On Banning Conversion Therapy

A year ago, the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, pushed for county commissioners to take up the issue of banning “conversion therapy” for children, the controversial practice in which therapists attempt to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity.

Palm Beach County had the opportunity to be the first county in Florida to ban conversion therapy for people under the age of 18. But thus far, the commission has dropped the ball on creating a county-side umbrella policy banning the measure outright, so HRC president Rand Hoch has decided to go door-to-door (or, rather, municipality-to-municipality) to get local leaders to do what the county has not accomplished the past 12 months.

The reason this is “big” news now is this past week, Wellington Mayor Anne Gerwig cast the lone dissenting ballot during a preliminary reading of an ordinance that would ban conversion therapy within village boundaries. Several other municipalities in Palm Beach County have approved similar ordinances banning conversion therapy by medical professionals, but they were all unanimous votes.

According to the American Psychological Association, conversion therapy refers to psychotherapy aimed at eliminating homosexual desires and is used by people who do not think homosexuality is one variation within human sexual orientation, but rather still believe homosexuality is a mental disorder. The APA has concluded trying to change someone's sexual orientation can cause depression, suicidal thoughts and substance abuse. 

When the APA published the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the “bible” used by mental health professionals to diagnose psychiatric disorders) in 1952, homosexuality was defined as a psychiatric disorder. Although there was no scientific evidence to support the diagnosis, it remained in the DSM until 1973.

California was the first state to outright ban conversion therapy in 2013. Conservative Christian legal organizations - representing individual parents, children and therapists - said the law violated therapists' free expression and parents' rights to make important medical decisions for their children. Since then, Illinois, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. have passed laws banning licensed mental health providers from offering the practice to children.

Gerwig said she was bothered the ordinance would prohibit licensed professionals from practicing conversion therapy to minors, but not unlicensed youth counselors. Under current Florida law, this is accurate; although the Wellington ordinance would ban the practice by medical professionals, by state regulation it could not ban its use by religious and other non-professional groups.

The past two legislative sessions, State Sen. Jeff Clemens has introduced legislation to prohibit conversion therapy statewide. However, the Florida Senate refused to take action on the bills. Clemens intends to reintroduce the bill in the 2018 legislative session. I urge both the county and state to ban the practice completely.

Going Rogue

“History will be the ultimate judge of last weekend’s historic Paris Agreement, the pact that commits 196 nations to work together in an attempt to limit climate change and stem the continued rise of greenhouse gas emissions.”

This was how I opened my commentary 18 months ago on the long-awaited - and much-needed - multi-nation pact to correct years of environmental abuse. Now, because of the irrational actions of President Donald Trump last week, the United States will be watching history from the sidelines, no longer capable of being either a partner or an active participant as the rest of the world moves forward.

The United States has gone rogue.

The worst part of Trump’s action for the United States as a whole is that we have yet again handed over our role as hegemonic leader on the global stage. Our allies are again dismayed, our business leaders’ wishes defied, our international competitiveness shaken, and ability to create job growth shackled. Further, under Trump’s “leadership,” the U.S. has yet again forfeited an opportunity to lead the way on an issue of international importance. Trump’s decision is based on volumes of fake news, ignoring numerous studies showing the reduction of carbon emissions would not only reduce greenhouse gasses and reduce damage to the environment, but also would drive economic growth in multiple ways.

The worst part of Trump’s action for everyday citizens is that it adds to the overwhelming burden being placed on future generations to deal with the idiocy of modern political actors. We are unsure which is the appetizer and which the main dish when looking at the buffet line of rising seas and trillion-dollar debt. And of course, the irony is those generations will need to add to said debt in order to pay for construction of infrastructure to deal with those rising seas, especially in areas such as southeast Florida.

In quick response, nearly 1,500 companies and institutions - including more than a dozen Fortune 500 businesses - signed a pact saying they are still committed to meeting the Paris Agreement standards; further, a dozen states and nearly 300 cities across the nation have committed through coalitions to stand by what was agreed to in December 2015. California passed legislation putting the state on a path to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050.

Sadly, Florida is not among those dozen states to take proactive measures, despite being one of the states most at-risk due to climate change. Yet. But a number of Florida mayors - including Jeri Muoio of West Palm Beach, Tomas Regalado of Miami, Philip Levine of Miami Beach, Buddy Dyer or Orlando, Rick Kriseman of St. Petersburg, Jack Seiler of Ft. Lauderdale, Andrew Gillum of Tallahassee, and Bob Buckhorn of Tampa - are part of the 274-strong “Climate Mayors” coalition that has pledged to work together to strengthen local efforts for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and supporting efforts for binding federal and global-level policy making.

Here’s hoping our federal leaders take note and reverse course, before further damage takes place.

Virus Alert

Eleven years ago, Weird Al Yankovic inked a catchy tune for his “Straight Outta Linwood” album called “Virus Alert,” which in his own humorous, albeit warped, way, offered up a warning about the perils of opening emails from individuals you don’t know or with attachments you aren’t expecting.

Even before 2006, computer users worldwide had been served up a wide helping of computer viruses, and despite advances in technology since then, the danger remains high; all you need to do is look at last fall’s extremely high-profile email hack attack, which had a definite impact on voters and their decision at the ballot box.

Is this week’s Google Drive phishing attack in the same ballfields as allegations of Russian interference in the United States’ 2016 presidential election? In some ways, it pales; in others, it may easily eclipse what happened in the waning days of the campaign.

Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers. In the May 3 Google Drive situation, the attack seemed to focus primarily on education emails and their servers; teachers across the School District of Palm Beach County and other educational systems nationwide reported an influx of questionable emails indicating that “(enter coworker name here) has shared a document on Google Docs with you.”

