thought you'd all want to see this

[kcobweb]

Action Alert !

From David Byrom, Ph.D., President

The National Coalition of Mental Health

Professionals and Consumers, Inc.

Hello colleagues and friends,

Recently, I was asked to help present a workshop on suicide prevention among GLBT individuals, at the third in a series of five regional conferences on suicide prevention in the U.S. This particular conference covers Public Health Regions 9 and 10 (basically, the entire west coast). Following is a statement my co-presenters and I have prepared outlining recent chilling events surrounding our workshop. One interesting thing to note ­ the two previous conferences, one in New Orleans and the other in Denver, contained workshops very similar to ours and were not a problem. The difference? Both were held PRIOR to the last election.

We give permission to forward this to whoever you believe needs to read it:

Please distribute as widely as possible:

Statement of Concern and Protest

Government funders within the Bush Administration at SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) notified the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) that SAMHSA Administrator, Charles Curie, would not be allowed to attend a SPRC regional conference on suicide prevention if conference organizers went forward with a workshop title that included the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual", and "transgender". The conference is scheduled to take place in Portland, Oregon, February 28-March 2. The original title of the workshop was "Suicide Prevention Among Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender Individuals."

On January 31, Lloyd Potter, SPRC Center Director, contacted workshop presenters Ron Bloodworth, Joyce Liljeholm and Reid Vanderburgh and requested that we come up with alternative wording for the workshop so that the words "gay","lesbian","bisexual", or "transgender" did not appear in the workshop title or descriptor.

We worked with SPRC to create alternative wording so that the workshop could continue to be offered but we expressed deep concern about government intrusion to remove any reference to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the workshop title and descriptor. After agreeing to the title "suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations", we were told that the new title would be acceptable to SAMHSA and that we could use the term "sexual orientation" in the workshop descriptor but that the term "gender identity" would "not fly with SAMHSA."

We are still planning to offer the workshop as originally planned even though the workshop title and descriptor had to be changed but we will not be quiet about the heavy handed efforts of SAMSHA to render gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender people invisible. The action of our government in this regard is the very reason a workshop on suicide prevention with gay,lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender individuals is needed. How ironic! The discriminatory and intimidating actions of SAMHSA and the Bush administration should not go unchallenged and should be of concern to all Americans.

Comments

[saltcod.livejournal.com]

There's plenty of pithy things I could probably say.
But mostly--this is just causing me to make disgruntled HMPH!ing noises.
Morons.

[shideem.livejournal.com]

seconding those HMPHing noises. damn! wtf?

[trope.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Scary, miserable, disheartening. I am reposting on my group blog.

[sanj.livejournal.com]

Oh, for crying out Christ.

Thanks for the intel.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I can (I'd like to) post a link to this on my website, but I need the original link - I can't do it to a livejournal entry.

[xochiquetzl]

Yeah, I ended up linking here, but I would have liked an outside source as well. I googled, but had no love.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

If I had a website to point you to, I would - but I got this as an email myself. Sorry.

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Ah well.

link to the conference

[firepie.livejournal.com]

SPRC Suicide Prevention Regional Planning Conference- Regions 9 & 10 (http://www.sprc.org/calendar/reg910conf.asp)

This really isn't funny. NIH research is being defunded and audited, scientists harassed, grants not approved when "transgender" or "homosexual" is in the wording. This article is about suicide, but think about having to study HIV transmission without accessing information about MSM or MSTG or TG-IDU. Imagine having to do prevention work(funded by the government) in which you are not allowed to talk about safer ways of having sex that is not normative heterosexual sex. Surely it's impossible to talk about the high rates of gay and trans kids killing themselves without also talking about the pressures of being gay or trans, stigma, or anything which would actually be useful to talk about. Coming from a government which wants evolution, if taught at all, to be called a "theory" and placed aside "the alternate theory of creationsim" nothing should be surprising.

Re: link to the conference

[sugarmommaless.livejournal.com]

I'm not good with acronyms. Can you tell me what MSM, MSTG and TG-IDU stand for?

Re: link to the conference

[firepie.livejournal.com]

These are BRGs (Behavioral risk Groups). In order to qualify for federal (and also usually state, county, city funding for HIV & HIV prevention, you have to target BRGs - and you don't get to decide what a BRG is. The federal government has done that for you.

MSM: men who have sex with men.
MSMW: men who have sex with men & women
MSM/IDU: men who have sex with men & injection drug users
IDU: injection drug users
WSR: women at sexual risk

recently, LA has added:
TGSW: transgender women at sexual risk (don't think this is a federally approved one, but it might be)

MSTG: I made it up to indicate men who have sex with transgender women

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

Here's some links, outside LiveJournal:

Request to Edit Title of Talk On Gays, Suicide Stirs Ire (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27202-2005Feb15.html?sub=AR) (Washington Post)

Don't ask, don't tell (http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/16/suicide/index.html)

[chipuni.livejournal.com]

One addition: I'm a little concerned that the statement does not yet appear on the NCMHPC (http://www.thenationalcoalition.org/welcome.htm) webpage.

[chimerically.livejournal.com]

I saw your post on auros's blog. Would it help to contact SAMHSA to protest this? (Their email address is info@samhsa.hhs.gov. If you want to poke around their website for other contact information, it's http://www.samhsa.gov/.)

[xochiquetzl]

A friend of mine (techn0goddess) sent me an update. I thought you'd like to see it:

http://www.metroweekly.com/mwblog/?iblogid=118

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[vinegar-chick.livejournal.com]

Isn't Cheney's daughter gay? Somebody in his family is. Now if ever there were anyone I would understand wanting to commit suicide it'd be her. The things these nutcases do. Makes me not want to go home.