Lance is pictured center with partner Erik on the left,at their Pride Day wedding officiated by Margaret Cho.
A Gay Men’s Health Agenda
By Lance Toma, LCSW
Executive Director,
It’s so simple and real and within our reach.
For gay and lesbian youth, for trans youth, for all youth – not having comprehensive, queer- and transgender-affirming sex education, is irresponsible, unethical and life-threatening. Abstinence-only education must end; the consequence of this policy is an increasing the mortality rate for the LGBT community as a whole. Condom education must be taught alongside abstinence, within a larger frame of communication and negotiation, respect for our romantic and sexual partners, love for our bodies and the clear acknowledgement of the sovereignty of our bodies, and affirmation of our sexual orientations and gender identities. Anything less is homophobic, heterosexist, and contributing to the debilitating co-morbidities associated with being part of the LGBT community.
Health care systems, insurance structures, and all related policies must guarantee LGBT and immigrant and refugee inclusiveness, sensitivity and access. When anyone is scared to access our health care system, we have failed. When one is an immigrant, perhaps an undocumented immigrant and gay, there is no incentive to take care of one’s health, and our society sets that person up to remain alienated from their health care system. We must demand systems and models that are culturally and linguistically competent, that do not discriminate based on immigration status or sexual orientation or gender identity.
A WORLD FULL OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND FREE OF STIGMA & DISCRIMINATION
I have often been perplexed at the relationship between marriage and health. And, while I do not see this issue as the end-all and be-all of our movement, I now have had the experiences of getting married several times (to the same person) in my state of California. This simple, and relatively quick (because I suppose with all the heterosexual marriages, our government has figured out how to make this a relatively red-tape-free process that can go from start to finish in under an hour), action of marriage has long-term and powerful effects. In my family, my Asian parents and grandparent and aunties and uncles have embraced my African American partner and our African American son. My in-laws embrace me as son and grandson and nephew. Our neighborhood community, mostly comprised of older heterosexual African American families, has showered us with presents and good wishes on our marriage.
We are all on a road that is not so well-traveled and at the same time being actively paved with great intentions and goals by amazing people. As we continue on this path, I look forward to the struggles and the stumbles, the delights and destinations along the way, and ultimately to that part of the path that is less bumpy because we will have achieved the structures and the policies, the models and the systems that ensure that we, alongside our brothers and sisters and sons and daughters, thrive now and into the future.
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[Click here to read previous input into the 2009 Gay Men's Health Agenda. Please feel free to comment there - or you could send in a full post of your own here. We will be happy to publish it! The feedback we receive will be featured in the closing plenary of the upcoming National Gay Men's Health Summit and will be a means of moving the community forward in the new year around issues that are important to all of us.]
Really nicely put. Thanks for writing. Yes, we sure need universal healthcare.
ReplyDeleteOne small suggestion: I think everyone has an incentive, a desire, to take care of their own health. That incentive IS health. However, there can certainly be many competing priorities and barriers to access, particularly for immigrants.