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Originally published at Monstrous Regiment. You can comment here or there.
A few days ago i described the amazing energy i feel whenever i’m around young queer people. There’s a vibrancy there that brightens the day and gives me hope.
But i’m also very worried because queer youth are in deep trouble. If you’re young, and gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, you’re in crisis. I’m especially concerned about young people of color in our community.
Statistics. They never tell the whole story, but pretend i’m writing about real people here:
- 83% of queer youth experience damage to their property, personal attacks, or verbal insults. (83%? Just pretend this refers to every young queer person you meet and you would basically be right.)
- 40% of queer youth experience physical harassment.
- 26% are forced out of their homes due to conflicts with parents and family over sexual identity. That’s one in four. I’m sure that’s what Jesus really wanted, right — your kid on the streets?
- Between 25-40% of homeless youth are queer. Since queer people make up somewhere around 5% of the population, this means that a queer young person is five to eight times as likely to wind up homeless than a straight young person.
- Homeless queer youth are often prostituted, and face discrimination in the shelter system. Only a few small shelters have been designed to meet the needs of homeless queer youth.
- The hate-murder rate of transpeople may very well outpace the per-capita rate of all other hate killings. Most of this is happening to young adult transpeople of color.
A few sources:
Health toll of anti-gay prejudice
Southern Poverty Law Center: ‘Disposable People’
Gender PAC: 50 Under 30
Transgendered Youth at Risk for Exploitation, HIV, Hate Crimes
After Working the Streets, Bunk Beds and a Mass (NYTimes, reg. req.)
Here in Massachusetts, there was some “controversy” last year over Youth Pride. I put “controversy” in quotes because, unless you are ex-Governor Mitt Romney, Brian Camenker of MassResistance, or some other reactionary Republican or Catholic, you can either see the need for Youth Pride (see the above if you have any doubts) or it doesn’t put you out very much.
Mitt “i’ll be a more effective champion of gay rights than Sen. Kennedy” Romney thought it would look good for his 2008 presidential campaign to take this class of exploited, abused kids and add his own kick for good measure. He moved first to kill (that didn’t work), then to gut, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth.
Kicking someone when they’re down. Mmm, very compassionate.
(Connected to this was the decision of 39 commissioners, advisors and past members of the Governor’s Commission on Sexual and Domestic Violence to express “no confidence” in Lt. Governor Healey as the head of that Commission.)
As you might guess, i have a problem with people who can look at a class of vulnerable people who are being routinely harassed, beaten, kicked out of their homes, prostituted and otherwise exploited, and killed, and think that the compassionate thing to do is to treat them like a political football, to point a finger at them and talk about what is wrong with them.
Of late i’ve been finding my perspective shifting much more towards the situation young people are in. For those of us who are over 35, our job really is to pave the way for them and to not screw up their lives. They’re not just “the future,” they’re the world. And those who lead our society should be deeply ashamed at how low they have prioritized the needs not just of young queer people, but of young people in general.