If you clicked the link, it asked for some access permissions to individuals’ Gmail account (which actual Google Docs links would not need), and then spammed everyone in their contacts with a link to a Google Docs file. They, in turn, email everyone in their contacts, and so on. All of them seemed to include the email address “hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh@mailinator.com.”

(If, by chance, you received this email and clicked on the link, here’s what you need to do, if you have’t already done so: (1) Go to your Gmail account’s permissions settings at https://myaccount.google.com/permissions; (2) Remove permissions for “Google Docs,” the name of the phishing scam.)

What’s of concern to area residents is many teachers across the district have incorporated Google Drive into their daily lives, including accepting and sending assignments electronically. This is the world in which we live, where the technology we have at our fingertips now controls how we live and work, not the other way around.

Cybersecurity concerns are not new. In a survey of 24 federal agencies, the General Accounting Office found between 2006 and 2015, the number of cyberattacks climbed 1,300 percent - from 5,500 to over 77,000 a year. This week’s attack was not an outlier. Nor is there any guarantee of absolute protection; even the best anti-virus packages can be overrun by intelligent creators of viruses and other cybercrime. All we can do is keep our protections active and updated, and hope we don’t get caught in the virus trap. And just to be a bit safer, change your email password. It can’t hurt.

Teacher (Lack Of) Appreciation Week

Next month will be quite hectic for the hard-working educators in our community, even by the standards of their regularly busy schedules. Between final preparation of students for high-stakes end-of-course exams, plus proctoring said exams, and helping the senior classes through their final few weeks of life in the K-12 galaxy - and, of course, the whole “teaching bell to bell” thing which is a part of their daily ritual - we understand if some need to enter “breathing” and “sleeping” as reminders in their daily calendars.

There are two additional, very important events taking place in May on which teachers across the district are keeping an eye. The first is Teacher Appreciation Week, which is May 1-5 in the School District of Palm Beach County. This is a golden opportunity for our communities, parents, and students to salute educators whose job it is to help prepare young adults for their future as leaders in business, agriculture, industry, the military, and politics.

Yet, somehow the school district’s own website fails to acknowledge this celebration of teachers. Yeah, there's a link to a story about this year’s six William T. Dwyer Award for Excellence in Education recipients, and a link to Volunteer Appreciation Week (which was this past week, in case you didn’t know). And maybe there will be some sort of announcement when the calendar turns to May. But for those educators who find it difficult to believe the district for which they work really does care about them - and the yearly battles over seemingly far-too-minimal pay raises, combined with far-too-hefty increases in health care premium costs, contribute to this perception - then the lack of publicity by their employer only serves as one more example of a disconnect that exists within the county borders.

Meanwhile, the district is trying to put on a good show for its Saturday, May 20, job fair at Park Vista High School. Human Resources Director Gail Williams said in a press release the job fair “is a great way to meet with hundreds of candidates - whether they are new graduates, transitioning from other careers, or interested in moving to the area - to join us in Palm Beach.”

A major change made by the district in advance of the job fair was approval of the 2017-18 school calendar, which removes those pesky half-day workshops and adds several vacation days to the week of Thanksgiving (making it a full week off from classes, barring implementation of hurricane makeup days). But there are many educators who scoff at the idea the district can entice new faces in the classroom until the salary situation is rectified.

At the Dwyer Awards ceremony April 25, Superintendent Dr. Robert Avossa pointed fingers at the state Legislature, and encouraged continued communication with state lawmakers to open the fiscal pursestrings and make education funding a priority. But I still believe there is plenty of wasteful spending within the Taj Mahal on Forest Hill Blvd. that could be reduced and applied toward salaries and other true enticements for current and future educators. If the district truly wants to celebrate teachers, both current and future, it needs to find ways of making them feel like Palm Beach County is worthy of their being here. It takes more than lip service to make that happen.

Johnny Hates Jazz

High school students these days are incredibly creative with their “prom-posals,” the invitation to take a fellow student to the end-of-year prom. Since most area high schools’ proms are all in April, it’s safe to say the majority of such elaborate requests have already taken place.

The key word in that first paragraph is “safe,” which is what school officials, along with area law enforcement and safety personnel, hope will be the pro-active word among teens attending the festive dance. This explains the annual incorporation of “Shattered Dreams,” a dramatization of the impact of distracted driving and the effects that it can bring into anyone’s life.

The Shattered Dreams program began some 20 years ago by St. Mary's Medical Center in an effort to educates students about the need to be an undistracted driver through a multimedia presentation that begins in a school's auditorium or gymnasium, and ends in the football stadium. It includes video and live testimonials, as well as an enactment by students (usually on the school’s football field) as accident victims, in an attempt to increase awareness about the effects that texting, substance consumption and other factors can have while driving. The area’s Trauma Hawk unit is usually part of the enactment.

Many schools in southeast Florida mandate juniors and seniors who purchased tickets to their prom to attend the powerful assembly, which usually takes place one day in advance.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, distracted driving is any activity that diverts attention from driving, including talking or texting on your phone, eating and drinking, talking to people in your vehicle, fiddling with the stereo, entertainment or navigation system - anything that takes your attention away from the task of safe driving. Distracted driving, whether from texting or driving under the influence, is one of the reasons that teen drivers are four times more likely to be involved in a fatal car accident than adults, according to statistics from St. Mary’s.

Now, I'm not here saying what students will or will not do on prom night - or on any other day (or night) of the year. But I also cannot say what non-students will or will not do, either. What I can do is urge everyone to be safe on the roads, regardless of age, gender, or destination; some 2,500 accidents involving teen drivers happen in Palm Beach County annually, and not all are the fault of a teen driver.