Depressing Rolling Stone Article About Homeless Gay Teens

[+ quoththeraven]

Sorry to be a Debbie Downer, but I thought what's in this article is important and worth sharing here:

 

The Forsaken: A Rising Number of Homeless Gay Teens Are Being Cast Out By Religious Families (Rolling Stone)

 

The takeaway sentiment? Tragically, every step forward for the gay-rights movement creates a false hope of acceptance for certain youth, and therefore a swelling of the homeless-youth population.

Obviously, the article is US-centric; how true its assertions are elsewhere, I don't know, but most of its observations seem pretty universal. It's only the flavor of religion involved that is likely to differ.

 

PLEASE NOTE: While I know I can't control the direction of this thread, I'd very much appreciate it if commenters would refrain from generalized bashing of religion as opposed to specific criticism of anti-gay religious entities or practices, particularly as they affect gay youth. Not every place or form of worship is anti-gay; for example, the church in which I grew up is part of the Welcoming and Affirming movement (that is, it doesn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender expression) even though that's contrary to the declared position of the main denomination to which the church belongs. The church was threatened with disaffiliation, but that never happened; seeing as this all took place in 1998, it will never happen.

[bigvalboy]

I am so glad that you shared QTR. These are always difficult stories to hear. I worked with the homeless youth in Hollywood off and on for years. The stories they tell are reminiscent of what is written here. Many came from affluent households and deeply religious parents. When the end came, in terms of these kids outing themselves to their parents, the stories were almost always the same. More often than not, they were tossed out into the world with nothing more than a few dollars and the clothes on their back, as the door was locked behind them. As one might guess, many headed to Hollywood. They all talked tough, put up a good front, but most were scared to death. We just don't know what it is like for the sun to go down on the streets of a big city. Hungry, with Nowhere to go, and not knowing where you are going to sleep safely.

 

We see these kids on the street and we just assume that they are all strung out on drugs, but many like Jackie had dreams and plans, and struggled just to feed themselves. I would say to these kids all the time, "food first, you make bad decisions when your hungry"

 

Arriving here a little over a year ago, it has taken some time to settle in. I joined a group called "Tuesday Angels" yes I donate at their fund raisers, go to the dinners, etc. but in all honesty, it is the easy way. After reading this article I had forgotten how much suffering is really going on out there. Perhaps some changes are in order.

 

Thanks a million times over for posting this. It was a powerful read.

[fedssocr1]

Lots of scary stats there for sure.

 

I wish we did more as a community for these kids but I think there's a lot of issues wrapped up in that, unfortunately.