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A Child in Our Time

15/11/2020 By ACOMSDave

A Child in our Time came about because yesterday I read an article by Jack Shenker on Craig Easton’s photographs of the Williams family which was published in the Guardian Weekend. It was thought-provoking in a number of ways, firstly the Williams family were not different from you and I, they worked and if it hadn’t been for the ‘depression’ of the 90s brought about by a number of factors including:

restrictive monetary policy enacted by central banks, primarily in response to inflation concerns, the loss of consumer and business confidence as a result of the 1990 oil price shock…Wikipedia

and because of the recession, they lost jobs and homes and ended up on benefits. They strived to get out the hole that they were driven into and let’s be honest neither the politics and politicians of that day, nor even today seem to understand what they need to help them step up out of the quagmire that governments have put them in.

But they are not alone; according to the current government’s own information, there were 5.6 million people on Universal Credit at 9 July 2020, an increase of 2% from 11 June 2020. around 42% (that means 4 in 10) of claimants were in the ‘Searching for work’ conditionality group. But again, this statistic means little until you also look at how many people in the United Kingdom are on the poverty line. According to fullfact.org, An estimated 14.3 million people are in poverty in the UK. 8.3 million are working-age adults, 4.6 million are children, and 1.3 million are of pension age. Around 22% of people are in poverty, and 34% of children are (27 Sep 2019).

As I said, the Williams family are not unique in what has happened to them, but I wonder if anyone in the government realises just how far we have sunk? We have initiatives driven by individuals like Marcus Rashford and other sporting stars, by organisations like Children in Need, businesses who either have their own initiatives or who have joined together to support others, and of course, we have private individuals – but, why does it seem that the government always seems to behind in taking action that will help positively. I see lots of government initiatives which rarely seem to achieve much!

 

Child in our Time - Levels of poverty

(Joseph Rowntree Fundation)

Also, I again have to note that it is not just the conservative government, the Labour/Lib Dem pact was equally as bad.
I honestly do not know the solution, but I do know that if we continue to vote in politicians who have little or no idea of the society that they are representing then as a country we would seem to be doomed.

 

The Joseph Rowntree Foundations says:

Solving poverty is not quick or easy, but it is possible, starting with a vision, commitment and a plan.

 

Child in our Time - Poverty - Free Creative Commons Highway Sign image

 

Links:

  • Poverty among gay people common but often ignored – campaigner
  • LGBT Seniors Shouldn’t Die Penniless and Alone

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Filed Under: Community Journalist, Government & Politics, History Tagged With: child, Children, Conservative, government, job loss, joseph rowntree trust, labour, lib dem, poverty, unemployment, universal credit

How to Break the Bullying Cycle

26/12/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

OUT dot com logo
 

gay bullying

Author Jonathan Fast discusses his book Beyond Bullying and the danger of ‘gay-neutral’ school policies.


