Word: psychologist
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...impossible to say how many children have gay parents, in part because there are no solid numbers on gay adults. Charlotte Patterson, the University of Virginia psychologist who testified for Sharon Bottoms, concedes that any estimate of children of gay parents -- hers is "millions" -- is an educated guess. A considerably lower yet still sizable figure is implied in a 1983 study by the Family Research Institute, a conservative think tank that distributed questionnaires in Los Angeles, Washington, Denver, Louisville and Omaha. Of 877 respondents who were fathers, 22 (about 1 in 40) labeled themselves either bisexual or homosexual...
...rights movement. A lot of gays wanted to have kids and presumed they could not. People started realizing they could live like everyone else." Nongay clinicians are not always so sensitive. Says Debra Samdperil, a Boston photographer who wants a child to raise with her partner, psychologist Laurie Livingston: "The doctors continue to see me as a single woman, not as part of a couple...
...hard to rob children of innocence, the sexually abusive parent, guardian or family friend is not only a predator in his own right but also a stand-in for all the gaudy malevolence of pop culture. "There's a social hysteria about child abuse," says Professor Melvin Guyer, a psychologist and lawyer who teaches at the University of Michigan. "It began with the McMartin Pre-School case and continued with Woody Allen. There has been a feeding frenzy, in which the ordinary presumptions of innocence are not applied. The allegations are treated as evidence." And the public reacts with wide...
...have touched off the violence. Some believe the crime waves are cyclical (see box). Many fault Hollywood, which rushes sordid re-creations to TV and cinema screens before the corpses are even cold. "We have created a culture that increasingly accepts and glamourizes violence," says Dewey Cornell, a clinical psychologist at the University of Virginia. "I don't care what the network executives say. It does desensitize you." Others point accusingly at the media. "Every crackpot out there knows that if he can take an automatic weapon into a fast-food restaurant, the more people he can shoot, the more...
There is a therapeutic reason for all this, experts say. "People both need lawyers and resent them," explains psychologist Harvey Mindess, a professor at Antioch University in Los Angeles. "A feeling of helplessness toward someone you're dependent on is very uncomfortable. In that anxiety-arousing situation, humor is a way of getting even." While such jokes invite cynicism, says Mindess, it is unlikely that they encourage violence...