Youth rights |
---|
Lyn Duff (born 1976) is an American journalist. [1] Her career began in eighth grade with an underground school newspaper and has continued in various written and audio mediums. She has done extensive reporting in Israel and Haiti. After being forced into anti-gay conversion therapy she soon was exonerated from the aforementioned. She speaks out for youth rights and criticizes certain mental health systems. She is affiliated with the Pacific News Service and KPFA radio's Flashpoints , an evening drive-time public affairs show heard daily on Pacifica Radio.
Born in California in 1976, Duff began her journalistic career as the founder of an underground school newspaper, The Tiger Club, while an 8th grader at South Pasadena Junior High School in 1989. After five published issues, she was suspended from school by the principal for refusing to stop disseminating the newspaper. [1]
After gaining help from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the South Pasadena Unified School District agreed to allow her to return to school. She completed her 8th grade year and was then accepted as an early entrance student to California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), which she attended for a year and a half.
While at CSULA Duff was on staff of an alternative newspaper published by Los Angeles art critic Mat Gleason who, at the time, was a graduate student in the school of journalism and president of an alternative Greek organization, Omega Omega Omega, and later went on to publish Coagula Art Journal .
In 1991, Duff, then fourteen, came out publicly as lesbian. [2] [3] [4]
Concerned about her daughter's sexual orientation, Duff's mother had her admitted to Rivendell Psychiatric Center (now called Copper Hills Youth Center) in West Jordan, Utah. Duff was admitted to Rivendell Psychiatric Center on December 19, 1991, at age 15. [5]
During the drive from California to Utah, Duff covertly called journalist and friend Bruce Mirken who then wrote for both the LA Weekly and The Advocate . [6] Although 30 years her senior, the two nevertheless had had plans to meet for dinner prior to her therapy stay, and upon hearing of her situation, Mirken phoned a public interest legal aid society that secured pro bono services of corporate attorney Gina M. Calabrese of the Los Angeles firm Adams, Duque & Hazeltine. [5]
Although Rivendell was not affiliated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Duff later said that she was visited by Mormon missionaries during her six months at the Utah psychiatric facility and that the treatment she received was heavily influenced by religion. Duff says that Rivendell therapists told her that a gay and lesbian orientation was caused by negative experiences with people of the opposite gender and that having a lesbian sexual identity would lead to sexually abusing other people or engaging in bestiality. Duff was diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder (GID) and clinical depression. [2] [7] [8] Duff was subjected to a regimen of conversion therapy. This involved aversion therapy, which consisted of being forced to watch same-sex pornography while smelling ammonia. [9] She was also subjected to hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, solitary confinement, and therapeutic messages linking lesbian sex with "the pits of hell". [10] Behavior modification techniques were also used, including requiring girls to wear dresses and harsh punishment for small infractions similar to hazing like having to cut the lawn with small scissors and scrubbing floors with a toothbrush, and "positive peer pressure" group sessions in which patients demeaned and belittled each other for both real and perceived inadequacies. [5] [11] [12] [13] [14]
On May 19, 1992, after 168 days of treatment, Duff ran away from Rivendell and traveled to San Francisco, where she lived on the streets and in safe houses. [15]
In late 1992, with the help of Legal Services for Children and the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and with legal assistance provided by the National Center for Youth Law, Duff petitioned the courts to have her mother's parental rights terminated. She was one of a handful of children who divorced their parents that year. [16] [17] [18] In October 1992, a lesbian couple in San Francisco adopted Duff. She lived with them until the age of eighteen, when she began living independently and returned to college. [12] [19] [20]
From 1992 through 1998, Duff was an outspoken critic of the mental health system, appearing on CNN, ABC's 20/20 , and numerous print, radio and television media outlets. [21] She also spoke at a number of human rights, civil rights, mental health and youth services conferences about her experiences and the rights of young people to live free of discrimination and oppression on the basis of their sexual orientation. [22] [23] During these years she also served on the board of several national organizations including the National Center for Youth Law (board member 1994–2001) and the National Child Rights Alliance (board member 1992–1993, board chairperson 1994–1999). In 1996, Duff was honored as a keynote speaker and given a human rights award at the international conference of the Metropolitan Community Church.
