Resources for LGBTQ Youth

[Jess]

http://www.towleroad.com/2010/10/wat...ts-better.html

[christie]

Originally Posted by Jess

http://www.rosmy.org/

Just a really cool aside -

ROSMY has a current direct mail outreach campaign this week.



Nice to see it!

[EnderD_503]

Thought I'd share this video put out by RyePRIDE (group from Ryerson university here in T.O.) reminding everyone to wear purple on Wednesday (tomorrow) in rememberance of the recent string of suicides.

[Nat]

[katsarecool]

I saw this and was very impressed. About time someone in office made it. I would like to see either the President or the First Lady do one of these videos.

[Jess]

In order to combat anti-LGBT bullying, Facebook has announced that it is teaming up with MTV, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and others to form a “Network of Support” for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender teens.

The initiative is a follow-up to last week’s partnership between Facebook and GLAAD, but goes several steps further by providing LGBT teens and their parents with information, resources and support to combat cyberbullying. The goal is for this “Network of Support” to help address issues the LGBT community faces in the online world.

“In light of recent tragedies involving youth who have taken their own lives as a result of anti-LGBT bullying, we felt it necessary to form a ‘Network of Support’ to help us effectively address issues faced by the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community,” Facebook said in a post on its Safety Page.

The initial list of partners for Facebook’s “Network of Support” include GLAAD; MTV’s A Thin Line campaign; the Human Rights Campaign (HRC); the Trevor Project; the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN); and Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

To start things off, Facebook provided six tips on how LGBT teens can protect themselves online, including how to block bullies and report harassment. The company also suggests that LGBT teens stick up for others, think twice before posting, reach out whenever they feel overwhelmed, and remember that they are not alone in their struggle.

Facebook said that it decided to create this network due to recent tragic events. The story of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi, who committed suicide after being harassed for his sexual preference, is a story that should remind us all that LGBT students face immense and sometimes overwhelming challenges. We’re glad to see preventing this type of tragedy from happening again is high on Facebook’s list of priorities.



http://mashable.com/2010/10/19/faceb...-support-lgbt/

[Chancie]

[Nat]

Order Out, Safe & Respected
Your rights at school

This kit is designed to help you know your rights at school and make sure they’re respected, and to give you concrete ideas about how you can make a difference in your school and community. You have the right to be who you are. You have the right to be out, safe and respected at school.

[sylvie]

thank you for this thread..

i have a 17 year old son who came out almost 3 years ago now..
he obviously has a supportive mom, and of course my side of the family is supportive.. however, he's having issues with his father and his side of the family..

he's openly gay, even at school... lucky for him, he is soo accepted and yes, i breathed a sigh of relief.. i was petrified when he announced that he was going to come out with his friends.. i'm so so SO proud of him, for being so strong & being who he is.. of course! i only worried about the possibility of bullying..

i appreciate all of the sites listed here.. we'll be going through them, as my city doesn't have much for gay youth, sadly.. so very happy to find this thread :-)

[Nat]

I crossposted this to the breaking news thread because I think it's pretty big news that the president made one of these videos, but I wanted to post it here too.

[Nat]

Desmond Tutu: 'Hate Has No Place in God's House

[Nat]

Gay and lesbian teens are punished more at school, by police, study says

Gay and lesbian teens in the United States are about 40 percent more likely than their straight peers to be punished by schools, police and the courts, according to a study published Monday, which finds that girls are especially at risk for unequal treatment.

The research, described as the first national look at sexual orientation and teen punishment, comes as a spate of high-profile bullying and suicide cases across the country have focused attention on the sometimes hidden cruelties of teen life.

The study, from Yale University, adds another layer, finding substantial disparities between gay and straight teens in school expulsions, arrests, convictions and police stops. The harsher approach is not explained by differences in misconduct, the study says.

"The most striking difference was for lesbian and bisexual girls, and they were two to three times as likely as girls with similar behavior to be punished," said Kathryn Himmelstein, lead author of the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.

Why the punishment gap exists is less clear.

It could be that lesbian, gay and bisexual teens who got in trouble didn't get the same breaks as other teens - say, for youthful age or self-defense, Himmelstein said. Or it could be that girls in particular were punished more often because of discomfort with or bias toward some who don't fit stereotypes of femininity.

"It's definitely troubling to see such a disparity," Himmelstein said.

"It may very well be not intentional," she said. "I think most people who work with youth want to do the best they can for young people and treat them fairly, but our findings show that's not happening."

The punishments can be damaging, she said. Teens expelled from school have higher dropout rates, and involvement in the criminal justice system can affect a range of opportunities, including housing eligibility and college financial aid.

"I find it tragic, " said Clara McCreery, 18, co-president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda. "I wonder if some people misinterpret the way some gay girls choose to dress as a sign of aggression."

Stacey Horn, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, called the study important and compared the findings to racial disparities in criminal sentencing. "To me, it is saying there is some kind of internal bias that adults are not aware of that is impacting the punishment of this group," she said.

The study brings punishment differences for gay teens into focus at a time when public concern about torment and bullying is heightened. In September, an 18-year-old Rutgers University student jumped off a bridge to his death after his gay sexual encounter was allegedly filmed by a roommate on a webcam and announced on Twitter.