 
Jonathan Fast knows what it’s like to be bullied. As a chubby 8-year-old in summer camp, he was tormented by an athletic boy who broke his arm. Even his father, Spartacus author Howard Fast, was bullied by the House Committee on Un-American Activities for being communist in the 1950s.
In his powerful new book, Beyond Bullying: Breaking the Cycle of Shame, Bullying, and Violence, 67-year-old Dr. Fast takes an unhurried look at the shame underlying violence towards LGBT and straight folks alike. “With this book, I hope readers will be better equipped to deal with bullying of every sort,” he explains, while speaking at his Yeshiva University office. “With time, we’ll be moved, if only by a single degree, closer toward a place where all people are equally valued and respected.” Fast spoke about the danger of “gay-neutral” school policies, fighting back, and whether or not there’s a “cure” for bullying.
Out: Did being harassed as a kid inspire this topic?
Jonathan Fast: In my last book, Ceremonial Violence, about school shootings, a detail was missing about the Columbine killers and other perpetrators. At a conference I heard a talk about shame, and had an epiphany: I realized these vicious guys were carrying huge amounts of that primal emotion. Most likely they were disappointing their parents, not gainfully employed, having trouble socially. Why turn to school shooting? Because they couldn’t express their shame if they wanted to appear mature, powerful, and successful. It’s taboo even to talk about this feeling because it’s associated with little children, weakness, and failure. Ultimately it comes out of their guns.
Gays have been bullied for decades. But during Stonewall, they fought back. Is rioting a useful reaction to feeling oppressed?
It’s a common form of shame management when the feeling is intense, shared by a lot of people, and there seems to be no other peaceful means of managing it. Rioters are usually unaware of their motivations beyond a general sense of rage and frustration. While neighborhoods may be damaged and community members hurt, the events draw attention to grave social problems. Stonewall created a milestone for the gay rights movement and empowered a subculture.
How have LGBT individuals dealt with society’s violence toward them?
Some choose to use their fists, which yields mixed results. Jamie Nabozny invoked the law. In 1988, after coming out in his Wisconsin middle school, he was repeatedly tortured by classmates. The problem persisted into high school. He sued both principals, staff members, and the school district for neglecting to protect him. Lambda Legal came on board, pushing the case into the headlines. A partner at the white shoe law firm Skadden Arps offered his services pro bono. The jury found the school administrators liable for failing to stop antigay violence against Nabozny, who won a 1 million dollar settlement.
In Minnesota, two young women responded with social action. A romantic couple in high school, they’d heard about a series of local gay teenagers killing themselves and wanted to bring visibility to non-traditional gender roles. They got elected to a 12-member Royal Court, and were set to walk in a public ceremony. But days before the procession, a teacher told them their plan was unacceptable because they were two women. They contacted the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Southern Poverty Law Center and battled against the school leadership. Ultimately they won the right to proceed on the red carpet, to wild cheers and applause.
Regarding that group of suicides, you point to education policies as potential culprits. One high school had written a mandate for faculty and staff to show respect for all students, and to remain neutral on matters regarding sexual orientation. It led to a spate of teen suicides over two years. What went wrong?
A lot. The 2009 recession hit that suburb hard. Residents bought big houses and got caught with giant mortgages. Middle class folks became homeless, living in their cars. Kids were told not to speak about their depression and lack of cash. So they couldn’t manage their shame. To begin with, adolescents aren’t working with a full biological deck. The frontal lobe—the part of the brain that analyzes consequences—doesn’t mature until age 25. Influenced by their peers, teens often make poor choices.
Add to that mix a poorly worded edict that bans any reference to homosexuality, spearheaded by conservative parents. It silenced the few gay teachers who’d acted as a support network for kids coming out. Trying to be neutral, one school psychologist took down the picture of her partner on her desk. Youngsters stopped hearing “it gets better.” All these things contributed to hidden shame, which you tend to turn inward, resulting in acts like cutting, and in this case, a cluster of suicides.
The ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in the U.S. military has been repealed. Marriage equality is the rule of law. But in one study, 95% of gay adolescents reported feeling separated and emotionally isolated from peers because of their sexual orientation. Around 50% of gay adolescents have experienced physical violence by family members. Research has shown that LGBT teens attempt suicide four times more frequently than their heterosexual peers. When will this trend reverse?
It’ll take another generation to change. I grew up in a homophobic home and my father was an intellectual. He’d say a great writer would never be gay, because they couldn’t relate to the basic human experience. Which was absurd. But when you’re a little kid and your father is a celebrated author, you tend to believe him.
In 1963 the New York Times published an article “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern.” Its title reflected the opinion of the Times and the times. I see it getting better with my grown kids.
We all carry shame at times. What are healthy ways to deal with it?
Write about it. Express yourself through art. The film The Gift is a good example. It’s about a teenage bully who grows up and doesn’t understand why in high school his target complained about getting beat up. After all, the bully had been abused by his own dad, but believed he’d sucked it up. Of course, instead of sucking it up, the roughneck had displaced his pain and trounced his victim.
Other ways to deal include going to confession, if you’re Catholic. Volunteering. Doing a good deed. The “It Gets Better” campaign is a great example.
Is there a cure for bullying?
No. We have endless examples of maltreatment of people in politics—think Donald Trump—and in media, like certain newscasters. We live in a bullying society. We have the highest homicide and incarceration rate, and the worst income division, which is a big shame factor. Believing that society is a meritocracy can be humiliating to a lot of people. They imagine success yields happiness. But if prosperity is unattainable, people take that personally. They feel ashamed, and unhappy. Sometimes the shame is turned outward, which is how we get bullies

 
BY HAIG CHAHINIAN
THU, 2015-12-24

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Filed Under: Anti-Bullying & Homophobia, Book Reviews Tagged With: bullying, Children, homophobia, kids, people, society

USA – Impeding LGBT Parents Does Not Help Children Who Need Families

12/11/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

huff-post-gay-voices-logo-1
 
Posted: 11/05/2015 4:54 pm EST  Adam Pertman
 
President, National Center on Adoption and Permanency and Myriad Strategic Partners
 