During these same years, Duff was emerging as a journalist in her own right, writing for Youth Outlook, a column in The San Francisco Examiner , and Pacific News Service. She joined the staff of Flashpoints, a daily hour-long drive-time show broadcast on Pacifica Radio's KPFA in 1994. Her writings have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle , The San Francisco Examiner, Salon, Utne Reader , Sassy , The Washington Post , Seventeen , the Miami Herald and the National Catholic Reporter . [24] [25] [26] [27] [28]
In 1995, Duff traveled to Haiti, where she established Radyo Timoun ("Children's Radio"), that country's first radio station run entirely by children under the age of seventeen. [29] She reportedly worked closely with Haitian President Jean Bertrand Aristide. [30] [31]
In 1998, Duff graduated with a BA in international affairs and labor law from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
By the late 1990s, Duff was a well-established international journalist with postings in Haiti, Israel, Croatia, several African countries, and Vietnam. After the United States invaded Afghanistan, she traveled to the front lines as one of the few non-embedded Western journalists. [32]
In early 2000 she began to cover religious affairs from her posting in Jerusalem, writing widely on the problems and conflicts between Christians, Jews, and Muslims. In 2002, Duff earned an MA in Theology. [33]
In February 2004, Duff, who was then living six months out of every year in Jerusalem, was home in the United States on a brief visit when a group of ex-soldiers overthrew the democratically elected government of Haiti. She quickly traveled to Haiti, arriving in Port-au-Prince when the coup was only days old and reporting on the situation extensively for several national media outlets. [34]
During 2004–2006, Duff regularly covered the situation in Haiti for San Francisco Bay View , Pacifica Radio's Flashpoints, and Pacific News Service. Her reporting is a blend of in-depth investigative reports and "as told to" first person commentaries by Haitian nationals. Subjects have included politically motivated mass rape, [35] the United Nations mission in Haiti, killings by American Marines in Port-au-Prince, [36] civilians taking over the neighborhood of Bel Air [37] and murders of street children by police and ex-soldiers. [38]
Dorothy Louise Taliaferro "Del" Martin and Phyllis Ann Lyon were an American lesbian couple based in San Francisco who were known as feminist and gay-rights activists.
The ex-gay movement consists of people and organizations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires and to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship. Beginning with the founding of Love In Action and Exodus International in the mid-1970s, the movement saw rapid growth in the 1980s and 1990s before declining in the 2000s.
Yvon Neptune is a Haitian politician and architect who served as the Prime Minister of Haïti from 2002 to 2004. He was appointed by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and took office on 15 March 2002. He had previously served as President of the Senate from 2000 to 2002.
KPFA is an American listener-funded talk radio and music radio station located in Berkeley, California, broadcasting to the San Francisco Bay Area. KPFA airs public news, public affairs, talk, and music programming. The station signed on the air April 15, 1949, as the first Pacifica Radio station and remains the flagship station of the Pacifica Radio Network.
A coup d'état in Haiti on 29 February 2004, following several weeks of conflict, resulted in the removal of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from office. On 5 February, a rebel group, called the National Revolutionary Front for the Liberation and Reconstruction of Haiti, took control of Haiti's fourth-largest city, Gonaïves. By 22 February, the rebels had captured Haiti's second-largest city, Cap-Haïtien and were besieging the capital, Port-au-Prince by the end of February. On the morning of 29 February, Aristide resigned under controversial circumstances and was flown from Haiti by U.S. military/security personnel. He went into exile, being flown directly to the Central African Republic, before eventually settling in South Africa.
José Julio Sarria, also known as The Grand Mere, Absolute Empress I de San Francisco, and the Widow Norton, was an American political activist from San Francisco, California, who, in 1961, became the first openly gay candidate for public office in the United States. He is also remembered for performing as a drag queen at the Black Cat Bar and as the founder of the Imperial Court System.
