While trying to deal with all the challenges of being a teenager, gay/ lesbian/ bisexual/ transgender (GBLT) teens additionally have to deal with harassment, threats, and violence directed at them on a daily basis. They hear anti-gay slurs such as “homo”, “faggot” and “sissy” about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes.[1] Even more troubling, a study found that thirty-one percent of gay youth had been threatened or injured at school in the last year alone![2]
Their mental health and education, not to mention their physical well-being, are at-risk.
How is their mental health being affected?
Gay and lesbian teens are at high risk because ‘their distress is a direct result of the hatred and prejudice that surround them,’ not because of their inherently gay or lesbian identity orientation.[3]
Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts.[4]
How is their education being affected?
Gay teens in U.S. schools are often subjected to such intense bullying that they’re unable to receive an adequate education.[5] They’re often embarrassed or ashamed of being targeted and may not report the abuse.
GLBT students are more apt to skip school due to the fear, threats, and property vandalism directed at them.[6] One survey revealed that 22 percent of gay respondents had skipped school in the past month because they felt unsafe there.[7]
Twenty-eight percent of gay students will drop out of school. This is more than
three times the national average for heterosexual students.[8]
GLBT youth feel they have nowhere to turn. According to several surveys, four out of five gay and lesbian students say they don’t know one supportive adult at school.[9]
Read more:
Other Resources - on - Mental Health America
National Association of School Psychologists
4340 East West Highway, Suite 402
Bethesda, MD 20814
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
3615 Wisconsin Ave., N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20016-3007
American Academy of Pediatrics
141 Northwest Point Blvd.
Elk Grove Village, IL 60007
American Psychological Association
750 First Street, N.E.,
Washington, DC 20002-4242
American School Counselor Association
1101 King St., Suite 625
Alexandria, VA 22314
Association of Gay and Lesbian Psychiatrists
4514 Chester Avenue Philadelphia, PA 19143-3707
The Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network
90 Broad Street, 2nd Floor New York, New York 10004
Human Rights Campaign
1640 Rhode Island Avenue NW,
Washington, DC 20036-3278
Human Rights Watch
350 Fifth Avenue, 34th floor New York, NY 10118-3299
National Education Association
1201 16th Street, NW,
Washington, DC 20036-3290
National Youth Advocacy Coalition
1638 R Street, NW, Suite 300
Washington, DC, 20009
Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays
1726 M Street, NW, Suite 400
Washington, D.C. 20036
Find out more:
Related links:
7 Ways to Support Teen Bullying Victims
by Kathryn Stamoulis, Ph.D.
October 11, 2010 – Psychology Today
…Combat homophobia. Three quarters of teenagers are exposed to derogatory and homophobic slurs regularly at school. Given the fact that over one third of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) teens have reported being threatened or injured in school in the last year due to their sexual orientation, it is not shocking that they are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual counterparts. Even the mere perception of being gay or homosexual can lead to bullying. For every LGBT teen victim of bullying, four more victims are bullied because others perceive them as "acting" gay. A 2009 survey from San Francisco University found that supportive families serve as a protective factor against suicide and other mental health issues in gay youth. Gay teens with little to no family support were significantly more likely to use drugs, have depression and attempt suicide…
Read complete article:
It gets better:
A video campaign featuring hundreds of videos by people standing up for gay youth
by Dr. Brian Mustanski
October 8, 2010 – Psychology Today
Video campaign to gay youth says, "It gets better."
In September several LGBT young people tragically took their own lives. In the media it was reported that they had experienced bullying, victimization, and harassment. While the reasons why someone chooses to take their own life are very complicated, we do know that things do get better and that suicide is not the answer. To help tell the story of how things get better famous syndicated columnist Dan Savage launched a YouTube channel that allows gay adults to upload videos of themselves describing the bullying they might have experienced in high school, but also talking about how much better their lives are now.
It is a rare opportunity for gay adults to speak directly to gay youth and explain that while sometimes you may feel isolated, that life gets better. Many celebrities joined in and shared their words of encouragements with the simple message that "it gets better."
Read more/view video:
Tyler Clementi:
Gay Bashed with the Bricks and Bats of Social Media
by Michael C. LaSala, Ph.D.
September 29, 2010 – Psychology Today
Tyler Clementi: Gay Bashing and Social Media
I am a professor at Rutgers University where Tyler Clementi was a student. I did not know Tyler, nor do I know the two young people accused of filming his sexual activity and posting it-but what I do know is this act was a gay bashing and the weapons were as powerful and wounding as a baseball bat-perhaps more so. Photo
Imagine being a very young boy, recognizing you have romantic feelings toward other boys. However, you come to realize to your horror that there is something wrong with these feelings--horribly wrong. Perhaps you have been bullied and harassed by the other kids in school who knew something was up because you looked or behaved differently than the way boys were expected to. Or perhaps you became proficient at hiding your feelings deep down in a place where no one could find them, not even you.
