Good for the Media

[rowyn]

Some weeks ago, an official from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) made a particularly dumb move. SAMHSA was providing substantial funding for a suicide prevention conference in Oregon. One of the panels was to be titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals". A SAMHSA official looking over the conference schedule contacted the organizers and threatened to withdraw funding if the words "Gay", "Lesbian", "Bisexual" and "Transgender" weren't removed from the panel name. The panel could be given -- but it dcouldn't be advertised as what it was. The organizers intended to comply, changing the name to something that would obscure the reason for offering the panel.

I could rant at length on how offensive and repellent the SAMHSA official's move was, but I don't think anyone in my readership needs help on this, so I'll skip it.*

The media got wind of the story, and soon a series of articles deriding this decision were popping up all over the place. The agency was deluged with protest emails. Congress members got involved.

In response to the outcry, the SAMHSA administrator issued a "clarification" in which he effectively recanted and reversed the lower-level decision that the name needed to be changed.

It would've been nice if it had taken less prodding, and come with an apology, too, but I guess that's too much to expect of a government agency.

* Yes, as a Libertarian, I could argue whether or not the government ought to be paying for conferences in the first place, and the fact that the money gives the gov't the leverage to pull these kinds of stunts is Exhibit A on "Why Government Funding Is Bad". But if my tax dollars are going to pay for this sort of thing, they sure shouldn't be paying for the doublespeak version thereof. Bah.

Comments

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

I am having a hard time even understanding why the initial protest was raised.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

They were probably afraid of controversy. Among a small portion of the American populace, the notion that GLBT people should be prevented from killing themselves apparently is controversial; a much larger portion still refuse to accept that GLBT is a minority group and not a behavior.

Since neither of these groups is particularly swayed by scientific evidence, it's likely to take a couple of generations of friendly GLBT media coverage before these attitudes can be overcome. In the meantime, attacking minorities has frequently been a successful strategy for political demagogues, so it'll probably continue.

[prester-scott.livejournal.com]

They were probably afraid of controversy.

If that's the case, then the protesting individual is a blithering idiot. He or she (I'm not clear which, if either, of the individuals named in the article is the one who initiated it) had to know that bucking a loud minority group (which, politically speaking, it is, regardless of the nature of the associated behavior) would bring down hell upon their heads. I am shocked that a government bureaucrat wouldn't have thought of that.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

If the complaint issued from a fairly low level I can absolutely believe it. Both the protest, and the protestor being a blithering idiot -- there are a lot of them in bureaucracies because there's just so little concept of personal responsibility.

Frankly, I bet the protestor is absolutely shocked that 1) anyone would stand up to her, 2) someone else would actually overrule her, and 3) that any of this would attach to her personally with all the potential interpersonal ramifications.

[rowyn]

Brenda Bruun, a project manager as SAMHSA, was the bureaucrat who objected to the original title of the panel.

No idea what her motive or agenda was. But I'm inclined to agree with Cynthia Rose, here: I think it was an effort to eradicate anything from her purview that might look the least bit controversial. "Oh, I don't want my bosses to think that I was pushing the Gay Agenda by sponsoring this conference, I'd better make them change the panel name so that it won't come to the notice of anyone higher up."

And yes, it was dumb on her part, from every angle. But an understandable kind of dumb. If the organizer hadn't decided it was worth taking to the press (and he could have easily decided not to; this IS the hand that feeds him, so to speak, and hoping that if he bites it some new and better master will take over is not necessarily a safe gamble) then there would've been no outcry over it. No one would've even noticed.

I gotta admit, I don't envy the organizers if they still have to deal with this woman for future conferences. :P

[rowyn]

In the meantime, attacking minorities has frequently been a successful strategy for political demagogues, so it'll probably continue.

'Course, it doesn't always work. Senator Kerry's campaign against rich people didn't net him the presidency.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Al-Qaeda is also a minority, and George Bush made lots of points attacking them.

[koogrr.livejournal.com]

They're just seeing how much they can get away with, then backing off if the protest is too great.

[rowyn]

I actually don't think that's what's happening in this particular case. (In other cases, like teachers and principals banning students from making political statements, I'd say that's what's happening, though).

But in this instance, as I said in a thread above, I think it's more a matter of a mid-level administrator thinking that it would "look bad" for her to be seen funding anything that seemed remotely gay-friendly. The fact that she was focused on the title and not the content of the panel is what makes me think it was purely based on how she thought it'd look on her next review or on her resume.

Of course, the fact that someone could even think it would look bad to support this topic is pretty damning of the current political climate. I don't suppose it makes much difference whether it's a vast conspiracy of overzealous nuts, or just a bunch of sheeple bureacrats who think that they need to act like oversealous nuts in order to scrape by undetected. :/

[queenofstripes.livejournal.com]

Thank you for posting this. *hug*

[rowyn]

You're welcome. *hug*