GAY DADS

ONOKY – Eric Audras via Getty Images

Eventually, every candidate running for president will probably say it. Child-welfare professionals work mightily to practice it. U.S. laws and policies promote its essential truth: Every child deserves to grow up in a safe, permanent, loving family.
Yet tens of thousands of children in our country spend too much of their lives intemporary (i.e., foster) care, unable to return to their original families but without sufficient prospects for moving into new ones.
At the same time, the number of LGBT adults serving as guardians and foster parents — many of them wanting to adopt — grows daily. And this reality has raised hopes among children’s advocates from coast to coast who see a promising, expanding pool of prospective parents for children who need them.
Even though marriage equality is now the law of the land, however, policies and practices remain in place that impede (and sometimes prevent) members of the LGBT community from becoming parents to these waiting children. On the occasion ofNational Adoption Awareness Month — i.e., November — here are just a few examples:
• Virginia, North Dakota and Michigan have all passed “conscience clause” laws, which allow foster care and adoption providers to exclude LGBT parents based on religious or moral objections. Michigan’s was just signed into law this year.
• Arizona and Utah require that preference be given to a “married man and woman” in foster and adoptive placements.
• Utah also imposes a cohabitation ban, which bars individuals who live with unmarried partners (same or different-sex) from adopting.
Some proponents of such restrictions openly acknowledge that they believe gay people are “sinners” or are otherwise problematic simply because of who they are, but most maintain they are motivated primarily by a desire to do what’s best for the kids.
It is not homophobia, they insist, to establish policies that promote the benefits of parenting by both a mother and a father who are married to each other. They frequently add that preventing LGBT adults from adopting protects children from being negatively influenced or even physically harmed by the people who are supposed to protect them.
Such arguments are, at best, ill-informed and, in some cases, just plain disingenuous.
If politicians and others who make those assertions truly believe their own words, they should act quickly to remove the millions of supposedly at-risk children who are already in families in which one or both parents are gay. More urgently, they should act expeditiously to end the scourge of single parenthood — which denies far more kids of two straight, married parents than any other cultural phenomenon in history.
Both suggestions are preposterous, of course, and I’m confident most people eventually will look back at the current restrictions on LGBT parenting and think the same.
The National Center on Adoption and Permanency (NCAP), which I’m honored to lead, is not an LGBT advocacy group. It is a nonprofit organization dedicated not only to helping every child live in an enduring family, but also to promoting evidence-based policies and practices that enable those children and families to succeed. Andthe evidence in this regard is one-sided and crystal-clear; in a nutshell, it concludes that children grow up healthier in loving homes than in temporary government care, pointedly including when those homes are headed by lesbians or gay men.
That is why a broad range of mainstream organizations – including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Association of Family Physicians, the National Association of Social Workers and the Child Welfare League of America — have come to the same conclusion as we have at NCAP. These are not groups that would put kids at risk; just the opposite. The common thread is that we work, based on the best available information, for the welfare of children. And we all agree that impeding LGBT adoption does nothing to further that goal.
Not incidentally, most practitioners in the U.S. have come to the same conclusion; that is, a growing majority of adoption agencies nationwide not only accept applications from gay and lesbian prospective parents, but also place children with them. Again, the social workers, therapists and other professionals at these agencies aren’t in business to hurt children but, rather, to improve their lives. And they’ve decided that happens when kids stop shuttling between foster homes and are safely ensconced in permanent ones.
The bottom line is poignantly simple: No state today can prevent LGBT adults from becoming parents, because those adults can do so in other ways (like surrogacy and insemination) or by moving to less-restrictive places. So all a state is doing when it imposes restrictions is shrinking its pool of prospective parents and, as a result, decreasing the odds that children in its custody will ever live in permanent, loving and successful families.

 

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Filed Under: Anti-Bullying & Homophobia Tagged With: Children, LGBT parents, USA elections, USA politics

Icelandic children’s show perfectly explains being gay

23/10/2015 By ACOMSDave Leave a Comment

Gay Times Logo14:28 21st October 2015 by Daniel Megarry

Icelandic-Show

An Icelandic kids television show has given a touching explanation of what it’s like to be gay.

Stundin Okkar, the longest running programme for children in the country, aired the scene in a recent episode, with former Eurovision contestant Paul Oscar making a guest appearance.

When asked by a woman on the show when he knew that he was gay, he replies: “You don’t decide what makes your heart beat, it just beats.”

Iceland has long been known as a tolerant society for LGBT people – the country was the first to elect an openly gay head of state, with Johanna Sigurdardottir becoming Prime Minister in 2009

 

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Filed Under: TV programme reviews Tagged With: Children, Iceland, TV Show

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