Transgender Issues…

Dear Editor,

Jim Healey got one thing right in his article about Adam Ferris; his death was indeed tragic. But that’s about all he gets right. It doesn’t take a mental health professional to see that Ferris was seriously depressed, confused, and likely suffering from attachment-related issues. That he was sick of self-identifying as transgender should have elicited immediate psychotherapeutic help. Instead, Ferris had to deal with the etiologies of his confusion on his own terms. Tragically, such therapy for dealing with unwanted gender confusion is something the LGBT community is eradicating across the country.
That Ferris made such statements as “I’m sick of being TG [transgender] and I’m sick of being different, I just want to be normal,” were his cry for help. And coupled with his withdrawal from social connections, binge drinking, and violent outbursts, Ferris was desperate. Where were his 3,200 Facebook “friends” when these cries were hitting a brass ceiling? All Healey would have offered was a diatribe about accepting his confused sexual identification rather than seeing this as symptomatic of a much deeper longing for help and healing. I am weary of the LGBT activists who use the lives of troubled young men like Ferris to boost their deeply flawed solutions to gender identity confusion. Real problems require genuine solutions. Sadly, Ferris struggled alone.

Don S. Otis
Sandpoint

Don,
Thanks for writing. Personally, I am weary of people who believe that just because someone is LGBT or has gender identification issues, they are somehow needing therapy to “correct” these feelings. Reparative or conversion therapy aimed at “praying the gay away” is outdated psuedoscience, in my opinion. I’m extremely proud of the job that Jim Healey did with this article. Nobody else in Sandpoint is covering LGBT issues with this much compassion. I’m proud to support LGBT equality.
-Ben Olson, publisher