The Toll Right Wing Hate Takes on LGBT Youth

Having spent decades in the closet before "coming out," I know full well the toll stigma and right wing targeting of LGBT individuals takes on one's soul - indeed, it contributed to two suicide attempts years ago at this point.  Yet, as we begin June - Pride month across the world - Republicans and evangelicals/Christofascists are busy at work seeking to renew anti-LGBT hate and stigma and peddling the lie that being LGBT is a choice.  Of course, all the legitimate medical and mental health research shows that there is no "choice" involved and that one's sexual orientation is predestined before birth and that the only question is one of when individuals decide to face the reality of who they are and who they are attracted to. Christofascists nonetheless continue to push the "change myth" and "conversion therapy" that changes no one, but lines the pockets of charlatan "Christian" therapists and gives political cover to Republicans more concerned about winning primaries than the harm they do to living, breathing people, particularly LGBT youth. 20% of those between 18 and 26 identify as LGBT.  While they have found more social acceptance, these LGBT youth and young adults continue to experience higher mental health issue than their straight peers.  Much of their mental health issues come from family rejection and a very real fear that their rights will be rolled back (something older gays are feeling as well) or that they are being erased by "don't say gay" laws in states like Florida.  Sadly, those pushing the new effort to stigmatize and denigrate LGBT individuals care nothing about the harm they do.  Indeed, doing harm is the entire goal of the effort.   A long piece in the New York Times looks at the state of LGBT youth.  Here are excerpts:

For L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers, high school is a much more accepting place than even a decade ago. They change their pronouns, go to school dances with people of the same gender, and are more likely than any previous generation to openly identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or otherwise queer.

“Being queer and being happy about it is something that’s so normal,” said Reese Whisnant, who just graduated from Topeka High in Kansas.

Yet there is a darker side. Even as they are increasingly welcomed by peers, their mental health is significantly worse than that of heterosexual young people. Many young transgender and gay people have been affected by a wave of recent Republican-led legislation questioning their identity or putting restrictions on their lives. They’re being raised by generations whose approval of and comfort with L.G.B.T.Q. identities lag their own.

Their experiences highlight a “paradoxical finding,” as researchers have described it: Even as social inclusion for young L.G.B.T.Q. people has grown, large health disparities between them and their non-L.G.B.T.Q. peers have not shrunk.

“This is what young people teach us: Change can happen as quickly as a generation,” said Stephen T. Russell, a sociologist and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who studies adolescent development and L.G.B.T.Q. youth.

At the same time, he said, “the moment we’re in is so scary in terms of the mental health crisis.”

Researchers say many factors are probably contributing to L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers’ contradictory experiences. To better understand, we took a national poll and talked to two dozen high school students in five states. The students were from states like Florida, Kansas and Iowa, which have passed various restrictions affecting L.G.B.T.Q. minors, and Oregon, which has no such restrictions and has passed protections.

At Reese’s school, he was one of at least a dozen openly transgender students, and many more students identified as L.G.B.T.Q. It’s a different world from when his older sister, Brianna Henderson, attended just seven years ago, when there were very few openly gay students.

Yet Reese has at times struggled to get the support of adults in his life. He has heard slurs in school. His home state has passed laws related to restroom use and sports participation for young transgender people. It has all strained his mental health, he said: “It’s stuff that teenagers shouldn’t have to be worrying about on top of all the other stuff we already have to worry about.”

One in five adults in Gen Z (those roughly 18 to 26) identify as L.G.B.T.Q., according to Gallup polling, compared with 7 percent of adults in the United States overall. The majority of them identify as bisexual. About 2 percent of Gen Z adults are transgender, and about half of adults under 30 report knowing someone transgender.

In much of the country, what it’s like to be an L.G.B.T.Q. teenager changed around the mid-2010s. The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. “Will and Grace” had been on TV, and the show “I Am Jazz” started that year. In 2014, the basketball player Jason Collins became the first openly gay athlete in one of the four major North American pro sports leagues, and a year later, Caitlyn Jenner, the Olympian and Kardashian, came out as transgender. . . . For today’s teenagers, it has been all they have known — they were in elementary school at the time.

This reflects other data that has found that verbal harassment of L.G.B.T.Q. teenagers declined during the 2010s, while support for same-sex marriage became the norm among young people. “You’re at the point among young adults where almost all these measures of acceptance are in the high 80s, low 90s,” said Jeff Jones, a senior editor who oversees research at Gallup. “It’s basically getting toward a consensus.”

As acceptance has grown, though, the mental health of queer youth has continued to suffer. Reported rates of mental health problems among all young people have been rising for the last decade, but non-heterosexual students face far higher rates than straight students.

About 70 percent of high school students who identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual reported persistent sadness, according to recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, twice the rate of their heterosexual peers. One in five attempted suicide in the past year, nearly four times the rate of straight young people.

Research shows that being in a minority group, especially if people in that group face stigma, causes stress that can affect their health — a phenomenon known as minority stress theory. Since adolescents feel a drive to conform with their peers, being a minority during this period may be particularly challenging. Studies have shown that L.G.B.T.Q. youth who experience more stress about their minority identity are more likely to have mental health challenges.

Young people are also affected by the culture at large, researchers say, as anti-trans legislation and what critics call “Don’t Say Gay” bills reverberate across the country. Among other bills, there has been a wave of legislation this year banning what doctors call gender-affirming care for trans minors, such as puberty blockers and hormones. . . . the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have urged states not to ban or limit this care.

Many teenagers, particularly in Republican-leaning states, said protesting these bans had become a big part of their lives.

“There is good data on the fact that these public moments that promote stigma and discrimination work their way into the culture and climate in schools and peer relationships with kids,” Professor Russell said.

Parents and schools play big roles and can do specific things to support L.G.B.T.Q. youth, researchers say. Studies find that family acceptance is among the most important protective factors, something that teenagers also said in interviews. . . . the most important component of the mental health crisis that L.G.B.T.Q. youth are experiencing,” . . . . “It’s family rejection.”

Some sex education curriculums cover L.G.B.T.Q. health and identities; nine states require it. The presence of a gay-straight alliance improves the school climate as a whole, studies show, even for people who don’t participate.

At Topeka High, Reese Whisnant said, teachers now talk about L.G.B.T.Q. issues, especially in history class, and there’s a gender-sexuality alliance with nearly 100 members. “They’re really trying to help kids understand they need to be accepting and stuff,” he said. “It’s definitely a lot better than it was. There’s still stuff that needs to be worked on, but it’s a lot better.”

Let's be clear.  Those who promote anti-LGBT hatred - be they evangelicals/Christofascists clinging to myth based religious beliefs and the bronze age beliefs of Palestinian goat herders in the Old Testament or Republican political whores - are hate merchants, plain and simple.  They need be shunned by decent, moral people.