Homophobia

A friend said to me at lunch the other day that youth growing up in the African-American community who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender have it the worst; “the worst” meaning of all other ethnic or religious communities. Not true.

When I worked with youth in Houston, Texas, I remember a seventeen-year-old high school student who had won a statewide piano competition. A week later, his parents discovered he was gay and threw him out of the house. He had to learn overnight how to live on the streets. He was white and his parents were educated Christians.

Also in Houston, a gypsy youth told me there is no community less accepting of gays and lesbians than the Roma.

Meeting with mothers and fathers in the Fort Lauderdale chapter of P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), a Jewish couple told me they ostracized their teenage son when he identified as gay.

I lived with a man who grew up in the Hasidic community. I never met his mother or his brothers. They would have nothing to do with him when we moved in together.

You cannot tell a gay or lesbian youth (or adult) who is scrambling to survive financially and emotionally because they have been abandoned that someone in the black community has it worse.

If you lose a job, what do you do with someone saying, the guy down the street has it worse?

If you lose a child, etc.

Let’s educate instead.