(New York) Gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers may be at higher risk of binge-eating and purging than their heterosexual peers, starting as early as age 12, a new study finds.

For the new study, researchers at Harvard University and Children’s Hospital Boston used data from a U.S. survey of nearly 14,000 12- to 23-year-olds to look at the relationship between sexual orientation and binge-eating and purging.

They found heightened rates of binge-eating among both males and females who identified themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or “mostly heterosexual.”

Among females, lesbian, bisexual and mostly heterosexual respondents were all about twice as likely as their heterosexual counterparts to report binge-eating at least once per month in the past year.

Bisexual and mostly heterosexual girls and women were also more likely to say they had purged in the past year in order to control their weight.

Among males, the highest risks were seen among homosexuals — who were seven times more likely to report bingeing and nearly 12 times more likely to report purging than heterosexual males.

Bisexual and mostly heterosexual boys and men also had elevated risks of both problems — with rates anywhere from three to seven times higher than those of their heterosexual counterparts.

The provision was added by the state House last week and LGBT groups say it sends a dire message to gay teens.

“The message this sends gay kids is, we’re not worthy, we don’t count – it makes them feel like second-class citizens, and isolated,” said Columbia, S.C. PFLAG founder Harriet Hancock to the Associated Press. “It gives our beautiful state another black eye.”

Some members of the House also criticized the exclusion. Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter (D) said the intent of the bill was hijacked homophobia.

“South Carolina has reiterated the myths and misconceptions people have about sexual assault,” said Cobb-Hunter, adding that domestic violence has nothing to do with sex or orientation, but control and domination. 

The measure requires school districts to create dating violence prevention policies for sixth- through 12th-graders and print the policies in school handbooks or Web sites by the summer of 2010.

Supporters of  the provision excluding same-sex teen relationships say they want to preserve South Carolina’s “moral values.”

“Same-sex dating is not traditional,” said Rep. Greg Delleney (R), a sponsor of the amendment. “Those groups want to destroy traditional values,”  he said.

The bill, with the contentious amendment, is now before the Senate.

Protestors urged senators to strike out the amendment and return the bill to the House.  But, there is little chance of the Senate taking up the bill. The current session ends on Thursday.

Oh you gotta love the Palin household. Sure Sarah Palin isn’t the vice-president, but her brood continues to make crazy gossipy drama.

Now before some conservative troll flips, I got nothing against household travails. Buy me a slice of cherry pie and I’ll regal you with tales of Withers’ hot mess (my personal favorite is my father and uncle knocking over the Thanksgiving table in a tussle); however, it’s a good idea to keep those family hijinks on the down-low. You would think hockey mom Palin would know that, but noooooo. She and her clan are keeping us all entertained with public charges, counter charges, and furious press releases.

First there was Levi Johnston, former fiance of Palin’s daughter Bristol, going on TV spilling all the beans. He spent nights in the Palin household, the Alaska governor probably knew the young couple were doing the nasty, he can’t get any alone time with his own son, etc., etc. Palin issued a press release calling Johnston out, which was odd. Why is a state governor letting some youngster get under her skin?

Now Sarah Palin’s father is getting his two cents in.

“I don’t agree with what he’s doing right now,” said Chuck Heath. “It’s not right. He’s broke, so he’s trying to capitalize on this. I wish he’d take some of this money he’s making and buy some diapers with it.”

Grandpa Heath? Why are you talking? And why isn’t your daughter telling her brood to keep family business on the hush-hush?

Dear Logo bosses: give the Palins their own reality show. Imagine the money baby! Think Bobby and Whitney times 3.

The cloth wristband has words “Rainbows are gay” on it. 

Chris Quintanilla says it is the latest in several anti-gay experiences he has had at the school. After nothing was done, his mother went to the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a letter sent this week to Peoria Unified School District, the ACLU said that the principal violated Quintanilla’s constitutional rights, pointing to a 40-year-old landmark Supreme Court decision guaranteeing students’ free speech and expression. 

