Teenage Homosexuality

Teenage Homosexuality
Of the many emotions a gay man or woman
feel, perhaps the most powerfully pervasive is fear. The fear of being
found out is real enough, but the worry does not end there. There also
lurks the fear of being called names, being assaulted, perhaps even killed.

For adults these fears are horrible enough. For a lesbian and gay teenager,
who lack experience and life skills to cope with them, such fears can be
overwhelming. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth face many problems as they
realize they are homosexual. Often they don’t know even one other homosexual
person and feel very alone and misunderstood. They see very few role models,
no one to identify with. No one knows their secrets, no one shares their
pain. No one will stop others from name calling if the name calling is
about homosexuality. Who would dare to speak up?
No one speaks up, not in junior high and
high school. College, perhaps; pride events are more easily seen then,
but in high school no one speaks up. Imagine dearly loving someone else
and having to keep it totally secret because if you don’t you will be punished
— cast out of your home by your family, ostracized by your friends, perhaps
losing your job. This is the world of the lesbian and gay young person.

The feelings homosexual youth face are
only the beginning of the problem. As they recognize that they are different
and discriminated against, they lose self esteem and become depressed.

Many become suicidal and develop a feeling of extreme depression and helplessness.

Those who don’t commit suicide live an adolescence of silence and oppression,
rarely being able to speak up without being struck down by peers. The U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Task Force on Youth Suicide
issued a report in January of 1989 concluding that lesbian and gay youth
may constitute “up to thirty percent of completed suicides annually” and
that “homosexuals of both sexes are two to six times more likely to attempt
suicide than are heterosexuals. Homosexual youth can not speak up because
of fear and misunderstanding. And when no one speaks up for them, no one
stops the pain, many teens can not handle it and commit suicide. This is
the meaning of the commonly known phrase, “Silence equals death.”
Not only do they face unrestricted discrimination
and harassment at school, they often face similar or worse homophobia at
home. Parents, unaware of their children’s sexual orientation, often make
cutting remarks about homosexual television characters, community members,
or the orientation in general. They may not even recognize their comments,
but the child (or children) is hanging on to every word, looking for at
least a tiny bit of acceptance from family. Many times they find hate instead
of acceptance, sometimes to the point of being kicked out of the house
at age 14 or 15 when a homophobic parent does find out. This leaves them
with nowhere to turn.

Many of these teens are themselves suffering
from the same prejudices that the rest of their family may share. Or perhaps
they’ve gotten past that, and started to forge a new identity, where being
gay or lesbian is something of which they can be proud.

Sometimes, what makes it so especially
hard for gay teens is the very thing that protects them, their invisibility.

What African-American parent would be making jokes about black people at
the kitchen table? What Jewish family would sit around casually commenting
on how God condemns the Jews? But the lesbian, gay or bisexual teen, sitting
there in their cloak of presumed heterosexuality, laughs outwardly, or
joins in expressing shared disgust, while yet another chunk of their self-esteem
has been chiseled away.

Homosexual teens can not confide in parents,
friends, or often even the church. Most Christian churches condemn homosexuality
and back up their beliefs with the Bible. However, the major references
to homosexuality in the Bible are badly mistranslated. Nowhere does the
Bible mention same-sex love negatively; it only mentions prostitution,
specifically in reference to local cults.

More information can be found at the URL
http://cent1.lancs.ac.uk/lgb/eight.html which is a detailed retranslation
of eight major Bible passages used to condemn homosexuality. Homosexual
youth often go to church with family as expected, only to hear the condemnation
of themselves echoed by the entire church. Where is the loving God the
church is supposed to be echoing? What love exists in condemning people
for who they love? Each youth sits there listening to parents, siblings,
friends, and religious leaders tear apart their feelings of love and self
esteem, not speaking up out of fear for emotional and often physical safety.

The more discriminating the place, the
more dangerous it is to speak up, but how much more dangerous is it to
let a teen live in constant depression and fear? Obviously it is extremely
dangerous, since as quoted earlier homosexual teens are up to six times
more likely to commit suicide than heterosexual teens. Not only do homosexual
youth hear discrimination and fear from home, church, and the community,
they also are exposed to a subtler form of it at school. Though it isn’t
obvious, the extreme lack of proper information is a very big discriminating
factor at most schools. Parents and Boards of Education still fight to
keep homosexuality-debate, discussion, even it’s mere mention-out of schools.

