discrimination as sex discrimination already covered in the law is a huge step forward for the safety and prosperity of transgender and gender nonconforming people," Chris Sanders, from the Tennessee Equality Project, said. "The safest course is to back up the federal interpretation with court precedent and federal, state, and local laws that explicitly protect people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. So the work continues.”

One day maybe we will be able to say that we are One Nation…. indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.