Don't 'Dis' Me. I Am a Person. Full stop.

This is one of those mornings when I again woke up 'early' (5 am) and my awakening brain made me decide it was not, at least easily, going back to sleep. Ideas such as this title were percolating so what else to do after some 20 minutes of struggle but get up and put it to print.

To begin with, let me parse my title for this posting. Indeed, by the time I have done that, I will have well introduced the ground of what I want to convey with this document. 

an exercise in academia, as the title should suggest. Allow me to continue.

'Dis,' of course, is as the On-line Etymology Dictionary [https://www.etymonline.com/word/dis] elaborates: 

dis- 

(assimilated as dif- before -f-, to di- before most voiced consonants), word-forming element meaning 1. "lack of, not" (as in dishonest); 2. "do the opposite of" (as in disallow); 3. "apart, away" (as in discard), from Old French des- or directly from Latin dis- "apart, in a different direction, between," figuratively "not, un-," also "exceedingly, utterly," from PIE *dis- "apart, asunder" (source also of Old English te-, Old Saxon ti-, Old High German ze-, German zer-).

But then, as my heading indicates, there is now another definition of the same 3 letters:

dis (v.)

 [https:dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/full-stop] expresses that 2nd definition well: 

"used at the end of a sentence, usually when you are angry, to say you will not continue to discuss a subject" This is indeed the plea many persons who are 'dissed' make. 

OK, now that we have our terms sorted out, what was I going to say? I'll get to that yet, indirectly. It will be worth it. And if you are a boomer like me - my we are getting distracted aren't we (indeed, my wife often thinks I have ADHD, which is, according to some, another one of those 'dis'es - a 'disorder') - that phrase will take you back to 1967 and Eric Burdon of The Animals intoning in "San Franciscan Nights:" "Save up all your brand and fly trans love airways to San Francisco U.S.A., Then maybe you'll understand the song, it will be worth it..." LOL.

I want to write here about people, persons, who are too often disadvantaged, among other things, because they are categorized with not one but both of the 'dis'es I've defined.       Can we use autism for an example? This is a condition - see, I am already using a word that sets it apart from 'normal,' but which I would rather not do - that has been classified as a disorder, particularly by the medical profession, of which I am a member. 

You see, we human beings are the only animals who 'name' things. As some of you will quickly remember, that was a task given Adam by God, and popularized (distraction alert) in a Bob Dylan song "Man Gave Names to all the Animals" Indeed,  the 18th century Swedish biologist Carl Linnaeus, as we know, took this to a whole new level with his "formalization of the modern system of naming organisms called binomial nomenclature" [thanks, Wikipedia]. For the uninitiated, that refers to all those two-word Latin names for organisms, such as 'Homo sapiens' for us humans. 

As many of you will know, there is subgroup of persons with autism that have been eponymously referred to as having, as being diagnosed with, Asperger's Disorder. Now, most of these individuals have average, if not above average, intelligence. And they are aware of what is going on and speaking out about it. They say, 'We do not have a disorder. We are normal. We just do things differently.' Indeed, some of them 'do differently' so well, they never get diagnosed. The current mayor of Taipei, Taiwan,  city of 5 million, is a self-acknowledged 'Asperger's.' In another life, he is/was a surgeon and the lead, no less, of a trauma team! This has led some to prefer the label 'High-FunctioningAutism" [HFA], which is still a label! Others, as some of us who know them will understand, do not function that 'normally,' at least as most of us understand 'normal.' So, what does that all tell us? Can we accept these people as variants of normal, as some of them are asking of us?

As many have discussed, who defines normal, and how, anyway? Maybe that is another of those areas where we should, at least in some of these 'cases' - and there's another word used to describe the abnormal - leave the judgment to God (I'm serious) and follow the  pro-active Golden Rule of Jesus in our behavior towards (I almost said 'treatment of,' which would again quickly lead us into the realm of 'treating,' as in a disorder, which is not where I want to go)  them: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." So often we narrow the meaning of judgment as used in the Bible to the moral and behavioral realm. Maybe we would be a lot better off if we left judgment in some other areas to God. Could perhaps save ourselves a lot of grief, and did not Jesus say he wanted us to leave our 'grief,' our burdens, with him?

Okay, finally, having gently (?) - and lengthily, I admit - introduced my main point with the example of autism, let me finally move one to what I really want to say here. Anyone guess? Especially those who know me and have read other of my blogs, especially the most-read one ever "A Nudge or a Slap."

I want to apply what I have said so far to how we relate to all those individuals in our world who, for now, are grouped into this huge, somewhat amorphous category, LGBTQ - and some even add other initials and punctuation now. It's a moving target, as we say. Unfortunately, for some, and this is not funny, they have been the fatally wounded target of many of the rest of us.  We have, if not killed them outright, driven too many to suicide. Merciful God, forgive us for what we have so wrongly 'done unto others.'

Homosexuality, represented now in that collection of letters by LG, for 'lesbian' and 'gay,' referring to females and males respectively, was, until 1973, a medical diagnosis, like autism. In that year, the American Psychiatric Association [APA], of which I was a dues-paying member for years when practicing, although not until some 20 years after that, decided to remove the label. In essence, they were saying, this is a variant of normal. Gradually, but too slowly for many - witnesses the homophobia still all too rampant in our world - we, more so in the so-called Western or 'developed' world, are coming to accept that.

So, without belabouring it further - here's my point - is it time to accept all of those other 'letters' as variants of normal? For those of you who judge them on a biblical basis - leave the judgment to God and remember what I wrote above about how to behave towards them? 

God appears to have given man the right to give names. However, if we want to continue in the biblical or theological realm, we know that the world is no longer the prefect world God created. I suggest this imperfection also applies to our naming of things.  

Names can have their benefits. One of the chief ones is that, once defined, others know more-or-less what we are talking about. This, believe it or not, is the reasoning behind many so-called diagnoses. As the APA's in-some-circles-much-maligned Diagnostic and Statistical Manual says, and I simplify, the 'diagnoses' here are, as many of us know all too well, fluid collections of descriptions, admittedly again, for something not considered 'normal.' These collections of signs and symptoms, as medicine refers to them, do not indicate anything about cause. We are not yet there in psychiatry, although great strides are being made in that direction. 

And we certainly don't know the cause(s) for LGBTQ etc. So why not just leave that issue to those who wish to pursue it and the rest of us get on with ceasing our 'dissing' and 'disordering' these individuals and treat them as persons? Like the rest of us? Stop the many 'ways' we 'name' them. Full stop.   

I could say more about what we can do to actualize the thrust of the last paragraph. However, enough for one 'chapter.' It's now 7:30, time to get on with other elements of my day for now.