PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Oregon mental health community is enraged after the organizers of a suicide prevention program were asked to delete references to gay, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people in the event's title.
The workshop's title is now "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations," instead of "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals."
Organizers say they were asked to remove the words by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, the federal agency which is funding the Feb. 28 workshop in Portland.
The controversy has promoted a flood of e-mails to the office of Charles Curie, the administrator of the federal agency.
"Charlie is getting e-mails calling him a Nazi," said Mark Weber, the agency's communications director. "It is disgraceful the hate that these people have sent to him."
Weber explained that an agency project manager had suggested that the phrase "sexual orientation" would be more inclusive than the words gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender.
They passed on that suggestion to the Newton, Mass.-based Suicide Prevention Resource Center, which contracts with the agency to stage conferences.
Soon after, the Portland workshop presenters said they were asked by the resource center to remove the offending words.
"This has become a political football," said Reid Vanderburgh of Portland, one of the workshop presenters and a psychologist who treats transgendered men and women.
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http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1108571133101140.xml&storylist=orlocal Washington -- A federal agency's efforts to remove the words "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual" and "transgender" from the program of a federally funded conference on suicide prevention have inspired scores of experts in mental health to flood the agency with angry e-mails.
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that is funding the conference on Feb. 28 in Portland, Ore. On the program, at least until recently, is a talk titled "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals."
Everyone seems to agree the topic is important. Studies have found that the suicide risk among people in these groups is two to three times higher than the average risk.
So it came as a surprise to Ron Bloodworth -- a former coordinator of youth suicide prevention for Oregon and one of three specialists leading the session -- when word came down from SAMHSA project manager Brenda Bruun that the contractor running the program should omit the four words that described precisely what the session was about.
Bloodworth was told it would be acceptable to use the term "sexual orientation." But that did not make sense to him. "Everyone has a sexual orientation," he said in an interview Tuesday. "But this was about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders."
The title rewrite was one of several requested changes. Another was to add a session on faith-based suicide prevention, said Mark Weber, a spokesman for SAMHSA, who said he believed the brouhaha was all a misunderstanding.
SAMHSA prefers the term "sexual orientation" simply because it is more "inclusive" he said. And besides, he added, it was only a suggestion.
Asked how strong a suggestion, Weber replied: "Well, they do need to consider their funding source."
Upon due consideration, Bloodworth renamed the session "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations." But he is not happy.
"We find this behavior on the part of our government intolerable," he wrote in an e-mail to colleagues, in which he called upon the government to "end this shameful marginalization of an already marginalized at-risk population."
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/16/MNG71BBLDI1.DTL The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is under fire from some mental-health experts for requesting that references to gays and lesbians be removed from a SAMHSA-funded suicide-prevention conference program, the Washington Post reported Feb. 16.
SAMHSA project manager Brenda Bruun requested that a session at an upcoming Suicide Prevention Resource Center conference in Portland, Ore., be changed from "Suicide Prevention Among Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Transgender Individuals" to something that does not directly reference the terms "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," or "transgender."
Bruun told session organizer Ron Bloodworth that using the term "sexual orientation" would be acceptable. But Bloodworth noted, "Everyone has a sexual orientation. But this was about gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgenders. Unless you use an accurate term, the people you are trying to reach don't recognize themselves and don't attend."
"We find this behavior on the part of our government intolerable," Bloodworth wrote in an e-mail to colleagues.
SAMHSA spokesperson Mark Weber said that the agency prefers the term "sexual orientation" because it is more "inclusive." Weber added that the change was just a suggestion, not a mandate.
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http://www.jointogether.org/sa/news/summaries/reader/0,1854,576216,00.html
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