I can resist anything but temptation.
— Oscar Wilde, “Lady Windermere’s Fan”
If there’s anyone who knows anything about temptation, obsessions and compulsions, it’s Michael Shelton, author of several books, including “Gay Men and Substance Abuse,” a self-help book for men with substance-abuse problems, and “Boy Crazy,” an examination of gay-male monogamy. He is Psychology Today’s expert on male sex and sexuality. His book “Secret Encounters” remains the only published book on the topic of sexual victimization in youth programs, and has received renewed interest in the aftermath of the Penn State scandal. Shelton has also served as camp director for Mountain Meadow, a camp for children of LGBT parents based in southern New Jersey. One of the few professionals in the country specializing in gay-male sex offenders, he is also a busy clinician working at several facilities in Philadelphia. A surprisingly light-hearted fellow, considering the weighty topics he deals with, the prolific writer spoke and laughed about his journey.
PGN: Tell me about Michael Shelton. MS: I’m Philadelphia-born and raised and I have a younger sister. My mother was a homemaker and my father was an electrician. I’ve always loved writing; in fact my mother jests that I when I parted the womb, I had a pencil and paper in hand.
PGN: Other than English, what was a favorite class? MS: Geez, I wish I had one, but it was always English for me. Other than that, I was not a happy student.
PGN: Your first story? MS: I don’t remember exactly what it was about, but it was probably in the horror genre. I loved horror movies and was always writing scary little screenplays. The first book I remember reading was the novelization of “Night of the Living Dead.” Not sure what to think of that — not your typical toddler fare — but at least I was reading at a young age!
PGN: Which family members had the greatest influence on you? MS: Three of my aunts — Alva, Betty and Lois — supported my writing from the time I was young. As soon as I entered their homes, they were ready with paper, pencil and the directive to “write a story.” Thinking back, it kept me occupied and out of trouble and their fawning over my juvenile efforts offered me lots of positive reinforcement.
PGN: What were some of your extracurricular activities? MS: Still writing! [Laughs.] I was in the honors writing class. I wish I could give you a much more colorful or dramatic childhood, but it was pretty straightforward.
PGN: Where did you go to school? MS: Hahnemann University, which was an incredible school. My senior year I did an internship and, in the middle of it, the program I was working with closed down. I was desperate to get another internship so I could graduate on time, and I hooked up with the Joseph J. Peters Institute in a program treating men who had been arrested or imprisoned for their sexual-behavior problems. I fell in love with the study and my life took a whole new direction.
PGN: What did you think you were going to do? MS: Chemical-dependency treatment, which I still do as well. I’m certified by the state, but I balance between writing, sexual-behavior problems and chemical-dependency work. Until that internship, it never would have occurred to me to work with men and sexual behavior. But I found the protocol for sexual-abuse treatment similar to the protocol for alcohol or drug abuse. Fortunately, they hired me when the internship was done.
PGN: How did you get to be Psychology Today’s expert on male sex and sexuality? MS: Well, I’d written a few articles for them and they asked if I wanted to take on the mantle, so I said, “Hey, why not?”
PGN: So, how to phrase this delicately … What’s wrong with men? MS: [Laughs.] I don’t think there is a delicate way to phrase that.
PGN: You look at guys like John Edwards, Mark Sanford and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods, Hugh Grant and Jude Law and think, Why can’t they keep it in their shorts? MS: Well, all I can say is that there are many men out there who are faithful and what you see in the news is a select group.
PGN: I remember Oprah once asking a gay activist why it seemed gay men were so oversexed and promiscuous and he responded that all men have that proclivity, it’s just that straight guys have women to dampen it! MS: Correct. There is truth to that! But again, there are plenty of good, faithful men both gay and straight.
PGN: What’s a random piece of advice? MS: The fourth book I wrote was called “Boy Crazy,” and it’s about gay men and monogamy. So I get a lot of gay couples coming in to ask about open relationships. Unfortunately, when they’re coming in for counseling, it’s when they’re having problems, which is the worst time to try to open a relationship. It has to be steady and secure before even thinking about it.
PGN: You’ve been contacted about the Penn State scandal. Why is that? MS: I wrote the first book written about sexual activity in youth programs back in 2003; it’s called “Secret Encounters.” Because of the scandals at both Penn State and Syracuse, it has suddenly found a new audience.
PGN: What are some of the problems? MS: You don’t know who you’re hiring. Most predators have not been caught so they can easily get through our wonderful background checks and clearances. I feel bad about saying it, but it’s true, that most sexual perpetrators are men. I’ve learned through personal experience in hiring and administrative programs that we need a much more comprehensive approach to protecting children in these programs. The challenge is, and perhaps understandably, is that programs don’t want to announce, “We’re doing everything we can to protect your child from sexual abuse” because then the parents start to think, Uh oh, does that mean sexual abuse occurs there? So a lot of programs do the minimal. Now that the recent scandals have broken, parents are beginning to ask, “What are you doing to protect my children?” and I’m getting queries from programs asking me to help them out. They want to know how they can create a safer environment other than the usual never leave a child alone with a staff member and do background checks. All the hoopla about background checks is fine, I applaud it, but remember the majority of the perpetrators are not going to be found in the system. They haven’t been, and probably won’t, get caught.