Kevin Pina is an American journalist, filmmaker and educator. Pina also serves as a Country Expert on Haiti for the Varieties of Democracy project sponsored by the University of Notre Dame Center for Research Computing, the University of Gothenburg Department of Political Science, and the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
Barbara Gittings was a prominent American activist for LGBT equality. She organized the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB) from 1958 to 1963, edited the national DOB magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966, and worked closely with Frank Kameny in the 1960s on the first picket lines that brought attention to the ban on employment of gay people by the largest employer in the US at that time: the United States government. Her early experiences with trying to learn more about lesbianism fueled her lifetime work with libraries. In the 1970s, Gittings was most involved in the American Library Association, especially its gay caucus, the first such in a professional organization, in order to promote positive literature about homosexuality in libraries. She was a part of the movement to get the American Psychiatric Association to drop homosexuality as a mental illness in 1972. Her self-described life mission was to tear away the "shroud of invisibility" related to homosexuality, which had theretofore been associated with crime and mental illness.
The Black Cat Bar or Black Cat Café was a bar in San Francisco, California. It originally opened in 1906 and closed in 1921. The Black Cat re-opened in 1933 and operated for another 30 years. During its second run of operation, it was a hangout for Beats and bohemians but over time began attracting more and more of a gay clientele, and becoming a flashpoint for what was then known as the homophile movement, a precursor to the gay liberation movement that gained momentum in the 1960s.
Jewelle Lydia Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived in New York City for 22 years, working in public television, theater, as well as philanthropy, before relocating to the West Coast. Her writing—fiction, poetry, essays and cultural criticism—has appeared in a wide variety of outlets, both feminist and mainstream. Her work centers on women's experiences, particularly those of LGBTQ women of color. She has been interviewed for several documentaries focused on LGBT rights and culture.
Anne-christine d'Adesky is an American author, journalist and activist of French and Haitian descent living in New York. She has maintained a deep relationship with Haiti, reporting the 2010 earthquake from a feminist angle, especially noting the impact of the disaster on the lives of teenage girls. She has also contributed to humanitarian projects in East Africa, as well as conducting extensive research into HIV/AIDS and its treatment worldwide.
Flashpoints is a daily, politically progressive investigative news and public affairs program broadcast weekdays at 5 p.m. PST on Pacifica Radio station KPFA-FM (94.1) in Berkeley, California. The program is broadcast on Pacifica's national feed.
Linda Andre was an American psychiatric survivor activist and writer, living in New York City, who was the director of the Committee for Truth in Psychiatry (CTIP), an organization founded by Marilyn Rice in 1984 to encourage the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) machines.
The history of LGBT residents in California, which includes centuries prior to the 20th, has become increasingly visible recently with the successes of the LGBT rights movement. In spite of the strong development of early LGBT villages in the state, pro-LGBT activists in California have campaigned against nearly 170 years of especially harsh prosecutions and punishments toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people.
Fritz d'Or, or Fritz Dor, was a Haitian American journalist and radio talk show host for WLQY-AM (1320) who was assassinated by Billy Alexander in Miami, Florida, for voicing his support for the new Haitian democracy and the elected Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who would be ousted by the military regime led by General Raoul Cédras in September 1991.
Belva Davis is an American television and radio journalist. She is the first African-American woman to have become a television reporter on the U.S. West Coast. She has won eight Emmy Awards and been recognized by the American Women in Radio and Television and National Association of Black Journalists.
Jeanne Córdova was an American trailblazer of the lesbian and gay rights movement, founder of The Lesbian Tide, and a founder of the West Coast LGBT movement. Córdova was a second-wave feminist lesbian activist and proud butch.
Three pro-democracy Haitian radio journalists were assassinated in Little Haiti, Miami, Florida, United States between 1991 and 1993.
Pat Norman was an American activist for women's rights, as well as the rights of the African American and LGBT communities.
Conversion therapy is the pseudoscientific practice of attempting to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity. As of December 2023, twenty-seven countries have bans on conversion therapy, thirteen of them ban the practice by any person: Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Malta, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and Norway; Seven ban its practice by medical professionals only; Albania, Brazil, Chile, India, Israel, Vietnam and Taiwan; another seven: Argentina, Fiji, Nauru, Paraguay, Samoa, Switzerland, and Uruguay have indirect bans in that diagnoses based solely on sexual orientation or gender identity are banned without specifically banning conversion therapy, this effectively amounts to a ban on health professionals since they would not generally engage in therapy without a diagnosis. In addition, some jurisdictions within Australia, Mexico and the United States also ban conversion therapy. In China and South Africa case law has found conversion therapy to be unlawful. Bills banning conversion therapy are being considered in Ireland, Mexico, Poland, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
Lyn Duff.