LGBTQ Youth and their Families

One thing that I thought was interesting about the homelessness epidemic in the LGBTQ community was how difficult it is to gather statistics about the issue since many LGBTQ youth feel afraid to come out and talk about their situations publicly. It was also interesting to learn about how the resources that are available for homeless LGBTQ youth today were not available to youth even just 10 years ago. The example of Ali Forney really struck me, and how if he had a center like the Ali Forney Center in his time, his life could have been saved. I think it’s easy to not think about the struggles that LGBTQ youth face on a daily basis, and how hard it must be to fear losing your own family just because you want to be yourself. My group and I even decided to switch our social issue to LGBTQ discrimination because there are so many problems that need to be addressed that are related to this issue, and it affects so many people in our society. I also thought that it was really great that centers were also helping families to be better accepting of their children since the ultimate goal would be to keep families together instead of just providing services for the children that become homeless. With my group’s project, the main thing we want to focus on is transgender youth, and how to make them feel more accepted in both their families and their societies. We think transgender children are put in a specifically difficult situation, as they often know of their orientation at a very early age. This also makes things difficult for parents, as many parents have a vision of what they want their child to be, and children who are struggling with this might not fit into their parent’s vision. We mainly just want to help create environments where these children feel like they can be who they are without any repercussions or fear because that is what every child deserves.