BLOGGER’S NOTE: Before viewing this blog, go to Deaf and Gay Parallels Part I: Parents of Deaf and Gay Children first.

The mental health and medical professions have contributed much to the devaluation and marginalization of gay and deaf people respectively with one difference: the Gay community is way ahead of the Deaf community in removing the stigma against homosexuality and breaking through barriers in employment as well as corporate and political arenas.

Up until twenty-three years ago, both deafness and homosexuality have been viewed as disorders.  Homosexual people were viewed as having a mental disorder.  They were expected to act, and be heterosexual.  For anyone to come out as homosexual meant they risked getting labeled as deviant, both morally and psychologically.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association board of directors removed homosexuality from the APA list of mental disorders called Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).   However, this decision turned out to be controversial, and a new category was added in 1980 to the DSM: ego-dystonic homosexuality. Controversy continued to rage over this new label.  It wasn’t until 1986 that homosexuality was eventually removed from the DSM altogether.  For a more complete history, read Homosexuality and Mental Health.    Another article discusses a political agenda to oppose homosexuality and oppress through the use of the mental disorder label. (Unfortunately, to view the entire article, you would have to purchase it.)  Just a couple weeks ago, an Ottawa article came out on the issue of sexual reorientation therapy and APA’s reaction towards the issue. (Pun unintended.)

When homosexuality was delisted the first time in 1973 as a mental disorder, this was actually the beginning, and not the end, of the long struggle to remove the stigma against homosexuality.  A heavy price was paid for this de-stigmatization, literally in blood and tears.

Today, as a result of the removal of the medical label, the gay community enjoy enormous political clout, at least in Canada more so than in the U.S.A.  In Canada, we have at least two openly gay politicians: Scott Brison, a current Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party, and George Smitherman, currently Ontario’s Minister of Energy and Infrastructure, as well as Deputy Premier of Ontario.  This is mostly due to the fact that their rights are enshrined (and protected) in the Canada Bill of Rights.

In the USA, judging from the media headlines in the past couple of years, politicians who have been outed to the public often lose their positions.  Many states do not appear to have provisions in their respective constitutions to protect gay people from discrimination.   Some states have attempted to exclude gays and lesbians from anti-discrimination laws and policies.  Colorado is one example.  There is a map of the USA showing states that have protection for gays against workplace discrimination.

At first glance, one might be inclined to think that there are no openly gay politicians in state or federal governments.  Upon further digging, one will discover a small number of openly gay (or GLBT or LGBT) politicians in the U.S.A, but they are not quite well known to mainstream society, with the possible exception of Barney Frank (D-MA).  He is well-known, popular and has the support of his voters.

In entertainment, where people used to remain closeted to attain movie star status, gay celebrities now wield more political clout in America. Ellen DeGeneres is touted as the most powerful gay celebrity on TV.  Close behind are Rosie O’Donnell and Jodie Foster. These women are said to use their star power to support suicide prevention for gay youth hotline. This is in direct contrast with the past.  People used to have to remain closeted in order to get ahead in show business.

Advances are made by the GLBT community in the corporate sphere as well. It looks like the glass ceiling is being broken through here, but there is still the issue of having to “pass” as a member of the majority group, as we have seen in US politics. For more information on the challenges of dismantling corporate barriers, read the article, Gay in Corporate America.

The Deaf, on the other hand, are still saddled with the stigmatizing label of disability. This medical perspective of the Deaf has coloured societal attitudes towards Deaf people for more than 100 years, to this very day.   Deaf children from birth, or from the age of identification, are assigned this status of “having hearing loss”, irrespective of the degree of loss…even if it’s only a few decibels. Thus, because of this “disability”, it then becomes the mission of the medical, audiological, speech and educational professionals to rehabilitate Deaf children so they can become “functioning members in society.”

To this end, Deaf children are placed under the auspices of Special Education in the Department of Education in the USA, and in the Ministry of Education in each of the ten provincial governments of Canada.  As we all know, Special Education has been set up for children of all kinds of disabilities.  IEPs (Individualized Educational Plans) have been set up for each and every Deaf child, in every possible educational setting.  The label “Communicative Disorder” or “Communicative Exceptionality” follows the Deaf child from Kindergarten through Grade 12 in Ontario.  There are other labels used in the U.S.A. View this link below as an example.

These labels are designed to get resources to help the Deaf children learn to “listen and speak”.  One example of such resources is titled Language Is Discovery, written by speech-language pathologists.   Resources are provided by rehabilitative professionals (audiologists and speech pathologists) in tandem with audist organizations like Canada’s VOICE and the U.S-based AGBell.

These organizations actively advocate the use of the cochlear implant and auditory-verbal therapy (AVT).  All of this occurs in support of Alexander Graham Bell’s 1884 objective, which was: “we should try ourselves to forget that they are deaf. We should try to teach them to forget that they are deaf.”  (Ladd, Paddy. (2003) Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood.)  This quote is also used in an article by DeLand in the Volta Review 1992 9:418.    More information on this can be found in Patti Durr’s People of the Eye blog.

The audist medical view excludes the possibility that the Deaf community would be viewed as a cultural and linguistic minority.  In fact, the pathologization of cultural deafness “results in the suppression of the oppressed group’s language and culture”.  The language in question is ASL.  Harlan Lane discusses this in depth in his book, The Mask of Benevolence: Disabling the Deaf Community.

On the political and corporate front, the Deaf community in North America has made some strides.  Thanks to the Deaf President Now protest of 1988, we now have Deaf Presidents of Gallaudet University (I. King Jordan, then Dr. Robert Davila).

In Canada, we have Gary Malkowski, who was a NDP Member of Provincial Parliament in Ontario from 1990 to 1995, the first Deaf politician, ever.  In the U.S.A., the late Marcella M. Meyer was the first Deaf delegate to a California Democratic Party convention.  At present, I know of no Deaf politician in the USA, either at state or federal level.

In the corporate arena, we have John Yeh, whose ascent to CEO status did not come easy.  He now owns a multi-million firm. To read about the dismantling of barriers he had to do to get to where he is, this article.

What I found interesting is that I was hard pressed to find Deaf people, either celebrity, corporate or political, with the same clout as Ellen DeGeneres, or Scott Brison today.  Although we have Marlee Matlin, who is a well-known actor in both the Deaf community and mainstream America, she still has nowhere near as much influence as DeGeneres. The Deaf community has a long way to go before they can break the glass ceiling as successfully as the GLBT community has.