When adults tout anti-gay legislation, young people are listening

When my 8-year-old cousin called me “bad” for being gay, I was sitting on the top bunk of the bed of the one-room deer camp my grandpa had built. Outside, around the fire, the adults in our extended family were talking and eating treats from our celebration of Grandpa’s 71st birthday. We kids had retreated indoors, exhausted from an extensive game of hide-and-seek. 

As the second oldest cousin, I was used to a flurry of questions during these family gatherings. On this occasion, they wanted to know who I had a crush on. I gave them a name, a boy’s name.

I was 14 years old at the time, an eighth-grader at a 300-student middle school in Houghton, a small town in Upper Michigan. I was out only to a small group of friends. And I wanted to test the waters of my family by telling the young, supposedly open-minded relatives. I never expected any of them to say anything homophobic or hateful. I wasn’t mad about the 8-year-old’s insult; he’d repeated what he’d heard somewhere, maybe even from one of our kin. I was hurt.

I gave up on the idea of coming out to my whole family. They would find out in time and we could have that conversation then. Life went on. 

“At 17, I’m experiencing harassment that I didn’t experience when I was 13.”

Toward the beginning of my sophomore year, I confided in my older brother my fear that someone at my high school was going to say or do something to injure me. I’d seen the way teenage boys behave in the bathroom. They violently shake open stall doors, sometimes. Or they give a guy “jumper cables” by poking him under both sides of his rib cage to make him hop up abruptly while he’s using a urinal. If that’s what they do to their friends, what would they do to someone they didn’t like? Yet, my brother told me not to worry. 

My brother was wrong. On the Wednesday before Halloween, during what was then my junior year, I heard it: “ … faggot!” A person shouted that at me, putting the f-word in front of what he’d said, as I was maneuvering down a crowded hallway. Someone else laughed. 

I was terrified. I stormed away as fast as possible. I didn’t look back. My brother and friends who’d been my safety net had graduated the prior spring.

When I told the school therapist that I didn’t know who said it, she pulled up the security camera footage and told me that I could go. She would take care of everything. 

Talking about it and having people listen

It felt good to be listened to. So,  I spoke to my school board. I convinced my principal to train teachers and staff about how to defend LGBTQ students. In my advanced placement language class, I wrote a speech that I gave at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C., where I also met with staff from my U.S. Senator’s and U.S. House of Representatives members’ offices. I told them about my everyday fears.

And the statistics are scary: Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 14 and aged 20 to 34 in America. LGBTQ+ people were four times more likely to commit suicide during the pandemic, a horrifying yet consistent trend.

Forty-three percent of transgender youth have been bullied on school property; 29% have been threatened or injured with a weapon while on school property; 29% of gay or lesbian youth and 31% of bisexual youth have been bullied on school property; and 6% of gay and lesbian youth and 11% of bisexual youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

What happens on campus reflects the violence off-campus, where LGBTQ+ people are four times more likely to be victims of rape, sexual assault, simple assault and other several other crimes.

Beyond physical threats, the CDC has also stated that LGBTQ+ people are placed at high risk for substance abuse and poor health outcomes due to experiences of discrimination and stressful conditions such as laws targeting LGBTQ+ people, marriage bans, hate crimes and medical discrimination. 

Several states have banned gender-affirming care for those under 18, further erasing the identities of many LGBTQ youth. A Republican congressman from Louisiana has introduced the Stop the Sexualization of Children Act, which, among other things, would ban books, events, and programs that discuss sexual orientation, gender identity, gender dysphoria, or related subjects. 

The House of Representatives has passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023. But an E Alliance study and others suggest that “there is no firm basis available in evidence to indicate that trans women have a consistent and measurable overall performance benefit after 12 months of testosterone suppression.” 

Anti-gay legislation fuels anti-gay action

When adults tout their anti-gay legislation on the 5 o’clock news, young people listen. Some of them parrot the adults.

At 17, I’m experiencing harassment that I didn’t experience when I was 13. (And I’ve been out at school since around freshman year.) My friends have received death threats. 

Yet, as I and others join the important conversations about these things, I also have seen some of my peers grow more understanding and less hateful. I have seen fellow LGBTQ+ students grow a little less afraid. I have had teachers thank me for being a source of news and other information. 

The same classmates who used to vehemently expressed their homophobia or transphobia, chiding me and my kind, now stay silent. It’s a small step. But progress is progress.  

According to The Hill, two-thirds of Gen Z are worried about the future of LGBTQ+ rights. They want to protect those rights. It’s a sign that, together, we can make it through this. We can create a world that is safe for everyone.

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Ian Evans is a senior at Houghton High School in Houghton, Michigan. He plans to someday run for his state’s legislature or for Congress.