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|  | Opinion Letter from the Editor The Next Generation  by Jere Keys
jere@slmetro.com It’s been my experience that every queer community center and HIV education program in the world trots out gay youth programs when it needs funding. “But think of the kids” is an effective pull on the heartstrings and the pocketbook of many potential donors. It’s hard not to get cynical when this same plea has been made over and over again.
Still, I find myself thinking that being cynical about this subject is one of the worst mistakes we, as a community, could make.
It’s difficult to say, exactly, how many gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender people there are in the world. Estimates range from less than 1% to 10%, often depending on the biases of the people making the claims. National exit polls in the last election found that about 4% of voters self-identify as queer. This number doesn’t include, of course, those who are closeted and those who engage in same-gender sexual relations but don’t self-identify as part of our community.
Why is a number important? In numbers we have power. If we truly did account for 10% of the overall population, it would be nearly impossible for politicians to continue marginalizing and ignoring our concerns. Sure, 1 in 10 isn’t even close to a majority, but most of us have straight family members, friends and associates who support us.
But what does this have to do with gay youth?
Well, I can’t help but wonder how many of our number have died before becoming an active voice in our movement. We know that queer youth are statistically more likely to be lost to suicide. We also know that their lives are more likely to be cut short because of problems with alcoholism, drug addiction, homelessness, and even anti-gay violence. Not to mention the ongoing problem of AIDS deaths in our community—young gay men are still one of the largest at-risk groups in the nation.
Think, just for a second, of all the people we’ve lost to AIDS, suicide, murder, addictions, and the cruelty of the streets. While it’s impossible to compile accurate statistics about all those causes of death, I feel comfortable in guessing that in two decades alone, we’ve lost at least half a million (and I’m guessing low) of our own to untimely death, many of these being young people who could have become part of our larger civil rights struggle.
While we were discussing homeless youth topics for this issue, I heard someone use the term “throwaway kids.” Is there a more hateful phrase in the entire English language? Putting my bleeding-heart notions aside, how can we, as a community, afford to lose any of our youth? In a country so sharply divided over, well … us, we need every single soldier we can get. We, as a people, need them to grow up with healthy images of themselves, the education to make smart decisions, and the support of positive role models. It’s not even a question of heartstrings, it’s just smart.
Sadly, the services we have are too few and the resources we need are unavailable. Conservative lawmakers have sought to close the public school system to us and have diverted money and protective laws away from homeless youth programs. Many traditional youth empowerment programs, such as the Boy Scouts, are closed to queer kids.
What resources do exist, such as The Center’s Youth Activity Center, are under-funded, under-staffed and under-equipped to deal with the enormity of the problems many gay youth face. We cannot lose programs like YAC, high school gay-straight alliances, homeless youth services and HIV/AIDS education programs, even if they only address a few of the diverse needs our youth face.
So next time someone asks you to “think of the kids,” don’t let yourself be cynical about it. Instead, make the decision that the only goal that works for our common cause, rationally and emotionally, is a zero percent population loss of our youth. They’re ours and we’re keeping them. | | |
