State Reps. Martin Walsh and Liz Malia, with "trans" child in 2004.
[Photo by John Rich, Home for Little Wanderers fall 2004 newsletter.]
In 2004, State Reps. Martin Walsh & Liz Malia were photographed with a "transgender" child (a girl "identifying" as boy) at the Waltham House for "GLBTQ youth" run by the Home for Little Wanderers and the Mass. Department of Social Services (DSS). This is an apt symbol for where we are going in this state, allowing the GLBTQ radicals in our government to take our children into stranger and stranger worlds of sexual perversion. (The "T" stands for transgender/transsexual, which means denying one's gender, crossdressing, surgically removing sexual organs, etc.)
In July, the Mass. Legislature established a "Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth" which will be pushing for more of this sort of program. Along with GLBTQ clubs and assemblies in the high schools, "Waltham House" is a prime example of where the Commission's new "gay and lesbian youth suicide prevention" tax money will go. Following the lead of Waltham House, we predict that the categories "bisexual" and "transgender" will soon be added to the name of the new youth Commission. (Waltham House says it helps "Q" or questioning children too.)
Rather than helping parents get real help for their troubled children, our government is actually promoting the views and treatments recommended by radicals in the mental health profession who believe anything goes with sexual identity, gender, or sexual behaviors -- even in the early teenage years.
Why is the majority in the Massachusetts legislature promoting and supporting homosexuality, bisexuality, transgenderism-transsexuality, or "questioning" in minors? Why is the Department of Social Services and the Home for Little Wanderers funding a group home for children promoting dysfunction and perversion? Why do mental health professionals support and promote such disorders among our young, instead of counseling children OUT of such destructive behaviors and attitudes? (NOTE: Transgenderism is still listed as a disorder in the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual of the psychiatric profession).
Read more about Reps. Malia and Walsh at the Waltham House (from Bay Windows, "A Port in the Storm," 8/12/04). Excerpts:
The residents at Waltham House, a group home for GLBT youth run by the Home for Little Wanderers, had a chance to spend time with some of their heroes Aug. 5 [2004] when Mass. state Reps. Liz Malia, D-Jamiaca Plain and Martin Walsh, D-Dorchester, paid a visit to their home. Malia, who is openly lesbian, and Walsh have been vocal opponents of a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and the teens, several of whom had protested against the amendment at the Statehouse earlier this year, said they were inspired by the legislators' work.
One of the residents, Al, 17, who like all the residents asked that their last names not be used, told Malia that he was moved by her February speech before the Legislature opposing the amendment. Waltham House staff read the text of the legislators' speeches to the residents before the visit....
The residents spoke with the legislators about their experiences both before and after coming to Waltham House, one of only three residential programs in the country specifically serving GLBT youth (the other two are in New York and Los Angeles). One of the residents, Justin, 17, who is transgender, said he was repeatedly harassed by students and administrators at the Catholic girls' school he attended for wearing his hair short. He said he was eventually expelled from school for shaving his head after the principal insisted he let his hair grow out.
"Coming to the Waltham House really turned me around and really gave me a huge amount of self-esteem that I didn't have," Justin told the legislators. "... This place turned me into the person I always wanted to be, turned me into the person where I can stand up and say, and shout out to people what I believe in and not have to just back down because I feel that I'm scared."
Al, who spent four years living in an all-girls residential facility before coming out as transgender, credited the staff at Waltham House with providing a stable environment for kids dealing with a whole host of issues, including GLBT issues. "When I feel like, how can anyone love me when I've done so many things wrong, how can anyone love me when my own family doesn't love me, [that] question is answered when the staff come in every single day, every single day regardless of what happens," said Al. He said that he worked in his own school to create a supportive environment for GLBT students by founding a gay/straight alliance, and he urged the legislators to work to make schools safer environments in which to come out for students with unsupportive families....
Opened in October 2002, the program currently houses 10 kids, with a potential capacity of 12. Like many kids in residential programs, residents of Waltham House may face a range of issues including abuse, familial rejection, substance abuse, homelessness, and other factors that have prompted the state's Department of Social Services to intervene and place them in a healthy and stable environment.
Program Director Karen Voorhees said that for all of the Waltham House residents, issues of sexual orientation or gender identity are central to many of their problems."I would say the target kid is the kid whose significant functioning problems are due to not being accepted for their gender or sexual identity, and so they come here and are able to function in a group home while being accepted for who they are," said Voorhees. "A lot of them come in and they say they haven't been allowed to talk about their sexual identity of their gender identity to even figure out what it is, so whatever it is they figure out is fine with us."