“When I asked my son’s principal why he wouldn’t be allowed to wear his wristband to school anymore, he said some teachers found it offensive,” said Natali Quintanilla, mother of the eighth grader.

“My son is honest and happy about who he is, and I love him and support his right to be himself. There are a lot of things teachers should be more concerned about than one little wristband – like educating our children.”

Quintanilla said that her son was harassed for being gay earlier this school year. When she asked to the principal to do something to prevent the harassment she said she was told “If he didn’t put it out there the way he does, he wouldn’t have much of a problem.”

The Supreme Court has held that students have a right to free speech at school, and that includes gay students. 

” The ACLU has won dozens of cases over the years where schools have tried to get away with illegal censorship,” said Elizabeth Gill, staff attorney for the ACLU national Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project. “A handful of teachers supposedly working themselves into a tizzy over one little wristband is hardly an excuse for violating Chris Quintanilla’s right to free speech.”

The ACLU letter refers to 1969’s U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court wrote, “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights… at the schoolhouse gate.” 

The letter also pointed to a Florida case in which a high school principal had attempted to ban rainbows at school. In that case, a federal judge ruled last May that the school had violated students’ First Amendment rights. 

“When schools censor students like this, they are failing one of the most important civics lessons there is,” said Dan Pochoda, Legal Director of the ACLU of Arizona. “Schools should respect the Constitution and encourage all students – lesbian, gay, bisexual, and straight – to appreciate and exercise their freedoms, rather than illegally trying to silence them.”

The ACLU has given the school ten days to respond to its letter. The school has yet to respond.

The authors suggest the discrimination, sexual abuse and harassment that gay, lesbian and bisexual teens face may prompt them to indulge in more sexually risky behavior like having sex without using condoms, starting to have sex before the age of 14 or having multiple sexual partners.

Lead author Elizabeth Saewyc said that a succession of surveys in British Columbia since 1992 show that in general, all teens are becoming more sexually healthy and taking fewer risks than they did when the survey was first administered.

But there are still disturbing differences between lesbian, gay and bisexual teens and their heterosexual counterparts, she suggested.

“One of the challenges is that although teen pregnancy rates are declining, although some of the risky sexual behaviors are declining for all orientation groups, gay, lesbian and bisexual teens still started at much higher rates than their heterosexual teens,” said Saewyc.

“There’s still a gap. For us, that is a concern that there still is this gap between heterosexual teens and gay, lesbian and bisexual teens.”

Saewyc is an associate professor in the school of nursing at the University of British Columbia and research director of the McCreary Center Society. Her study, which was published in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.

The findings are drawn from data compiled through the B.C. Adolescent Health Survey, administered every five or six years to between 15,000 and 30,000 Grade 7 to 12 students in schools across the province. Conducted by the McCreary Center Society, the survey gathers information on a range of issues including nutrition, weapons in school and sexuality.

This research article, which compares findings from the 1992, 1998 and 2003 surveys, showed girls who described themselves as bisexual were nearly twice as likely as girls who said they were heterosexual to have been pregnant. And in 2003 lesbian teens were more than 2.5 times as likely to have been pregnant at least once.

Male teens who described themselves as bisexual or gay were between three and four times more likely than heterosexual boys to have impregnated a girl in 2003 – which is actually a decline from earlier surveys.

Saewyc said it is a common misconception that gay boys don’t have sex with girls.

“We assume that sexual attraction, sexual behavior and sexual identity are going to be 100 per cent consistent for people. And that’s not the case. Especially not for teenagers,” she said from Vancouver.

“So they may know who they’re attracted to. They may identify. But they’re not necessarily only going to be having sex with their same gender.”

Gay and lesbian teens may have sex with members of the opposite sex for a variety of reasons. Some do it to hide, to deflect the abuse that they see inflicted on gay, lesbian and bisexual teens. They call it “camouflage.”

