Reply #16: you could read this to them: [View All]

[nofurylike]

it presents both sides.
it is very good for them that you are the master.
you clearly care deeply about your son, and about discrimination.


peace!


AMA: Banning LGBT Youth from Groups Risks Their Health (RI)
By Jennifer Levitz, Journal Staff Writer
June 20, 2001

The American Medical Association, considered the nation's arbiter of health advice, from salt intake to seat belts, yesterday made a more unusual diagnosis: Discrimination is bad for the health.

The AMA voted into official policy a resolution that says it is a health risk to ban homosexuals from youth organizations. The resolution originated with a doctor who is a leader of a Boy Scout troop on the East Side of Providence; The Rhode Island Medical Society submitted it to the AMA last month.

The AMA's 547-member House of Delegates voted on the resolution yesterday, at its annual conference in Chicago, asking youth organizations nationwide to "reconsider exclusionary policies that are based on sexual orientation."

The Rhode Island Medical Society, which has two delegates to the AMA annual conference, argued that discriminatory policies increase the risk of suicide and depression among gay youths. Its resolution did not mention the Boy Scouts of America, nor does the AMA policy.

The AMA policy also does not mention the higher risk -- reported in several medical studies -- of suicide for gay youths. Delegates said that discriminatory policies based on sexual orientation are "bad for adolescent health at a number of levels, not just limited to suicide," said Michael Macko, a doctor of internal medicine from Providence, who is the president of the Rhode Island Medical Society, and a delegate to the AMA convention.

Macko, in a phone call from Chicago yesterday, estimated that at least 80 percent of the delegates approved the policy during a voice vote.

Only two doctors spoke out against the resolution during yesterday's vote, he said, with one of them being concerned about pedophilia. Others pointed out that there is "no relationship between pedophilia and homosexuality," he said.

He also heard opponents say that the AMA should not be taking a stand on discrimination -- that it is not a health issue.

"But the reason it passed so easily was that it was recognized that it is adverse to the health of adolescents to be discriminated against," Macko said.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year upheld the Boy Scouts' right to ban gays. One delegate, Macko said, noted: "Yes, they have the legal right, but that doesn't make it right."

"One man said, 'Gee, you know there's nothing illegal about smoking, but that doesn't mean the AMA is wrong to come out against smoking as a health hazard,' "Macko said. "This is very analagous."

The Boy Scouts of America is believed to be one of the few youth organizations that exclude based on sexual orientation.

The Narraganset Council of Boy Scouts, in Rhode Island, referred questions to the Boy Scouts of America headquarters in Dallas. National spokesman Gregg Shields did not return a voice-mail message left yesterday.

There are several doctors on the national board of directors for the Boy Scouts. Among them are Louis W. Sullivan, president of Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and W. Walter Menninger, a psychiatrist who is head of the well-known Menninger Clinic in Kansas.

Yesterday, Carlos R. Hamilton Jr., a Houston doctor who sits on the Boy Scouts' national policy-making executive board, said the AMA's latest advice isn't likely to change minds.

He said the Boy Scouts "make no bones about what kind of leaders they want to have," and that it's up to parents to choose the kinds of role models they want their children to have.

For more information, please contact:
Providence Journal http://www.projo.com
75 Fountain St.
Providence, RI, 02902
Fax: [phone]
E-Mail: [e-mail]