Witch Hunts

Psychotherapist Jayme Peta posted a thought-provoking piece on her blog recently that compares the marginalization of the LGBTQ community to witch hunts. One technique of this marginalization are the so-called "Hell Houses."

She quotes Irene Monroe, who writes, "Hell houses are today’s contemporary form of witch-hunting. Created in the late 1970’s by fundamentalist pastor Rev. Jerry Falwell, hell houses are religious alternatives to traditional haunted houses. They are tours given by evangelical churches across the country design to scare people away from sin. And one of those sins is homosexuality."

Peta continues:

The witchhunts go on: it is still about anxiety about sex and gender, distortions and projections by a culture on it its most vulnerable. They are about turning people against one another out of terror and fear of “going to hell.” Now, instead of targeting women, the new “witches” are those who do not fit sexual and gender norms. Instead of neighbors turning in neighbors, youth bully children at school who don’t fit gender norms. This results in trauma, physical injuries and at times, death. Some things don’t change.

Today, we don't burn our "witches." What we have, instead, is a seemingly blameless cultural system in which LGBTQ youth are estranged from their families because of an apparently valid series of beliefs. We teach self-hatred and repression. This is a sentencing, a cause of homelessness. Forced rootlessness or burning at the stake: which is the less dignified is debatable.

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Sex, Queer Theology and the Homeless (or how I get off about getting off)

When I talk about love and street communities, the response is often to question whether it’s “responsible” for the homeless to engage in such relationships, as if needing to give and receive affection were a bizarre luxury. Admittedly, my friends, in other respects warm allies with the homeless, will sometimes snicker darkly when they learn that two residents are engaged in a sexual relationship, or were, will talk reproachfully and patronizingly about the risks involved, the instability. This is rationalized through the deployment of compassion for the person's situation, but I can’t shake the suspicion that something more is at play here, a subtle agreement that sexual love among the homeless is taboo.

A cursory review of our resident demographics shows why this may be the case. “Homeless” is a sociological warehouse term that encompasses categories of the oppressed displaced by economic marginalization. As Jonathan Kozol writes, the “primary problem facing the homeless today is that of not having a home,” disproportionately a socio-economic penalty for people of color, immigrants, the mentally ill, those suffering from long-term chronic illnesses like addiction, and members of LGBTQ communities. Street sex is queer sex. The two can’t be divided.

Please contact me for the remainder.

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Why disPlacement?

Because the post-modern American experience of homelessness reflects a unique history of cultural rootlessness in this country. Identity and privilege are now determined by one's placement, the depth of one's roots in the dominant community.

Within this context, homelessness has become a potent social violence, a collective punishment that serves both as a method and consequence of marginalization. Who loses? The chronically ill, physically or mentally so, the poor, people of color, the queer community, veterans- all are to varying degrees outliers severely undercut by greater systemic vulnerability to homelessness. The homeless themselves are then twisted in public perception to appear to be a homogeneous quasi-ethnic group subject to further social abuse and criminalization. Yet another of many underclasses in this country: the displaced.

Placement, in this sense, can be defined as a disruption of any socio-political axis mundi, any discourse that creates margins resulting in homelessness. Placement is feminism, queer theory, indigenous rights, the syncretic, liberation theology, squatter's movements, anti-racism, anti-colonialism, or any model, constantly revised, that destabilizes the binary of mainstream and counter-culture. Paradoxically, this form of cultural disruption can create the possibility for inclusion and security for all people. Placement implies that all people at all times have the right to a stable and permanent homecoming, spiritually and materially.

If this is the case, placement is clearly about more than just the cultivation of a political will to create more affordable housing. It's about how we treat one another every day. Placement and displacement occur all the time. That's what's wonderful about it: we always get to choose between the two, interrogate the present, choose homecoming over exile. It's up to us.

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More on Why Health Care Reform Could Cut Homelessness

Nan Roman, President of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, weighed in on health care reform in the Huffington Post:

It's not always easy to see, but homelessness and health care have a clear -- and cyclical -- relationship: poor health can lead to homelessness, and homelessness can aggravate poor health. And both can be a burden on our health care system.

Many people become homeless due to a lack of health care. Untreated illnesses can lead to disability and job loss -- and unemployment remains one of the leading causes of homelessness. It's worth noting here that the leading cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical expenses, insured or not. So people's incomes are clearly tied up with their ability to get or pay for health care; and the lower incomes lead to higher risk of homelessness.

To read a concise summary of Roman's points from Change.org, click here.

Image courtesy of New York Daily News. Caption: First lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks during an East Room event at the White House.

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News: UN Rep Schools the US on Homelessness

From the London Guardian:

A United Nations special investigator who was blocked from visiting the US by the Bush administration has accused the American government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing banks and big business while treating as "invisible" a deepening homeless crisis.

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing.

"The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

Is anyone listening to this?

Image: Raquel Rolnik

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Another Reason to Hate Perez Hilton

Ass.

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Policy Review: Health Care Reform Essential to Ending Homelessness

Neil Peirce at the The Denver Post contributed a perfect example of how commentators can use the health care debate to keep homelessness on the political radar. He writes:

By failing to restrain medical system costs or guarantee care for all Americans, we've forced thousands of families to go into bankruptcy. Today, alarming numbers are being forced to take to the streets where their health is even more endangered by extremes of pelting rain or stone-cold nights, unsanitary conditions and sometimes violence.

This is an essential approach, I think, one that grounds the health care debate in something more substantive than emotional screeds. Peirce rightly points out that what's at stake isn't our souls, as might be at issue in the question of whether or not health care is a human right (though I agree that it is). Instead, to frame a broken health system as root cause of multiple (expensive) social ills is to highlight the possibility of sweeping improvements for all levels of society.

It goes both ways. To strengthen and reform programs that prevent homelessness is to reform the health care system. That's an angle I wish more advocates would deploy. Peirce quotes HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, "Simply put, if we want to tackle health care reform - if we want to lower costs - we must tackle homelessness. It's that simple."

Image courtesy of The Denver Post. Stephen Titus, who served in the Army in 1982-92, tries to read a newspaper clipping to see whether his glasses, donated by Navy veteran Frank Montijo, right, are the correct strength at Thursday's Homeless Veterans Stand Down. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

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