“For some, it may be that they’ve been told that this is abnormal and wrong and they may think: `Well, if I just have sex with enough opposite-gender people that will cure me,”’ Saewyc said.

“And for some, it is camouflage. It’s passing. For some, it’s curiosity – `Well, how do I know I’m really gay until I’ve tried and decided no, I really don’t like that?”’

David Wolfe, a clinical psychologist who has a chair in children’s mental health at Toronto’s Center for Addiction and Mental Health, said the way to address the elevated pregnancy rates among bisexual, gay and lesbian teens is to find ways to stop making them feel so stigmatized.

“The take-away (message) to me is we have to normalize in our education of teens around such sexual orientation,” Wolfe said in an interview from London, Ont. “It’s much like racism and sexism has always been – it’s still something that’s permitted to continue in the schools.”

He said there needs to be more openness in the education process about the fact that there are different sexual orientations.

“I’m not necessarily saying to normalize it by making Dick and Jane become Dick and Fred or something. But I think that in their health education, they have to understand the variability of human sexuality. …”

“Parents may look at it as saying that somehow we’re endorsing this behavior. … But what it’s really saying is that this is a reality. There are people there with different colored skin. There are people there with different sexual orientation. And you don’t try to meld them all together and pretend they don’t exist … and label them as somehow wrong.”

“We are creating our own problems by creating problems for them,” Wolfe insisted. “By not giving them a chance to have a voice in it. Then it becomes a bigger problem – and we blame them for it.”

Arizona: Tuscon
Eon’s Homeless Youth Project, http://www.eonyouth.org

California: Los Angeles
GLASS-LA (Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services), http://glassla.org/

L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center, http://laglc.convio.net

Florida: Ft. Lauderdale
SunServe, http://www.SunServe.org/

Georgia: Atlanta
CHRIS KIDS, INC, Rainbow Program, http://www.chriskids.org/programsRainbow.htm

YouthPride, Home@YP, http://www.youthpride.org/programs.php

Illinois: Chicago
Howard Brown Broadway Youth Center, http://www.howardbrown.org/default.asp

Iowa: Des Moines
Iowa Homeless Youth Centers, http://www.yss.ames.ia.us/ihyc/

Massachusetts: Boston
Waltham House, http://www.thehome.org/site/PageServer?pagename=programs_waltham_house

Michigan: Highland Park
Ruth Ellis Center ~ Ruth’s House, http://www.ruthelliscenter.com

Ypsilanti
Queerzone at Ozone House, http://www.ozonehouse.org/services-lgbtq_support.shtml

Minnesota: Minneapolis
YouthLink: Project Offstreets, http://www.youthlinkmn.org/?q=programs/project_offstreets

North Carolina: Durham
North Carolina Lambda Youth Network, http://www.nclyn.org

New York: New York city

The Ali Forney Center, http://www.aliforneycenter.org

Carmen’s Place, http://www.carmensplace.org/

MCCNY Homeless Youth Services, http://www.homelessyouthservices.org/

Sylvia’s Place, http://www.homelessyouthservices.org/sylviasplace.html

Green Chimneys, Programs for LGBTQ Children, Youth and Families,
Agency Operated Boarding Home AOBH, http://www.greenchimneys.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=129:agency- operated-boarding-home&catid=111:nyc-programs&Itemid=174

Gramercy Residence at Ungar House,
 http://www.greenchimneys.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=99:gramercy-residence-at-ungar-house&catid=111:nyc-programs&Itemid=99

Triangle Tribe Apartment Program,
http://www.greenchimneys.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=131

Washington: Seattle
Isis House, http://www.youthcare.org/page.cfm?pagename=Shelter and Housing

Do you know of a resource that should be added to this list? Email  jennifer.vanasco@logostaff.com 

When a teen comes out, and their parents are able to accept them, it is a wonderful thing. However, recent studies have shown that as many as 25 percent of teens face rejection by their parents and families when they come out. Our nation’s homeless youth population is swollen with LGBT youth who have been thrown to the streets as a punishment for their honesty and integrity in coming out.

