http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/12/health/gay-lesbian-teenagers-violence.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
What this says is that even with all the talk about how much better it has gotten for LGBT people, with all the talk of kids coming out in high school, of gay-straight alliances, that a lot of LGBT kids still struggle. I was talking about this with someone at work, who asked me why I thought, with the attitudes young adults have towards gay people, for example, why this is still such a problem. Besides the obvious, that there are still large pockets of intolerance out there no matter where you go, I also pointed out that the polls you see are young adults who are for the most part away from their parents and likely have moved away from their peers in high school, and that in school kids (I am talking the non LGBT kids) are caught up in the common culture at home and school where being gay is still not ‘okay’ a lot of the time. Not just among who you would expect, socially and culturally conservative people, but rather even among parents who claim to be okay with LGBT people,but a lot of them are uncomfortable with it (and kids catch that, I don’t care what they say), and kids in school who might not have problems with LGBT people will act with the mob in making jokes, saying nasty things, calling someone a ‘■■■’, because they are afraid of being accused of being gay if they stood up, and so forth.
Someone posted this same link on another discussion forum, and it made me sad to read more than a few of the posts, rather than seeing the suicide rate and drug use and dropping out of school being the reaction to feeling alone, confused, the target of abuse, they claimed this showed that LGBT kids were abnormal and that is why these things go on…and these aren’t just anonymous posters, I have heard people say this openly in real life, too, blaming the kids for their misery, if they would just be ‘normal’ they would be fine sigh. Then again, I also subscribe to the old HL Mencken axiom, that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the american public.
I volunteered at a crisis center for youths in Ann Arbor while I was getting my MPH. They were largely teens who had been kicked out of their homes… and the majority were LGBT.
It breaks my heart. I live in a very insulated liberal bubble (and I absolutely recognize this fact). My dad was in a marriage ceremony (spiritual, not legal since it wasn’t at the time) between two men back in the 90s. My grandmother has been a staunch advocate of LGBT rights for decades (her only brother died of AIDS in the late 80s). When I had a girlfriend in high school, I encountered no discrimination. My LGBT friends here in Ann Arbor have never told me about incidents around here.
Then I go and visit extended family or friends-of-friends and am reminded of all the vitriol that still exists. I go to the crisis center or where I volunteer as an HIV test counselor and I am reminded of what people even my age still experience.
@romanigypsyeyes :
I live in a relatively live and let live kind of place, most people if you asked them would not exactly be raging to ban same sex marriage or to overturn gay rights laws, but even around here kids still run into trouble and there are far too many people who at the very least, don’t think it is a big deal. I can only hope that when the younger generation of adults grow up and have their own kids, things will change, their own parents and grandparents may have raised them to be bigots but somehow they have grown away from that, if polls can be believed. I asked my son about it, and even though the world of classical music is one where there is a long history of gay artists and composers, the gay kids still run into problems, sadly. Some of it is the international nature of classical music, there are a lot of kids from places that are still in the dark ages in many cases if not openly hostile to LGBT people, but some of it reflects general society, too. My S shocked me when he told me of a friend of his, a fellow student, who transferred from one of the more well known conservatories in the world, and he did so in part because he was openly harassed for being gay among other things (which is weird, because said school has turned out a lot of musicians over the years who were gay themselves).