Gay teens rejected by their families often face homelessness

[Doondoo]

Chris Moore celebrated his 18th birthday with a crash course in survival. That day nearly two years ago, his family told him to get out because, he says, they could not accept him as a gay person. Unprepared to face the world on his own, Moore stumbled. He dropped out of high school two months before graduating. He found refuge on the couches of friends for four months. He spent three nights sleeping in a Miami park before going to a youth homeless shelter.

"Yeah, I was scared," said Moore, 19, who now lives in Oakland Park. "I didn't call my family because I knew that they didn't want me back unless I straight."

Gay youth advocates estimate Moore is one of thousands of gay, bisexual or transgendered young people who have become homeless after their families reject them. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Coalition for the Homeless recently released a report that estimates as many as 672,000, or almost 42 percent of all homeless youth nationwide, identify themselves as gay or lesbian. That is a large share of the nation's gay population, which is usually estimated at between 3 to 5 percent of total population. Nick Ray, the report's author, said in Florida, as many as 5,000 homeless young adults aged 15 to 24 consider themselves gay or lesbian.

For many such youth, family rejection often compounds their teenage struggle with self-identity and peer pressure. Ari Hampton knows the feeling. The 18-year-old from Lake Worth said he left home in September, two months after his birthday, because his dad did not tolerate his sexuality.

"He told me `I'm not going to have a son that's gay,'" Hampton said.

Since then, Hampton has been staying at a friend's house, which has kept him from the streets or shelters. He hasn't spoken to his father since.

"It's been scary, but I've been trying to do my best out here," Hampton said.


http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cgayhomelessfeb25,0,1126112.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

[saltpoint]

1. Shame on parents like this. Graceless bigotry. /nt

[gollygee]

2. I don't understand how someone could reject his/her own child

What kind of a parent would do that? :(

[Doondoo]

3. Easy answer......

.......the selfish kind who put their own egos above the physical needs of their children.

[philosophie_en_rose]

29. It should be criminal.

:grr:

[MuseRider]

4. It is beyond me

how any parent could reject their child for any reason, especially a reason like this. He is the same person they loved before in every aspect, it is just that he is now being totally honest to himself and to them. So sad.

[AngryOldDem]

8. I've seen this happen

I work at a shelter, and some of the most heartbreaking things I see are parents dropping off their kids. Thank God it doesn't happen often. I don't know what gets to me more -- the parents who are torn up over having to do it (often their kids act like they couldn't give a shit, also sad, because more often than not it's a front), or those who drop their kids off, turn on their heels, and go, without a word.

Most kids that age, though, turn up on their own. Once they have no more couches to which to "hop," ("couch-hopping" is what most homeless teens and young adults do) they show up at our place. They can come into the shelter as adults if they are 18. If they are younger, we refer them to the teen crisis center, which is often packed to the rafters. (It will be moving into a warehouse-size building here soon.)

But I'm with you. I can't imagine booting my kids them out of my home and into a shelter. And that goes for my other relatives as well, who otherwise are basically dead to me. Living in a homeless shelter is NO way to live.

[applegrove]

5. Bingo! This keeps otherwise productive people out of school. Not to mention

the traumas they may go through. Is bad for everyone not just the person when their potential is destroyed by small minded wedge issues.

[marmar]

6. Parents who do this will one day live to regret it....

One of my best friends from college, whose family had moved to the Detroit area from a small ultraconservative religious town in West Virginia, came out to his parents during his last year at UM. He came out to his parents over a Christmas dinner, at which his father told him it was the last Christmas he'd be welcomed at their house.
To this day, more than a decade later, he has no contact with them. And though he's dealt with it and has his own life in Chicago, there's a piece of him that was and always will be severely damaged.
I thought love conquered all?

[terip64]

7. kick and recommend

[dsc]

9. Every time I read a thread like this

I thank my lucky stars my dad and mom were who they were. Some people just don't deserve to have children.

[Dulcinea]

10. This is so sad.

Those poor kids, who have nowhere to go because their own families reject them. Too many people hate what they fear, & homosexuality often falls into that category.