In last year’s report “An Epidemic of Homelessness,” the Task Force cited studies showing that up to 40 percent of all the homeless youth in the United States are LGBT.

It is upsetting and disturbing to hear the stories kids tell us when they seek help from the Ali Forney Center. We hear of kids being battered and beaten by their parents and family members. We hear of kids being told that they are damned and unloved by God by their religious leaders.

We hear of kids being gaybashed in youth shelters, most of which in our country are “faith-based.”

A common theme I hear in the stories our kids tell us is how, in the eyes of their families and communities, their being LGBT cancels out their human value. They become no longer worthy of love and protection in the eyes of their parents.

This is where the broader LGBT community must come to the table.

We need to show our kids that they are loved and cherished for who they are. We have an obligation to our youth to create and support structures that protect queer youth when their parents refuse to do so.

 In every city we need to be advocating that youth shelters be safe for LGBT youth, and that distinct programs be created and funded to meet the needs of LGBT youth. Paying closer attention to the needs of our kids needs to be a higher priority for us as a community on local and national levels.

I am proud of the Ali Forney Center’s trailblazing efforts in responding to the urgent needs of homeless LGBT youth. We opened in 2002 with six cots in a church basement. Since then, we have grown to offer eight seperate residential sites with the capacity to house 50 youth per night. We have a drop-in center that offers food, showers, medical and mental health care, HIV testing and prevention services, and vocational and educational assistance to over 500 youth per year.

We offer the kind of guidance, support, and protection that youth should be receiving from their families.

When Ali Forney, a homeless queer youth, was murdered on the streets of NYC in 1997, this kind of support for LGBT youth did not exist. Ali was faced with the choice of staying in a Roman Catholic-run youth shelter where gaybashing was notoriously prevelent, or of struggling to survive on the streets. Ali chose the streets, and was mudered on a cold December night.

It is wonderful now to see how our youth are able to thrive when given the kind of nurturing and support they need. We were so proud this past summer when one of our former clients, Lamont, was fearured in a New York Daily News article about his courageous efforts in founding the first LGBT student club at Medgar Evers College, where he became a student while living in our housing program.

We were also filled with pride last summer when Andre, another of our kids, was given a full scholoship to dance at the Alvin Ailey School.

Most recently we have exhaulted in the accomplishments of Isis, who came to us last year with a fierce determination to pursue a career in fashion, and moved from our housing program in June to become the first trans woman contentent on America’s Next Top Model!

However, the Ali Forney Center is a rarity. There are only a small handful of programs in our country dedicated to housing LGBT youth – there are tens of thousands of LGBT youth enduring the terrors and humiliations of homelessness on our streets.

 The protection and safety of our youth must become a central priority of our community. We need to show these kids, and ourselves, that they are valued. When a kid is thrown to the streets for being gay, it is an assault against each one of us.

We need to do a better job, so that when kids come out of the closet, they do not have to be thrown to the streets.

There was a whole floor of them. Nothing but kids. The walls were that pale institutional green of old aquariums and the cloudy windows had chicken wire imbedded in them.

The day room was large and open, if not airy, and kids littered the chairs and floors with the drugged-out stares and low moans of the over-medicated.

EPPI was like some freaky camp for some of us. I was there for a while in tenth grade, after slashing my wrists and taking an overdose of pills.

My best friend, Laura, also spent some time there after her suicide attempt in 11th grade. Another wrist slasher. She was more depressed than I was and took all the Thorazine they gave her while I hid mine under my tongue. Debbie was there after her overdose in tenth grade. Amy was there, too, after she tried to suffocate herself with a dry cleaning bag after she took a whole bottle of aspirin.

