Teenage Homosexuality Essay
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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...
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