[WorldResident]

11. Regardless of reason, most of the homeless I've met have unsupportive or MIA parents

Without taking personal responsibility out of the picture, I believe the parents make or break the child a lot of times.

[Occulus]

15. Personal responsibility doesn't count for jack

I was "personally responsible". I graduated 13th in my class, with a 3.85 GPA, both National Honor Society cords, the Sousa award for musical achievement, and more extracurricular honors than I could care to name. I marched with the Madison Scouts drum and bugle corps in 1994; they would go on that year to rank 6th in the world.

I came home and my mom snooped around in my bedroom, found a whole lot of- ah- material I had hid away at the bottom of the bottom drawer under my bed, confronted me about being gay, and kicked me out literally into the rain with no more than the clothes on my back, a couple changes of clothes, my oboe, and my bike. She didn't even let me take my car because they were still paying for the insurance.

The following year, because my grades had dropped from the mid-three point area to the mid-to-lower two-point area (I wonder why that happened...?), they told me they had decided they weren't going to help me pay for school any more. I always wanted to go back, but debts I incurred after leaving home for a second time have thus far made that impossible. This was twelve years ago.

The wounds haven't healed, all the more so because I try to be "part of the family". But I know I'm really not, and probably won't ever be treated like it.

The wounds are just as hurtful now as they were then. That... woman... who didn't even have the grace to keep loving her adopted child no matter what completely ruined my life and everything I had planned. I was good at one and only one thing- music- the which she and my father knew from the time I was five (but didn't clue me in on until I figured it out for myself in middle school), and she almost singlehandedly ruined it.

My father? He never even mentioned any of this to the day he died. Whatever he thought of me went with him to his grave. I don't know whether to hate him or not...

[salin]

16. I think the previous poster used the term to refer to the responsibility of the parent

and your heartfelt, heartsick post - reconfirms that sentiment. If folks can not handle the personal responsibility of being a parent, of unconditional love, of full acceptance of their children, then those folks never had any business taking on parenthood in the first place. Your adopted mother being a case in point.

:hug: your post inspired me to tears. I hope you now that you have friends and a fan-base out here in Duland. It probably doesn't account for much, but I hope that it does bring a little satisfaction.

salin

[Occulus]

41. Oh, I know

I added a longer post a bit down; read it if you have the time. I know there wasn't anything ugly meant by what that person said.

It's just real hard to take the whole 'personally responsible' spiel (not that that's what that poster was saying!!) when one was personally responsible to begin with :)

I really shouldn't have fans. They'll get splashed by the acid or slashed by the shrapnel. Catastrophic detonation is a distinct possibility.

:D

[InkAddict]

20. Very gutsy of you to tell your story...

Thanks for the music...I probably saw your performance with Madison Scouts; they were indeed awesome in '94. Gives me chills when I think of their signature rifle snaps. We have friends who marched Glassman.

Try to remember that what goes around, comes around. It continues to be THEIR loss...I can relate! Let your light shine in truth and love even as you forge a new path for the future. Never forget and never give up.

[WorldResident]

37. I was referring to the homeless youth problem in general, not just due to sexual orientation

Disclamer: Just so that there is no misunderstanding, I am NOT calling sexual orientation a poor social decision, but I may group it with that for purposes of discussing parental responses to old teenagers.

***

Fortunately, I come from a very supportive family. A family that will support me even if I screw up (and trust me I have, both scholastically and in the social decisions I made). However, I know parents who think that by throwing their kids out on the streets they will get their kids to stop making decisions they don't approve of, be it their choice of friends, perceived laziness, poor scholastic performance, sexual orientation, or lack of sufficient submission to the parents.

IMHO, this does not work, regardless of whether the parents' motives are justifiable or not. What will happen is if the kid is really making bad social decisions, he or she will most likely get involved with the wrong crowd and probably end up behind bars or become a junkie on Skid Row. If the kid was making obejectively good social decisions, like the poster above, he or she may not end up with the wrong crowd because they actually have brains, but the hurt towards his or her family is probably exponentially greater because he or she was actually wronged whereas the kid kicked out because he was just being a bum at home arguably deserved to be kicked out. (I'm not saying the latter rationale is right, just that it is more justifiable).

