Still a ways to go

musicprnt
Thu, 11 Aug 2016 21:22:44 +0000

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&region=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.