Gay Teens Confront Their Humanity

Some gay teens - too overwhelmed by anti-gay ideologies manifesting within their families, churches, schools and communities - never confront the homophobia around and within them. They've been silenced.

I feared the numbers of these 'silenced' would temporarily grow given the increased visibility of our movement since 'gay marriage' came forward as a national issue and the resulting increased vigor of those in opposition. John Cloud's "The Battle Over Gay Teens" (full article here), if nothing else, lessened that fear.

Some gay teens today live openly in insular accepting environments which now include not just college but also high school. Not surprisingly, some don't understand what's at stake for them later on in life. They have, it seems, fallen victim to the illusion - brought about by the very recent emergence of openly gay celebrities - that being gay is 'no big deal'.

Convincing these gay teens as they approach adulthood that it is important to talk about their lives without denying their innate homosexuality may at first prove difficult. But I suspect, as happened with me, they will eventually grow to appreciate what the gay activist leaders of the past have achieved and have not achieved for them.

For most out gay teens today, they will mature into a country (USA) that will, for the most part, bar them from marrying the one they love. Many may enter adulthood in states that categorize them as unfit to foster or adopt children. Many will be banned from clubs, churches and organizations and face job and housing discrimination with no legal recourse available to them.

Still, to be fair, I think for many if not most gay youth, figuring out how to BE in a heterosexual world is confusing and frustrating enough. But then they are confronted with the extra burden of understanding the forces seeking to not just deny them equality under the law but also to equate them, as a whole, with rapists, alcoholics and the mentally ill.

I'm surprised, given all that, how many gay people do 'come out' okay and relatively undamaged. I'm not surprised at the anger and passion out there. That anger and indignation is what has galvanized our movement. I'm confident most gay youth will come to appreciate this anger expressed by many activists as not a militant anger but a valid sensible one given all that has been said by leaders such as Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Pope.

Afterall, we fight for the full humanity of people who are gay. The Fundamentalists and all those anti-gay forces they've rallied around them fight for a hypocritical immoral ideology based on lies and hate. As I've said before, ideologies come and go, but we gay people are here forever and now that we've emerged from the closet of medieval superstitious ignorance about sexuality, there's no going back.

With that in mind, there is too much at stake for any gay person, young or old, to believe we have reached any sort of post Gay Lesbian Civil Rights Movement identity. Gay teens who believe their place at the table of society has been permanently set are in for quite a shock when they try to sit down at that table later in life. Therefore, we still very much need new generations of outspoken Gay and Lesbian leaders to speak with force, courage and steadfastness on behalf of those without a voice, still too afraid to speak.

(This article was written as a comment (#86) to the post Gay America: The Next Generation on BlogCritics.org.)