 For a time it seemed like every lesbian who ever attended my all-girl’s high school ended up attempting suicide and taking a short trip to EPPI because of it.

 That was the 1970s, however, and being an out lesbian was rough. Very rough. Laura, Debbie, Amy and I were all living very different lives from our straight peers. Suicide seemed like the trump card we held, the get-out-of-hell free card.

 In 2008, being queer is considered acceptable among a majority of Americans of all ages. More than a third of teens in urban areas identify as bisexual. Access to support groups, in schools and on the Internet has eroded the isolation of the past among LGBT teens. 

Lesbian and gay teens today needn’t feel the hopelessness or fear that the LGBT youth of my generation felt.

 Or do they?

NEXT PAGE: The high, tragic numbers of LGBT teen suicide

 What will be the message behind her choice of words and phrases this evening – genuine love, understanding and respect, or hostility, prejudice and misunderstanding?

Will she fly the “family values” flag of the Religious Right? Will she stand on the shrill and divisive “gay marriage” foundation of James Dobson and Tony Perkins?  And will she stand on Sean Hannity’s “traditional value” of allowing deep-seated hostility and prejudice toward gays and lesbians to be passed along to yet another generation?

But there is a much more important question as it relates to the gay or lesbian teenager who without friends or family is anticipating ending his or her life out of despair. For all those who seek an end to a national moral failing, the question for us is: Will we begin to question and therefore expose this horrible hypocrisy?

The gay teenager’s despair and emotional trauma is not because God created them without affection for the opposite sex – it’s because society says they should be rejected, condemned and deemed unworthy, inferior or immoral because of the way God created them.

For far too many years, groups like Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Perkins’ Family Research Council have used words and phrases that on the surface appear innocuous and somewhat meaningless, but upon basic scrutiny reveal hostility and prejudice toward gay and lesbian citizens.
Could there be a worse form of hypocrisy for Palin than doing harm in the name of religion – and particular the evangelical community which professes the Christian ideals of respect, love and understanding?

All of us – private citizens, public officials and the media – must do a better job as caretakers of the words and phrases that are used to communicate issues and positions related to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens.
 
We hope that Gov. Palin will choose not to use the anti-gay establishment’s code language. But if she does, we urge you to hold Gov. Palin accountable for her use of these words and phrases. It only takes but a few simple follow-up questions to expose the true intent behind these words and phrases – and please, take my word as a former anti-gay Christian Right voter, the intent is not love, understanding, compassion and respect.

The campaign, by the non-profit Trevor Project, was developed by Better World Advertising and will coincide with National Suicide Prevention Week, which is sponsored by the American Association of Suicidology. It will run Sept. 7-13, 2008.

The series of print and online advertisements feature four young people, representing those who attempted suicide because of intolerance and harassment, and expressing how glad they are that they did not complete suicide because their lives have since changed for the better. 

The vignettes deliver the message that the despair leading to suicide can be resolved in a way that leads to a happy and fulfilling life. The Trevor Project said it hopes to place the advertisements pro-bono in media outlets and on Web sites nationwide.

“It is significant that our first social marketing campaign will launch during National Suicide Prevention Week because suicide is one of the top three killers of all young people, and LGBTQ youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers,” said Charles Robbins, executive director of The Trevor Project.

“It is time for young people to rise above homophobia and work together to create inclusive, respectful environments for one another.”

The Trevor Helpline, 866-4-U-TREVOR, is a free and confidential service that offers hope through its trained counselors. 

It also provides lifesaving guidance and vital resources to parents and educators in order to foster safe, accepting and inclusive environments for all youth, at home and at school. 

The organization was founded by three filmmakers whose film, Trevor, about a gay teenager who attempts suicide, received the 1994 Academy Award for Best Short Film (Live Action). 

The “I’m Glad I Failed” print and online advertisements can be downloaded free at TheTrevorProject.org/ImGladIFailed .