As you mature, and with much concentrated effort you become somewhat more comfortable with your feelings-comfortable enough to explore and act on your sexuality while away at college. You then find that this most intimate of acts, stigmatized by large segments of society, was secretly videotaped and broadcast to hundreds, perhaps thousands of people…
Read more:
GAY TEENAGE SUICIDE
Roman Catholic - hierarchy child sexual abuse “cover-ups”
ordered by Benedict XVI
to avoid public outrage & criminal charges
falsely accused gay priests - WATERGATE?
The following statements are harsh statements, but unfortunately they are heavily documented. (1) Benedict XVI and his hierarchy failed to protect children from child sexual abuse for decades. (2) They mistreated and intimidated the victims and their families who came to report the child sexual abuse, in order to cover up publicity of any child sexual abuse. (3) They failed to protect children by repeatedly reassigning the child sexual abusers to assignments where children would be present. (4) When the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children became public, globally, in 2002 they shifted the blame wrongfully onto gay priests.
Read complete report: Child Protection Service of the Archdiocese of Dublin http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/PB09000504
(5) By falsely, against known research to the contrary, blaming gay priests they implicated the entire LGBT community and how they are fighting against Marriage Equality. When the scientific facts known for decades about human sexuality have been discounted with no substantiated facts given to explain why, it causes many questions whether Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s fight against Marriage Equality is more a fight to maintained the cover-up of the hierarchy’s criminal negligence failing to protect children? Benedict XVI and his hierarchy need to clearly offer substantiated reasons why they are against Marriage Equality. This statement needs to be spelled out in great detail and follow Pope John Paul II’s test of truth of not separating science and religion.
(6) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous public propaganda against homosexuality encourages public intolerance towards LGBTQ&I adults and children. They continue to do this even though this summer 2 major Christian denominations approved LGBT singled and partnered people for all forms of ordained ministries. (7) Benedict XVI and the hierarchy’s continuous promulgation of the Vatican’s unsubstantiated antigay teachings that are harmful to children in their early childhood psychological developmental years, harm that is crippling throughout their lives. They have continued this even after the beginning of the year, 2009, the Family Acceptance Project research studies had shown the negative effects caused to youths, when their sexual orientation is not accepted, having health problems, suicidal ideation, etc. They ignore all the major medical, psychiatric, psychological and social workers national and international professional associations regarding their findings regarding human sexuality and sexual orientation. WHEN DO WE START PROTECTING CHILDREN?!?!
Written by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Pope Benedict to Beatify a Gay Saint?
A Conservative Icon? Maybe Both
by David Gibson – September 18, 2010
Politics Daily
…"It is not good for a Pope to live 20 years," Newman once wrote of the long-lived Pius IX. "It is an anomaly and bears no good fruit; he becomes a god, has no one to contradict him, does not know facts, and does cruel things without meaning it."
Such frank talk about the failings of the hierarchy tended to make Newman a champion of liberal Catholics -- a courageous man who wrote about the "development of doctrine" in the church at a time when the Vatican was projecting an image of unceasing continuity. He also disagreed strongly with the church's adoption of the doctrine of papal infallibility, and famously wrote that if pressed, he would drink "to Conscience first and the Pope afterwards." Photo
…Complicating all the interpretations is the fact that Newman had an extraordinarily close relationship with another English Catholic, Father Ambrose St. John, who had died in 1875, leaving Newman bereft -- and giving today's gay Christians an icon of their own.
"I have ever thought no bereavement was equal to that of a husband's or a wife's, but I feel it difficult to believe that any can be greater, or any one's sorrow greater, than mine," Newman wrote at the time of his friend's death. "From the first he loved me with an intensity of love which was unaccountable." And elsewhere: "As far as this world was concerned I was his first and last."
Attachment Theory
Nothing in life is more precious than the intimate relationships we have with love ones. Healthy love relationships delight us give us confidence to take on challenges and support us in difficult times. Photo
Gay marriage ->
Restoring "Hope of Love"
To Children In Early Childhood -> Marriage Equality
March 23, 2010 – by Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
Marriage Equality, like Galileo, is the truth about the facts of growing up gay. Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the “hope of love” to children in early childhood – essential to their development and well-being for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.
Someday,
maybe, there will exist
a
well-informed,
well considered
and
yet fervent public conviction
that the
most deadly of all possible
sins
is the mutilation of
a
child’s spirit.”
The Trevor Project
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