Gay political correctness
Comments about politically correct culture prompted me to throw down this quick post about my experience in organized medicine. I’ve been involved (sometimes deeply) in various venues of organized medicine, and recently I privately heard a former trustee of one of the largest and most powerful medical associations in the world comment about proposed policy regarding a GLBT issue. He said: “It doesn’t matter what the resolution says, most of the delegates intend to further their careers in organized medicine and so they won’t say a word against it if it supports a GLBT goal.” This particular piece of policy ended up being the only one in the assembly’s business session that passed without major revisions, despite that its supportive material had several logical fallacies and unsubstantiated appeals to scientific authority. No other resolution got a free pass like that. Considering the regularity with which organized medicine’s policy is quoted as authoritative in other debates, I was deeply disappointed that my position required me to recuse myself of testimony. If that’s not the power of framing the political correctness debate, I don’t know what is.
1 --on November 16th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Sounds like a win for homosexuals. Then again, I don’t know what the resolution was…
2 --on November 16th, 2007 at 6:00 am
Definitely a win for GLBT activists… just a loss for every fair-minded person on the planet.
3 --on November 16th, 2007 at 8:32 am
You’re right if a resolution is passed only because of political pressure. But it’s hard for me to tell without knowing what the resolution was, why it passed relatively easily (maybe it was a “no brainer” and actually had merit?) or what the political agenda of the person making the comment was (maybe he was a homophobe?). It’s sort of like assuming that just because a black man was hired, he wasn’t the most qualified person for the job and clearly.
But I agree, no resolution should pass just because it offends some lobby (Christian right, or gay rights).
4 --on November 16th, 2007 at 9:44 am
What JGW said.
5 --on November 16th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
Yes, I agree with your points. I bring up this experience specifically because the person who made the comment is a young, very open-minded person (not an ounce of homophobia) and the issue was not AT ALL cut and dried. It was an important issue (the specifics of which I won’t go into) that I would have supported in a modified version, but there was no substantive discussion at all. It deserved real consideration and got none. Nobody wants to be labeled a homophobe, and that fact has turned organized medicine into a restrictive political minefield.
6 --on November 16th, 2007 at 6:28 pm
The medical field has always had an over-abundance of politics, but it usually revolves around dollars, not the latest fad in political correctness. Truly a sad circumstance.
Neal
7 --on November 16th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Well, since I trust your judgment of the situation, I’ll admit that’s lamentable.
But in my business, that’s what we call “beta error.” Having this kind of outcome is the cost of having a gay rights lobby that is strong enough to protect us from discrimination in the workplace, terroristic violence, and that is strong enough to educate the general populace about homophobia. Since I can’t do without the latter, I will have to accept a certain amount of the former.
Hopefully, as the institutions we live in become better educated, they will be better able to distinguish between what is a legitimate concession to an oppressed minority, and what is a boondoggle that’s being shooed through because the lobby that represents that minority doesn’t understand how the boondoggle is bad policy. The squeamishness exhibited by the person in question is, to me, a result of being insufficiently educated about GLBT issues. If he/she really understood the community well, he/she might be more willing to stand his/her ground on an issue of policy that doesn’t really affect the well-being of that community.
8 --on November 17th, 2007 at 1:50 am
Do we know what the resolution was?
9 --on November 17th, 2007 at 7:05 am
I do, but “we” don’t.
10 --on November 17th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Do we get to know?
11 --on November 19th, 2007 at 11:43 am
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