Probing the consequences of teen misconduct, the new study examines behaviors that include lying to parents, drinking, shoplifting and vandalizing, as well as more serious offenses such as burglary, drug sales and physical violence.

Using data from more than 15,000 middle school and high school students who were followed into early adulthood as part of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, researchers compared categories of misconduct against six punishments. The interviews used for the study started in 1994-95 and continued until 2001-02, but researchers said they expect the findings would be similar today because the institutions involved have not dramatically changed.

Nearly 1,500 of the participants in the study identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, but more than 2,300 reported having felt a same-sex attraction at some point in their lives. More than 800 were in a same-sex relationship.

The results showed that, for similar misconduct, gay adolescents were roughly 1.25 to 3 times more likely to be sanctioned than their straight peers.

The sexual-orientation disparity was greatest for girls. Girls who identified themselves as lesbian or bisexual experienced 50 percent more police stops and reported more than twice as many juvenile arrests and convictions as other teen girls in similar trouble, the study said.

Andrew Barnett, executive director of the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, which serves 300 teens a year in Washington, said he was not surprised by the findings.

"This is a symptom of school administrators, teachers, court officials, police officers - anyone who works with youth - not necessarily being equipped to handle the challenges" faced by the teens in their care, he said. "It's much easier to punish the youth than to work with them and figure out why they may keep getting in fights and what is leading to this behavior."

Hien Le, 17, president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, said she sees no tendency to punish gay students in her school. But she and other teens said parents often become more punitive when they disapprove of a son or daughter's sexual orientation.

"Your parents are the ones who are supposed to be supportive, but it isn't always that way," she said.

"I think it happens more than people think," said Caroline Callahan, 16, president of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Langley High School in McLean.

The study's data set was not large enough to allow for an additional analysis by race, but Himmelstein and others said that was an important area for further study.

Jody Marksamer, a staff attorney and youth project director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, said the study brings data to what advocates have seen for years: that biases, overt and subtle, often play out in courts, in schools and with police.

Gay youths are often grappling with family tensions and harassment by peers and sometimes with depression or homelessness, he said. Harsher punishments can make for "a cascade of effects" that can "move them from the schools to the criminal justice system."

Joseph Kosciw, senior director of research and strategic initiatives of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, said that more needs to be done in schools. "I think it really calls for professional development about how to address" issues related to sexual orientation, he said, "and how to address bullying and harassment when they happen."

[Soon]

Guest Post - Carl Siciliano on JMG

The holiday season frightens me. It is the time of year our homeless kids are most likely to attempt suicide. Kids who have been cast out of their homes suffer badly during a season that celebrates and idealizes family togetherness.

Yesterday I met with a group of kids at our drop-in center in Chelsea. They were all out in the cold at night, waiting for beds to open up in our shelters. One boy, who is 16 years old, told me how everything went bad for him when he was eleven. His father demanded to know if he was gay and when the boy was honest, his father refused to speak to him for three years. His mother tells him that he is a mistake and that she wishes she never had him. He has been running away repeatedly since then. There is nothing to celebrate at his home. I had a hard time sleeping last night, wondering what he had suffered.

What a sick, toxic force homophobia is in our society, destroying homes, making parents turn on their own children. Tens of thousands of teens in our country have been forced out of their homes. An LGBT teen is eight times more likely to suffer homelessness than a straight teen. The religious and political leaders who promote homophobia are causing terrible human suffering. They lie when they say they are promoting family values.

The waiting list for our shelter beds skyrocketed in the last year. More than half the kids coming to us for help are from out of state. Most are from the red states. Even though we recently opened a new 20-bed shelter, we now have a waiting list of over 200 kids. In New York City there are only 250 youth shelter beds for a population of 3,800 kids, 40% of whom are LGBT.

I am haunted by the perception that these kids are paying the price for our victories. I believe that when there is a lot of conflict about gay rights, parents who give credence to homophobic religious and political leaders take it out on their LGBT kids. It is no coincidence that our waiting list grew more than ever before in a year that saw the overturning of Don't Ask Don't Tell, and the achievement of Marriage Equality in New York.

The fight for LGBT equality for adults is often a matter of changing laws. But for these kids, who have been made destitute by homophobia, it is a fight for resources. A gay teen may not be able to depend on their parent's love, but they should be able to depend on our community to protect them. We cannot allow them to be left out in the streets.We need to marshall our resources to provide for them, and demand that our tax dollars help to create a safety net for them.

At the Ali Forney Center we are doing our best to protect the kids. We now house 77 every night in eight different shelter and longer-term housing sites. We serve hundreds more daily in our two drop-in centers. We work especially hard during the holiday season to create a warm and joyful environment for the kids. We have Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts at all of our housing sites and drop-in centers. We bring together many people to help us with all the food and withassembling abundant presents for all the hundreds of kids. Honestly, making the kids feel as happy and loved as possible during this season can be a matter of life and death.

I am deeply grateful to the community of people surrounding JMG for your generosity to the Ali Forney Center. Over the past few years the appeals Joe has invited me to write have generated over $65K. On this Thanksgiving day, I give my thanks to all of you who have been so kind and caring.

I hope that you will consider continuing to support our work. Donations can be made online or can be mailed to:

Ali Forney Center
224 West 35th Street, Suite 1102
New York, NY 10001

Thank you!

Carl Siciliano
Executive Director
Ali Forney Center

[Nat]

(((Jonah)))