PGN: What are two things groups can do? MS: First, we have to realize that a program director can only be in one place at one time. Take a residential summer camp: The camp director has 80 acres and 60 staff members and 300 campers that he or she is overseeing while at the same time being in charge of all the organizational things like ordering equipment, handling parental inquiries and doing paperwork. How much time is he going to spend making sure all the staff are following the rules and are where they’re supposed to be at any given time? Not very much, so the first step for any youth program is to train the front-line staff and make sure they’re invested in this. Most youth program staff members are typically between 18-22 [years old] and might not be even aware of the signs or what to do. Most of them are hard-pressed to believe that one of their friends or someone they know could be capable of molesting a child. So we have to open their eyes and say, “I don’t care how close you are to the person, if you see something suspicious you need to report it.” That was part of the problem with the Sandusky case: People saw things but couldn’t believe it actually was happening. The other thing you need to do is get the parents invested. They really need to talk with their kids before they go away about what is OK touch and what is not OK. And what to do if something happens. I see it so many times, where parents just don’t want to talk about it. They don’t want to scare the kids before they go away. Sorry, I got on my soapbox for a minute, but I have dealt with too many kids that have been sexually assaulted in youth programs.
PGN: In your practice, you deal with gay men and a number of specific issues. Can you touch on some of them? MS: I have what I call the triad. Most gay couples will deal with at least one of them, some unfortunate people with all three. Pornography. A lot of gay men think of it as a neutral influence, but we’re seeing more and more that it can be a negative influence on a relationship. And that’s not just for gay men. Substance abuse in our community is another big problem. Monogamy is the last issue. I find that many men after five years decide to open up their relationships and that can be really tricky to do. There’s a right way and right time and a wrong way and wrong time.
PGN: And are you in a relationship? MS: Yes, I am. For 20 years! His name is Donald.
PGN: And what does he do? MS: He was a teacher. We have quite a history. Ten years into our relationship, he was struck by a car that was involved in a police chase. His brother was killed and Donald suffered traumatic brain injury. So he went instantly from being a teacher to being unable to work due to his cognitive deficits. Thank God his personality stayed the same, but I went from being a partner to a caretaker for many years. Now he’s back on his feet, but the cognitive problems will be there forever. It’s been very interesting: Our lives are separated by the first 10 years and then everything after that. Which segues a little into something else I’ve been working on. For the two years we were going through rehab, the people couldn’t have been nicer or treated us with more respect, but nobody — nobody — mentioned our sex life. I assumed that maybe it was because they were uncomfortable because we were two men. But it always stayed in the back of my mind and years later, I started getting referrals for men coming home from the military. I did a little research and found that it wasn’t just us — that across the board, people don’t want to talk to disabled people about their sex lives. What happens when someone is mentally or physically disabled and how it affects their sex life is just an unspoken topic. But it really impacts their lives, especially since so many of the men coming home injured from war are young men. I’m working on a whole new series for Psychology Today about it.
PGN: And when did you come out? MS: My coming-out story — well, I was a peripatetic young man. I left Philadelphia in 1986 to live in a commune in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia …
PGN: Wow, I haven’t heard that term for a while. MS: Yes, I lived there for a year with men and women from all over the world, particularly western Europeans. Gays and lesbians were replete there, so coming out was a non-event. After that, I did some globetrotting and then a year of volunteer work in California and Minnesota. By the time I returned to Philadelphia in my mid-20s, I was out and haven’t looked back.
PGN: Some random questions … Movie that makes you cry? MS: Well, moviegoing for me is not just a hobby, it’s an obsession. [Laughs.] If I don’t go to two to three movies a week, I go through withdrawal. And I don’t mean cheating and watching movies at home, I mean seeing them on the big screen in a theater. I’m a big sop, so I tear up very easily. We just went to see “Iron Lady” with Meryl Streep and I cried at that!
PGN: So since you’re a film buff, favorite line or scene from a movie? MS: There is one particular scene in a movie that changed my entire perspective on film. In 1980, my friend and I waited outside the Orleans Eight movie theater until we spotted a seemingly pleasant older couple. We asked them to lie and pretend we were their children because the movie was rated R and we couldn’t buy our own tickets. They did, and we sat down for a matinee showing of “Dressed to Kill.” About 15 minutes into the film, a scene occurs in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art — by the way, it was actually filmed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art — in which Angie Dickinson plays a seductive game of cat-and-mouse with an enticing stranger throughout its hallways and passages. It’s a seven-minute scene without any dialogue. It was the first time I encountered film as an aesthetic medium. Thirty years later, I can still watch that scene and be mesmerized by it.
PGN: Name a turning point in your life. MS: Five days after Donald’s accident, the doctor told me I should spend the night at the hospital because Donald wouldn’t make it through the night. He was wrong of course; we made it through that night and, 10 years later, Donald is still with us!
PGN: What’s next? MS: I’ve been working with a lot of gay and lesbian parents. Because of the new conservative wave in the country, a lot of gay families are experiencing serious backlash. Here, we have supportive groups like Mountain Meadow, etc., but in the heartland, especially in the Bible Belt, it can be scary. I couldn’t imagine living like some of them have to do. Because many of the couples can’t be out, they have to collude with the children to hide the relationship. It sets up perilous dynamics. I had one lesbian couple, raising children, who have been together for 18 years and the son, who is now a teenager, is coming out as gay. The couple was terrified that their cover was going to be blown and they basically told the son, you need to stay in the closet for the sake and safety of the family. It’s been a real eye-opener for me. So that’s my latest book that I’m working on, “Family Pride: LGBT Families Thriving in Isolated, Unwelcoming and even Hostile Communities.” Look for it this summer!
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