Links: Moral Murkiness, Destigmatizing Bipolar Disorder, Same-Sex Marriage in Schools, and Black Influence on American Culture

Posted by Sappho on October 27th, 2009 filed in Bipolar Disorder, Blogwatch, Marriage, Race

I met Jim Burklo back around the time he had the idea for Urban Ministry of Palo Alto. He was the driving force in organizing the group, pulling together the churches that supplied the board of directors and the volunteers, and for a time was our second Urban Minister. I was on the board for a few years, and volunteered at the drop-in center, but drifted away to other things when I switched from a swing shift job to a day one that left me less available for daytime volunteering. At his blog, Jim has a post on how, while working with Urban Ministry, he came to understand that he was dealing not with an area of moral clarity, but with Areas of Moral Murkiness.

Glenn Close on Mental Illness: The Stigma of Silence.

… Illnesses that were once discussed only in hushed tones are now part of healthy conversation and activism.

Yet when it comes to bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, schizophrenia or depression, an uncharacteristic coyness takes over. We often say nothing. The mentally ill frighten and embarrass us. And so we marginalize the people who most need our acceptance.

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well. Our society ought to understand that many people with mental illness, given the right treatment, can be full participants in our society. Anyone who doubts it ought to listen to Kay Redfield Jamison, a psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins, vividly describe her own battles with bipolar disorder.

(Incidentally, I strongly recommend Kay Redfield Jamison, as does Joel; she’s great.)

Sophia has issues with the t-shirt campaign part of Glenn Close’s effort, and has an open letter on her blog.

Hello! I am a happy and thriving person living with bipolar disorder who is writing to 1) thank you for your efforts to reduce shame and stigma related to mental illness and 2) point out that your t-shirt campaign is disabilist and highly offensive. It identifies neurotypical family members as human beings, “mother,” “sister,” etc., and implicitly praises the familial love moving them to stand by their disabled loved one. And it dehumanizes mentally ill people by labeling them as disorders rather than human beings who are also loving family members and valuable members of the human community.

Jim Burklo on a lesson he learned, while a campus minister, from one of his students with bipolar disorder.

Conor Friedersdorf has a question to which I have an answer.

Insofar as I know, I’ve never ordered or poured an alcoholic drink only to leave it sitting atop a bar or mantle or bookshelf. It isn’t that I fancy myself able to drink more than other people, or that I’m particularly conscientious about refraining from wastefulness. It’s just that I always finish my drinks. It’s the natural thing to do: limit your total drinks to avoid over-intoxication and measure your sips for maximum satisfaction so that you’ve enough for a full swig on the last one.

Every time I clean up after a party, however, perhaps fifty percent of the plastic cups, beer bottles, and beer cans contain a sip or more of leftover liquid. What gives? I suppose I can understand that some people fetch a drink, having overestimated their desire for it, and quit prior to finishing. But fifteen percent of these leftover drinks are filled almost to the rim. Who are these people that open a beer or pour a cocktail only to abandon it untatsted? Were they so drunk that they desired a last beverage even though they couldn’t remember to drink it?

Oh, this one’s actually easy. I’ve done this myself (though I no longer do). The reason you take a drink and don’t drink it is that, once you have a drink in your hand, people stop offering you a drink. Carrying that untouched drink around, and then getting yourself some water when you’re actually thirsty, saves time discussing the drink you don’t want.

10 Very Common Stupid Tricks That Wreck A Good Life. This one has more truth to it than the one about the five dating mistakes.

Jonathan Rauch on Turning Schools Into Closets.

So now it’s official: Opponents of gay marriage in Maine do not just want to block gay marriage. They want to use the law to force all discussion of gay marriage out of the schools. In other words, they demand to turn the public schools into closets.

This was always implicit in the logic of their anti-SSM message, which is, as far as it goes, unassailable. 1) Legal gay marriage will make married gay couples more visible and grant them full legal equality. 2) Gay couples’ heightened equality and visibility will increase the likelihood that gay marriage would be discussed in schools, even though marriage isn’t in the Maine curriculum.

Of course, if gay marriage can be discussed despite not being in the curriculum, it can also be discussed despite not being legal in Maine. Its existence in Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and New Hampshire might come up in the classroom, for example. So the logical consequence is: 3) The only way to protect schoolchildren’s ears from mention of SSM is to censor it….

Matt Frost on Cities White People Like.

Ta-Nehisi Coates on How Does It Feel To Be A Problem?

Andrew Sullivan on Whose Country?

From its very beginning, after all, America was a profoundly black country as well.

This took a while for an Englishman to grasp upon arriving here, because it’s so easy to carry with you all the subconscious cultural baggage you grew up with. England, after all, is deeply Anglo-Saxon….

It struck me almost at once, if only in the music I heard all around me – and then in so many other linguistic, cultural, rhetorical, spiritual ways: white Americans do not realize how black they are. Even their whiteness is partly scavenged from the fear of – and attraction to – its opposite. Even something as stereotypically white as American Catholicism, I discovered to my amazement, was also black from the very start. (Yes, those Maryland slaves. If you’ve never been to a Gospel Mass in an ancient black Catholic parish, try it some time.)

Guest contributor J Chang at Racialicious with Casting & Race Part 2: Defacing Color.

Chris Blattman with Uganda: ticking time bomb?

John Holbo at Crooked Timber with Highbrow, Lowbrow, Middlebrow.