Nurses and librarians still fail to offer resources to timid young people
with agonizing questions. In a 1993 study performed by the San Francisco
Department of Public Health, ninety percent of youth (ages twelve to twenty
five) with AIDS are gay or bisexual men, while those under age thirty comprise
sixteen percent of AIDS cases. Given the lengthy incubation period, virtually
all were infected as teenagers. Newt Gingrich has pledged to hold Congressional
hearings on withdrawing federal funds from school districts that mention
gays and lesbians in curricula services, a punitive and financially disastrous
measure similar to the Robert Smith-Jesse Helms amendment that passed the
Senate in August 1994 but then expired in the committee.

These amendments would efectivley ax the
very few school based programs that teach tolerance and foster self-acceptance.

If homosexuality is mentioned at all, it is usually skimmed over and brushed
off as something that “no one here actually needs to know about.” It is
assumed that the entire class is heterosexual and should not need to know
what homosexuality and homophobia really are. However, according to popular
statistics about 10% of the population is homosexual. In a class of 20
students, that’s 2 people. If the class size is 30, it’s 3 or even 4 students.

Up to 3 or 4 students must listen to how everyone else’s sexual and emotional
feelings are natural, but theirs are never mentioned. Rather than providing
proper information on how homosexuals are often discriminated against,
and what homophobia means and how it hurts, the class barely even mentions
the subject if it does at all.

If a homosexual youth is lucky enough to
find their way to the Internet, they are eventually greeted by a bit of
a LBG-supportive environment. Several sites exist to help homosexual youth
realize that they are normal, lovable, and can be successful. The sites
also have many tips on coming out, especially to parents and family. However,
many sites with very useful information for homosexuals are restricted
to adults (age 18). Many of these sites do not contain sexually explicit
material above what shows on prime time TV. The information directed at
adults (announcements of pride events, etc.) is also of use to youth, and
restricting the entire site to adults prevents youth from reaching useful
pieces of information. The youth also need to know about adult same sex
relationships; they have no or few role models available locally, and often
the only way that they can learn that same sex relationships can last like
marriage does is to read about it over the net. Keeping all information
about adult same sex relationships away from youth prevents them from seeing
the permanent, loving aspect of what their lives could be.

As homosexual youth enter college and begin
to explore the world on their own, many begin to find the support groups
that were so lacking in high school. Large universities sometimes have
official student organizations for homosexual students. Books are much
more available, and often many people are publicly “out” on campus. This
environment begins to help homosexuals understand themselves better. Some
become very active and public, to help pave the way for people who may
be having a harder time than they have. Many homosexual people gain the
courage and independence to come out to their family, sometimes because
it is the first time their physical safety is not in danger by doing so.

As homosexual youth mature and begin to
develop adult relationships, they must integrate their feelings and attitudes
into their normal life. They also usually overcome most of the homophobia
that they grew up with. Often a part of the integration of growing up is
that the person is able to stop focusing on their own homosexuality, becoming
more open to same sex and opposite sex relationships without thinking about
whether their homosexuality is showing or not. Homosexual people in this
stage have begun to really be able to accept themselves without feeling
obsessive or afraid of issues surrounding homosexuality. The details vary
between people, but the overall change is toward self acceptance and comfortableness
within society. This change is needed for proper social interactions, with
friends and lovers. It most often happens in the late teens and early adulthood,
because a lot of self inspection and independence occur then.

Homosexual teen suicide, discrimination
from all areas of life, and misunderstanding of homosexuality, both from
the heterosexual community and from the homosexual youth who have not have
access to information, would greatly reduce, or nearly disappear, if proper
education was given in the public schools to combat homophobia. “Liberty
is the right not to lie.”
Homosexual youth should not have to lie
to hide their orientation from their parents, friends, and the rest of
the community, just to stay alive.

Even one teacher taking a stand for proper
homosexual information in schools can make a difference. That one teacher
may be the role model one or several students needed to see to make them
feel worthwhile and not suicidal. Too often though a teacher who stands
up for equal rights and protection is cut down by the school administration
and parents. However, even then a student may feel better that at least
one person understands them and wants to fight for their rights. It can
be the difference between total destitute and a bit of hope. Whether the
teacher gives positive information in the classroom, or stops cutting remarks,
or simply discreetly helps one or two students find a support hotline,
it can often make the difference between life and death for despairing
teens.

As more teachers, administrators, social
workers, and other people speak up, the deadly silence and invisibility
of homosexual youth begins to diminish. If silence equals death, then proper
communication and information is the one way to insure life.