Suicide and the Gay Agenda

While visiting with more and more LGBTQ people, particularly over social media where I can get a variety of insights from a wider range of geographic and cultural contexts, I’ve noticed a new trend.  This new trend creates a sense of relief in me while at the same time chilling me to the bone. 

When people talk and connect and engage in a deeper, story-sharing dialogue, it doesn’t take long for common themes between people to emerge.  For LGBTQ people, who often grow up isolated and desperate for this kind of connection, obvious themes quickly emerge.  Themes surrounding “When did you know you were gay/bi/trans?” and “What was coming out like?” and “How did/do you handle crushes on straight friends?” are top on the sharing list.  But the theme I’ve been tracking more and more?  “I thought about/came close to/attempted suicide when…”

On the one hand I am so incredibly relieved we’ve arrived at a place, if only internally within the LGBTQ community, in which we can more openly talk about mental health issues like self-concept and self-harm.  It’s ironically no secret that in the culture of the United States actually talking about mental health is still a difficult thing.  Traditional stigma are still attached to people who struggle with depression, anxiety, identity, and so on.  People are reluctant to share their mental health challenges for fear of judgment and, face it, when you already live with the judgment of huge sectors of society or fear of judgment because of being who you are, you’re not going to rush out and add fuel to the fire by saying, “Oh, by the way, I’m not just gay but I’m also depressed and I’ve seriously thought about suicide.” 

But among “our own” we can have these conversations. 

And that’s what I find so frightening about this theme.  It seems like suicidal ideation and suicide attempts are becoming a part of the “coming of age narrative” for LGBTQ people.  It’s almost a given that this theme will surface in conversations within the LGBTQ community.  “Yeah, I knew I was gay when I was twelve but I was terrified to say anything because my parents were super religious.  It was so bad, I felt so alone, that I tried to kill myself when I was fifteen.”

I’ve written before about the isolation LGBTQ people experience (Oubliette, Discussions of Equality in High School) and the human need for community and the results of not feeling connected with community (complete with research and statistics) (Community).  Today I’m going to bring these topics together and talk about the real threat the LGBTQ community faces.

Everyone’s heard the phrase “gay agenda.”  Most of us make a joke about it anymore, mocking the religious and political leaders who obviously have no idea of what it means to be gay or how a person “becomes” LGBTQ.  That being said, maybe we need to do, as a community, what we have always done since the beginning.  Maybe we need to grab a hold of these catch phrases and insults and turn them to our advantage.  I would like to suggest that we actually create a “Gay Agenda” and as item number one on that agenda we list in bold, all caps, complete with hashtag:  #STAYALIVE.

Here are some frightening facts that I found.  Keep in mind two things. 

1.     When dealing with studies and statistics we always have to admit that there is an under-reporting that takes place with regard to self-report.  People who want to keep things on the down-low are never going to be honest when asked questions about certain topics.  An individual who attempts suicide may simply say he’s dealt with depression “all his life” but he will choose not to disclose that he has also struggled with his identity for just as long.  Because the individual fails to self-report the identity piece, the idea that he struggles with sexuality, his attempt won’t be documented within the body of research reflecting suicide and suicide attempts in the LGBTQ community.  Statistics, though accurate as far as the study and research are concerned, really don’t capture the reality of the situation because people fear being honest about things that will bring judgment and may even out them.  And, by the way, this isn’t just the reality for LGBTQ research.  This happens in any kind of study that relies on any kind of self-reporting.

2.     Similarly, the statistics I’m about to share are older statistics.  Recently I’ve been citing a survey in which 48% of respondents between the ages of 13 and 20 identified themselves as exclusively heterosexual.  This means that 52% of young people in this study identified themselves somewhere in the LGBTQ spectrum.  This is a revolutionary piece of information and I suspect that findings like this survey are going to be seen more and more among the younger population and we will eventually see statistics like the ones I’m going to talk about altered significantly in light of this new information and the willingness to share it.   

I want to make one thing clear.  LGBTQ people are not depressed because they are LGBTQ.  They do not consider suicide because they are LGBTQ and they do not commit suicide because they are LGBTQ.  There are no mental deficiencies caused by “being gay” any more than “being gay” is caused be a mental deficiency.  If you still subscribe to this nonsense you are literally stuck in the 1960’s because legitimate science abandoned your nonsense in the early 1970’s.

So if we’re going to talk about mental health challenges faced by LGBTQ people, particularly youth, let’s look at real causes rather than politically motivated causes or religiously imagined causes.

In 2013 the National School Climate Survey reported that “schools nationwide are hostile environments for a distressing number of LGBT students.”  The survey, which was completed by nearly 8,000 students between the ages of 13 and 21 and of whom nearly 60% identified as gay or lesbian, found:

·        55.5% of LGBT students felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation and 37.8% because of their gender identification. 

·        Roughly 1/3 of LGBT students had missed at least one day of school in the last month because they didn’t feel safe

·        More than 1/3 avoided gender-segregated spaces in their schools (i.e., bathrooms, locker rooms) because they felt unsafe

·        Most avoided school functions [Which, of course, adds to that sense of isolation.]

·        71.4% of LGBT students heard “gay” used in negative ways and 90.8% felt distressed because of that language

·        64.5% heard other homophobic remarks often

·        56.4% heard negative remarks about “not acting masculine enough” or “feminine enough” often.