[Occulus]

40. You're so right.

I wasn't trying to jump on you; if I came across that way, I apologize. It's just that this crap happens regardless of the kid's achievements, and when it happens to someone who's genuinely doing something worthwhile, well...

My mom is sitting on $400,000+ in stocks and mutual funds while her daughter and her three kids struggle to make ends meet and her son is for all purposes adrift in life because of her. This is the same woman who once gave me an IOU to get the piano tuned in lieu of a birthday gift; the woman who tried to take posession of my paycheck when we were working on the same job, the same woman who hunted me down in her car while I was riding my bike to tell me she had volunteered me to go into work, my employer having called while I was gone.

I don't know. You tell me. People are often horrified at how I feel about my mom and, to a lesser extent (only because he traveled on business a lot) my dad. But keep in mind, this woman threatened to shut the piano lid on my fingers if I kept playing during her soaps. I was playing "too loud"- but I was adamantly denied piano lessons. Unless *I* paid for them.

I taught myself how to play piano, and quite well; by the time I graduated, I was teaching myself segments of "Rhapsody in Blue" and was playing piano in our high school jazz band. I also accompanied two pieces in concert with other choirs in the school system- and not the high school choir I was singing in!

She retaliated by refusing to tune or maintain the piano in any way- an instrument I paid for half of. The IOU she "gave" me for my birthday now holds the condition- according to her- that I first move the piano to my homeapartment. This is something she added (maybe it was a signing statement?) in the last few years.

That doesn't include the times both my mom and dad told me all about people I knew who were going to Interlochen or Blue Lake (two well-known music camps here in Michigan) while in the same breath telling me I couldn't go because they couldn't afford it. Yet today, she sits on close to half a million dollars.

My parents told me my entire life I could "do anything I wanted to do with my life". They told me they would "stand beside me, 100%". They talked about unconditional love, and how much they wanted me when they adopted me, and I heard these things my whole life.

Every last word of it was a lie. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd been the best of the best- oh, SNAP. I was. I knew it. My teachers knew it. My parents knew it- what birth family history there is that exists specifically states that both parents had a good deal of musical talent (gee, I wonder if that was meant to be a hint or something).

Maybe I'd still be working for the USPS now if I hadn't so foolishly applied myself to music as, ah, desperately as I did. Maybe I'd have memories of being... well... normal.

And here I sit, never once having taken any revenge, doing my best to keep up some sort of family tie with the person who, far above and beyond any other individual over the course of my entire life, has done me more damage than anyone else could have ever possibly been capable of.

I missed out on a lot in high school because I was so completely focused on what I saw as my future career. From my freshman year in high school, I knew I wanted to teach music. That's all I aspired to. I didn't want to perform solo in concert, I didn't want a performance gig with an orchestra- I wanted to teach, to apply what I learned from my high school band and choir directors (I was a very good singer as well) and all of the directors I performed under outside school, and I paid close attention to their techniques and their material. I resolved very early on that my students would end up being more challenged musically than I was. To that end, I started composing as well, that I might one day write pieces for the group I was teaching to challenge them at exactly their specific ability level.

The biggest reason I'm still hurt isn't really for me- it's for the people I could have shared my talents with in a way that would have benefited them. I'm dead certain, had I been teaching all this time, there would have been at least one student who would discover they're good at playing one instrument or other, and go on to do something with it. That was the whole why of why I wanted to teach.

Instead, my parents made me ashamed I ever even tried. I look back now at all the teasing I got just for being a "bandfag", jeering I got for being a guy playing oboe, and beyond that all the shit I got from all other directions and I really wonder why I bothered. I missed out on just about every school function there was outside the music department because I didn't feel like I was welcome.

I haven't really touched music in years, except to occasionally write a note or two. Working for USPS in a plant, I see a lot of ads for colleges and universities (and music schools), and every one of them is a reminder. That, all by itself, keeps me from any sort of healing; constant reminders are like sewage in a wound.

I'm sorry for the rambling nature of this post; nevertheless, I'm going to end with something really hard to deal with. How does one go about reconciling the concept of "unconditional love" with a) one set of parents, for whatever reason, giving you up for adoption, and b) the adoptive parents rejecting you and ruining you life?

