Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 1, Spring 2005 | Page 64

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Popular Culture Review
wife were once foster parents and eventually adopted their now twenty-four
year-old son, Jamiel Terry. Jamiel “came out” in his essay “A Rising Son”
published in the May 2004 issue of OUT magazine. After that, he was no longer
welcome in the Terry home.)
“Affirm homosexuality”? It seems more a matter of acknowledging
reality. A young gay person would not appropriately be placed with foster
parents who believed and acted as if their ward were a “sinner” and his/her
sexuality “an abomination to God.” Actually, no children should be placed in a
home where they would automatically be seen as damned “sinners” and their
burgeoning sexuality an evil to be denied. It would certainly not be in their best
interests, psychologically or sociologically. Imagine being locked into a “home”
where the “loving” parental figures said who you were was a perversion
condemned by God. As Gary Cohan, M.D. , noted in his March 2004
Advocate.com article “Rx: Marriage”:
After 20 years of practicing medicine in the gay community, I
can report that many diseases and most self-destructive
behaviors are tied to low self-esteem. Alienation from
families, shame, social isolation, hate-fueled violence, and
being called “faggot” does so much damage to the young
psyche that many of my adult patients now struggle with the
tragic aftermath: depression, substance use, and sexual
compulsivity to fill the emotional void.
6. The health care system will stagger and perhaps collapse.
The whole of Dobson’s arguments reads as follows:
This could be the straw that breaks the back of the insurance
industry in Western nations, as millions of new dependents
become eligible for coverage. Every HIV-positive patient
needs only to find a partner to receive the same coverage as
offered to an employee. It is estimated by some analysts that
drastic increases in premiums can be anticipated and that it
may not be profitable for companies to stay in business.
And how about the cost to American businesses? Will they be
able to provide health benefits? If not, can physicians, nurses,
and technicians be expected to work for nothing or to provide
their services in exchange for a vague promise of payments
from indigent patients? Try selling that to a neurosurgeon or
an orthopedist who has to pay increased premiums for
malpractice insurance. The entire health care system could
implode. (58)