·        1/3 heard negative remarks about transgendered people

·        51.4% of students reported hearing homophobic remarks from their teachers or school staff.  55.5% of students reported hearing negative remarks about gender expression from teachers or other school staff.  (Again, you wonder why I had to write about teachers being completely inept at facilitating conversations about equality and allowing students to talk about “fag marriage” and “shooting their mentally deficient and gay children?”)

·        74.1% of LGBT students were verbally harassed (called names, threatened) in the past year because of their orientation.  55.2% because of their gender expression

·        36.2% were physically harassed (pushed, shoved, etc.) because of their orientation.  22.7% because of their gender expression.

·        16.5% were physically assaulted because of their orientation.  11.4 because of their gender expression.

·        Almost half of LGBT students experienced electronic harassment/cyber bullying (i.e., text messages, facebook messages)

·        Nearly 2/3 of LGBT students who were harassed or assaulted in school did not report the incident to school staff usually because they doubted the effectiveness of any intervention.  [Which you can understand why when teachers/staff are contributing to the hostility of the environment.]

·        Over 2/3 of the students who did report an incident indicated the school staff did nothing.

·        Nearly 1/3 of LGBT students reported being disciplined for the same public displays of affection non-LGBT students engaged in freely.

·        18.1% of LGBT students were prevented from attending school dances/functions with a same gender date/partner.

·        17.8% of students were not allowed to form or promote support groups.

·        17.5% of students were prohibited from discussing or writing about LGBT topics in school assignments.

·        15.5% were prevented from wearing clothing or items supporting LGBT issues.

·        9.2% of students reported being disciplined for simply identifying as LGBT.

·        Policies which were reported that directly affected transgender youth:

o   42.2% of transgender students were prevented from even using their preferred name. [Which makes you wonder considering how many non-trans students are allowed to use stupid nicknames born from athletic participation, right?]

o   59.2% of transgender students had been required to use a bathroom or locker room based on their so-called “legal sex.”

o   31.6% of transgender students had been prevented from wearing clothes considered inappropriate for their “legal sex.”

Now this is where we get into the actual effects of all of this hostility, inequality, intolerance, and blatant ignorance and hate.

Students who experienced higher levels of victimization because of their sexual orientation were three times as likely to have missed school in the past month, had lower grade point averages compared to students who were “less often harassed” (2.8 vs. 3.3), were twice as likely to report a lack of plan/desire to pursue college or trade school, and had higher levels of depression and lower levels of self-esteem.

Students who experienced higher levels of victimization because of their gender expression were three times as likely to miss school in the past month, had lower GPAs, were twice as likely to report they didn’t plan to pursue higher education, and had higher levels of depression and lower levels of self-esteem.

These same statistics translate from victimization to discrimination. 

A .pdf of the entire study can be found here. 

How does all of this play out?  How does all of this well-documented violence and hostility toward a specific and vulnerable sector of America’s youth translate into tragedy and the loss of life? 

A 2012 Stonewall Survey gives us some insight.  Young gay men are 30 times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts.  Lesbian young people are six times more likely to attempt suicide.  Some have made up to nine unsuccessful attempts to kill themselves.  The highest rates of suicide are among those who are isolated from support.

This same article reports “US News reported that teenage gay people who have been rejecred by their parents are far more likely to self-harm, take hard drugs and commit suicide than teenagers who are…loved and supported by their parents.”

25% to 60% of gay people seek counseling at some stage in their life as reported by the Counseling Directory. 

But where does all of this come back to?  Where do people receive tacit and/or overt approval for their intolerance and ignorance?  This is a hard question for me to actually answer not because the answer is elusive but because admitting it ultimately leads to an admission of a certain amount of complacency.  The answer?  The Church.  Or more specifically:  Religious and faith communities and institutions.

It doesn’t take a lot of research to convince people that traditional religious understanding bolsters contemporary intolerance of LGBTQ people.  It’s common knowledge.  It’s as well and basically understood as knowing the KKK is not a supporter for the African-American community.  More and more research is published in which people, victimized by narrow and superstitious understandings of religious texts, share their stories and bring awareness to the damage the Church, for example, has done for generations. 

And it’s not just the Christian Church struggling with these issues and attempting to push back against hundreds of years of intolerance and ignorance.  A 2012 study of Suicide and Suicidal Behavior in Tel Aviv discovered “a staggering 20% of the homosexuals and lesbians surveyed reported suicide attempts—112 times the rate among the general population.”  The study goes on to note that “this sector…does not get enough notice, and it is a hotbed for suicides that you later hear about after the fact.  The suicide rate among the religious homosexuals is the highest because they experience more distress when confronting their families.”

I cannot tell you how angry reading studies and reports like this makes me.  I cannot tell you how my heart aches when I hear people share their stories of rejection by faith communities who claim to embody the love of God and the ministry of Jesus Christ.  I grew up in the Church.  I still consider myself a part of the Church.  But the Church makes me so angry when their hypocrisy reaches this breaking point, when they claim to be the Body of Christ, to embody the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth who led people beyond their self-imposed boundaries to people who were different, though differently, behaved differently, loved differently—not to preach at them or tell them how they need to change but to simply love them—and then these same Churches preach a doctrine of intolerance that creates fear and self-loathing in LGBTQ people who fear not only losing the love and connection of their family but, through hateful and ignorant words, feel themselves cast far away from the love of God.

We have SO MUCH work to do—in our religious communities, in our schools, and in our society at large.  No subset of our population should have to share stories of their suicide attempts any more than they should have to share stories of police violence and institutional racism.  We have to do better.  We have to educate ourselves better. 

We have to #STAYALIVE because it is getting better.  We need you to help make that happen.