I don't mean to sound hostile. If I do, I sincerely apologize. But how do you reconcile the concept of unconditional love with a history of parents who abandon you and another set of parents who both betray and abandon you?

This shit hurts. For a long, long time.

[WindRavenX]

12. This is SUCH an important issues--we need GLBTQ safe houses in every city!

Many runway GLBTQ teens have no where to go and fall pray to violence, drug abuse, etc.

How sad a society where a parent would turn away their own flesh and blood :(

[rebel with a cause]

13. throw away kids are nothing new and is not limited to gays.

Did research on this in the early 90s. Although gay teens are definitely a good portion of the population, it also included other youths with other circumstances. there were those mothers that chose the boyfriend over her child, in some of these cases it is because boyfriend was abusing child and mother preferred to get rid of the child rather than the man. In other cases, man just didn't want to deal with kids and so mom got rid of them. Some girls were there because their own father was sexually abusing them and the mother would not believe them, and they were finally forced out of the home. Some kids told of how they had went to school in the morning and came home to find the family had moved away. One boy had lived in a mobile home and came home to find the home gone. Some were thrown out because they were a financial burden on the family, and the parents thought they were old enough at 14-18 to make it on their own. There are more examples, but I will leave it at this. What most of these kids have in common is that they would rather live in the streets, do anything they have to do, rather than end up in the child welfare system. I worked in it, and I would rather them not be on the street, but I can see their point.

[Dulcinea]

23. Horrors.

Some people just should not reproduce. :cry:

[rebel with a cause]

25. Exactly!

One reason to be pro-choice and hope this type of person chooses to use birth control.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. That's what I saw, too, when I worked with street kids

It wasn't always the mother's boyfriend who didn't want the kid--sometimes it was the father's girlfriend.

[rebel with a cause]

43. true, and it happens in the best of homes

My mother died when I was a young adult, but my two brothers were both still youngsters of 12 and 14. Within nine months my father remarried, and this woman did not want the two boys. She had not raised her own two children, why would she want to raise someone elses? Well, to make a long story short, my father would never throw the boys out, but what they did was almost as bad. They bought a house trailer and set it a short distance from the house. (they had acreage) The boys came over for their meals and to drop off their laundry, but otherwise they were on their own. I, as well as my sisters, offered to take the boys but my father would not hear of it. He didn't want anyone to think that he was not doing the right thing. Well he wasn't!

[Sapphire Blue]

14. You can download the report @

http://www.thetaskforce.org/register_for_report

More info @ http://www.thetaskforce.org/press/releases/prHY_013007

[dsc]

28. thanks for the link

The document has 199 pages, and I am crying on page 13. I don't think I will be reading the whole thing.

[Initech]

17. This is really sad. I hate bigotry.

Of course, none of this will ever get reported on mainstream media, which is still too focused on crack whores like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan to notice.

[Kurovski]

18. The lack of the basic human emotion of love for one's own offspring is appalling and shameful.

Some people who believe they have the ability to raise other human beings are woefully mistaken in their assumptions.

[mzteris]

19. when my daughter was in highschool

one of her friends came out to his parents. His dad told him to GET OUT! He was going to come and stay with us but his mom grew a backbone and told her husband the son was staying - period. If he didn't like it HE could leave. He decided to stay. AND they all went to counseling.

The next year that boy (along with my daughter - who is 'straight' - and some others) started the Gay-Straight Alliance at their school.

[AnnieBW]

21. I Would Gladly Open My Home To a Gay Teen

If this kid's father doesn't want his son any more, I'll gladly adopt the kid. Being a teenager is bad enough without being rejected by your own family because you're different.

[Jonathan50]

22. I would be willing to wager that most of the parents are authoritarian followers

I thought I would show you this link to Dr Bob Altemeyer's online book _The Authoritarians_. A rather casual examination for the layman of what Dr Altemeyer calls "the authoritarian follower" or "right wing authoritarian". Based on quite a few years of Dr Altemeyer's research into the authoritarian personality it is an illuminating study of a psychological or personality type that non authoritarians have a very hard time understanding.

