Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...Coming out early: the fight to help LGBT youth
Dr. Robert Reid-Pharr was in New York City walking his dog one morning when he was approached by a young black teenager. He appeared to be 15- or 16-years-old with slightly feminine mannerisms, Reid-Pharr said later. He propositioned the professor: sex in exchange for food. Like so many other homeless gay youth in New York City, the young man in front of Reid-Pharr has resorted to prostitution in order to survive.
Reid-Pharr, a critical essayist and professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, turned him down.“I asked him what he was doing and he said his mom was addicted to crack. He had been out all night because there were people doing drugs at his home and he couldn’t stay there,” Reid-Pharr recalled. “He said, ‘usually when guys take me home they give me food first.’”
Like the young man who Reid-Pharr encountered, gay youth take to the streets for a variety of reasons, some resorting to hustling to survive. Whether they are kicked out by their families for being gay or are forced to leave to escape abuse, staying at home may not be an option for many gay youth.
According to a 2007 study done by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 20 to 40 percent of homeless youth in the United States identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. The same study also found that there are between 15,000 and 20,000 homeless youth in New York City, of whom 3,000 to 8,000 are LGBT.
Even when they are able to live at home, a gay kid’s life may not be easy. Bullying and a lack of support are pervasive problems in schools. A 1997 Massachusetts Department of Education Survey found that gay students hear anti-gay slurs as often as 26 times each day. Faculty intervention occurs in only about 3 percent of those cases.
Yet national attention for gay youth seems to be limited to only the most extreme stories, like the 2008 murder of Lawrence King, an openly gay 15-year-old student who was shot and killed by a fellow classmate.
When gay children are being murdered by their classmates, why are the issues of gay youth not more widely covered?
Carl Siciliano, the executive director of the Ali Forney Center, a housing center in New York City for homeless gay youth, explained why he believes gay youth are sometimes ignored or overlooked in the wide spectrum of gay rights. Siciliano believes that a new generation of gay youth has risen up, different from past generations of gay men and women who were accustomed to coming out later in life.
Kids are coming out earlier than in previous generations, Siciliano said, and gay organizations are only now paying attention.
Older generations were accustomed to coming out later in life when they were out of their parent’s homes and able to support themselves. Today, kids who come out as young as 12 and are kicked out of their homes need the help of these gay organizations to survive.
“Just the concept of a gay organization protecting gay youth is new,” said Siciliano. “We need to set standards because some of the [programs for gay youth] that have come around are lacking and grossly substandard.”
NEXT PAGE:How are LGBT youth adapting?
This is exactly the type of article that begs to be read. Thank you, Cory!
Although still difficult to come out, I am happy to see teens have a better support network than we did when we were that age.
This was a great article, but missing one big piece – how do we get involved? How about a list of groups with contact info? You make the point in the article about the gay community needing to get involved. It would have been great to see some options at the end on how to do that.
I’m curious myself as one of the luckier gay teens. I want to help others like me, I’m not sure how to go about doing it!
Here are some links, google for lgbt youth centers in your area. Every little help is adding up…
http://www.givethemhopenow.org/
http://www.aliforneycenter.org/
http://www.safeschoolscoalition.org/RG-homeless.html -
Do we not have an obligation & oputunity to be a safety net for our youth? Has not the our response to the pandemic proven we can rally when needed.
Here is a chance to keep the youngest amoung us healthy + hiv negative?
We need shelters to get them off the street & away from the tradgic chioce of putting themselfs in mortal danger either from murder,rape & hiv exposer.With high risk behavior such as drugs & unprotected sex. I know way to many of us have indured the same!
SO WHEN DOES THAT END????
I dream of the day were every child has a roof to sleep under & feel safe & loved!a very tall order.Yet we all can band together With all the apartment buidings facing forcloser cant we use that to are advantage? Or am I the only one who layes awake at night thinking of this crisis?????
I know what this is like, I came out to my mom and ant because I felt it was time to at the age of 16, (1995), I was still in high school then, need leis to say she told me I’m not and she wonted me to have kids so she can be a grandma, she cried and cried and ignored me for a long time until she was over it (1999 or 2000) after that we never real talked about it she just told me it was stupid and it was in the past and we should leave it there. I never told my dad, he’s not around any more nor do I talk to him.
“I know what this is like, I came out to my mom and ant because I felt it was time to at the age of 16, (1995), I was still in high school then, need leis to say she told me I’m not and she wonted me to have kids so she can be a grandma, she cried and cried and ignored me for a long time until she was over it (1999 or 2000) after that we never real talked about it she just told me it was stupid and it was in the past and we should leave it there.” Quote
A common result. Initial horror, what did I “do wrong”, bang head on wall, cry,etc. etc
You need to have friends as a back up to accept you, and support you especially if the worst happens.
But over time, if you can pry mom away from the clutches of the church, she will come around. PFLAG.ORG is a great group if there is a chapter near you.
Much of what you said is of course just embarrassment on your mom’s part. Embarrassment, from a life in the sales biz, is one of the greatest motivators of behavior. You need to over time get your mom to understand her emotions, as the final chapter in getting her “out of the closet” that so often happens when the kids come out.
Sri about your DAd, couldn’t tell if he has left the scene for other places or this life. But I guess it doesn’t matter.
So, here we have a long (and otherwise excellent) article about the problems of homeless “gay” youth, which uses a young trans woman as its only example and yet only mentions that she is transgender, NOT gay, once, thus erasing the identity of trans youth and the unique problems that they face, and the proud identity of this young girl as transgender. Gay and trans are *not* the same thing, although gay and trans youth face some of the same problems. The fact that the public conflates the two and, like this young girl’s mother, assumes she must be gay if she is trans, is no excuse for a publication supposedly written for the LGBT community to ignore the unique identity and problems of trans youth. Frankly, I am disgusted that 365gay.com can’t do better than this.
Eye/Heart opening article…we need to do more for our Gay Youth. I was really lucky to have really open parents…but a lot of kids out their need our support.