RWAs do not desire or seek power for themselves, rather they desire a strong leader to tell them what and how to think and to reinforce their already strong irrational biases.

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

From the introduction of _The Authoritarians_

The second reason I can offer for reading what follows is that it is not chock full of opinions, but experimental evidence. Liberals have stereotypes about conservatives, and conservatives have stereotypes about liberals. Moderates have stereotypes about both. Anyone who has watched, or been a liberal arguing with a conservative (or vice versa) knows that personal opinion and rhetoric can be had a penny a pound. But the arguing never seems to get anywhere. Whereas if you set up a fair and square experiment in which people can act nobly, fairly, and with integrity, and you find that most of one group does, and most of another group does not, that's a fact, not an opinion. And if you keep finding the same thing experiment after experiment, and other people do too, then that's a body of facts that demands attention. Some people, we have seen to our dismay, don't care a hoot what scientific investigation reveals. But most people do. If the data were fairly gathered and we let them do the talking, we should be on a higher plane than the current, Sez you!

[BlueIris]

24. 42%? That is horrifying.

It's possible that this is the most disturbing statistic I have ever read.

[Ms. Toad]

26. It would be even higher . . .

But a number of GLBT teens commit suicide before their parents have a chance to throw them out. (About a third of teen suicides are GLBT youth.)

[Dastard Stepchild]

27. I love my parents.....

Not only did they fully accept my bisexuality, but they opened their home to my wayward gay male friend that needed a family when his rejected him.

[BlueStorm]

30. This is sad...

This is probably a good and decent child that they have tossed out. I cannot imagine for even a second a person doing that to their own flesh and blood.

Then again there are some very shallow people in this world who would do anything to make themselves look good in society.

I am so glad I have the parents that I do have.

Blue

[murielm99]

31. These kind of stories break my heart.

When our daughter came out at 19, she was scared. She followed the advice of her GLBT support group, and did not tell us until she had somewhere to go and a way to take care of herself. I know that is harsh advice for a kid, but it is so necessary. Not all kids are able to conceal their orientation from judgmental parents.

I was hurt that she was scared to tell us. I had always made my feelings clear. And, I have a gay sibling whom I support and love.

She said she thought it could be different if it was my own kid. It wasn't.

I am so proud of her for being who she is. I am proud of everything she has done, not only her now openly gay lifestyle.

I can tell you that if my husband had not been as supportive as he should have been, I would have kicked him out of the house. He has had a long journey, and I am as proud of him as I am of our daughter.

Not long ago, he was talking about a Lesbian couple who are friends. They have been together for forty years. He said, "I don't think of them as some the nicest gay people I have ever known, I think of them as some of the nicest people I have ever known. Period."

I would gladly open my home to a gay teenager who has been thrown out of the house.

[dsc]

33. I was terrified to tell my parents

In retrospect it was stupid of me to be so scared. You sound like a wonderful parent.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. You better believe it about the status thing

I'm currently volunteering in a meal program for street youth. One girl--I don't know if she's gay or straight--has turned herself into an art gallery of sorts, with piercings, tattoos, and just plain bizarre hairstyles and glasses. She has a perfectly good home in the suburbs, but her parents won't let her come home as long as she looks like that. They will meet her at a location far from their home to give her money, but they don't want her in the neighborhood. Probably doesn't fit with the designer furniture and the landscaped lawn. :grr:

[mondo joe]

32. Some of the best advice I ever heard to young gay people was that there is no need to

"come out" while a dependent if doing so puts you at risk of harm.

It's incredibly sad that such advice has to be said.

[Xenotime]

35. When did we become such a closed-minded society?

The parents are the shameful ones.

[JerseygirlCT]

38. Good heavens. I cannot in my wildest dreams imagine doing

that.

How sick must you be to turn away your own child like that? How much must you have invested in your own hate to do that?

[NMMNG]

39. Parents who are this hateful don't deserve children

:-(

[Robeson]

42. The mindset of those parents is beyond me....

...though I've known repugs who are as equally perplexing.

[AllegroRondo]

44. This totally blows away the myth that homosexuality is a "choice"

what person would "choose" to be disowned and kicked out by their family?