‘I deserve to be valued’: LGBTQ youth speak out against statehouse Republican bills
- Thread starter cigaretteman
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I havent' taken a poll. I do know my kid's complaint is that it's not enough as they dont' have a large enough dating pool.
So you think it was school friends that made them gay? Not me as the evil liberal?
What if they realized it during covid lockdown? TicTok maybe? Anything but how they actually feel right? Someone has to be to blame!
There is a difference between making people aware of it and making it trendy. It's been made trendy.
I was aware of homosexuality in high school and college. I knew some homosexual people in college. This was not hidden.
It didn't lead to 1 out of 6 people my age becoming gay.
You need to get much better sources of information. People coming out is more accepted today which is why we're seeing more youth as they have less fear. Older people have been coming out because they are more mature and able to handle the possible stigmas. They are still coming out later in life as well. I know people who were hetero through college and into their 30s before determining the right relationship for them was same sex.
The "cool thing to do" is right wing propaganda. You have a tendency to fall for it. If it were just a fad we would be seeing many reverting, but we don't.
Nothing is making LGBTQ trendy, it is just more accepted to be out and proud these days. That acceptance is what is causing all the push back by conservative Christians. Once gay marriage became a reality and most people realized the world didn't end because of it, then those conservative Christians had to find a new cause to rally the troops against. What is trendy right now is making laws that punish or restrict transgendered people and people who participate in drag shows. Neither of those kinds of people are new, but the need to legislate against them is new and popular it seems.
I'm not going to sit and second guess individual cases without knowing much about them.
But what I will do is look at statistics and what is going on culturally and note that something seems off. Millennials for example are pretty accepting of LGBTQ, but no where near 1 in 6 of them have come out as LGBTQ.
But Gen Z is going off as 1 in 6. Then I add in the fact that we now have people who introduce themselves with their pro-nouns. Add in the fact that there is an LGBTQ character in just about every single TV show currently being made. And again I'm not suggesting we go to hiding them but the number of LGBTQ characters is way way above the percentage of people that are actually LGBTQ. Plus the internet . . . Just as disaffected young people can go find some right wing group on the internet that terms them into a paranoid anti government extremist I also believe that other disaffected young people can get involved in left wing groups on the internet and be pushed towards changing their sexual orientation or gender identity.
What societies promoted homosexuality in the past? And your assumption about a species reproducing is absurd.
Bull crap it isn't new. The word's "girl with a penis" would have sounded crazy to anyone just 10 years ago!
Even the very liberal Jon Stewart (who I mostly respect) was making jokes about transgender people back then.
I'm not saying we have to go back to making jokes about them by the way. But the idea that we should all just categorically accept what they say they are is who they are is a completely new idea that would have been written off as crazy 10 years ago.
Any person with a penis circa 2013 who went into a women's restroom claiming to identify as a woman would have been leaving in handcuffs and labeled a perv.
Ancient Greeks used to practice homosexuality as young men prior to marrying a woman. Participating in homosexuality was considered a rite of passage and was expected of a young man.
Any person with dark skin tones circa 1943 who went into a white‘s only restroom would have been leaving in handcuffs (or worse),
Things change. Societies improve. Life marches on.
You are completely out of touch. SMFH.
There is still a stigma with being gay so it can be hard for anyone to face it. Just the propensity of hate crimes, the recent bans on books and many other instances demonstrate this. But to you it's "just trying to be cool".
Put what on younger children? The ability for them to be themselves?
Is there a heavy stigma among younger generations though?
Kids on the other side of the country don't give a shit what Ron DeSantis thinks of them. They mostly just care about what their friends think.
Why can't you see that your examples are exactly the reasons we are more aware of trans people these days? Transgendered people hid in the those days. Now that most people realize it's unacceptable to make jokes about transgendered people it's safer for them to come out of the closet.
I've got news for you, transgendered people with a penis have been using the women's restrooms forever. Where do you think a transgendered woman dressed like and looking like a woman would have gone to the bathroom? Were you seeing a lot of transgendered women in the men's room prior to 2013?
And that is not a unique situation by any means. I can think of 3 kids who were very similar and it took them all until they were well into their adult years to be comfortable enough to tell everyone. They would have been much better served had they been able to do so early on.
^ This is your brain on non-stop Twitter/Facebook propaganda. Someone needs to get out and touch grass some more.
All that you're saying is that you see more LGBTQ people being out or represented on TV and you don't like it.
You provide nothing to suggest that they aren't really who they say they are other than they're younger than you.
You already sound like a boomer.
Wow. I suppose there are too many black people on TV for your tastes as well.
When you consider the No Opinion category along with the others the picture starts to become clearer. And then if we take into consideration the relative stigma against LGBTQ+ each group grew up with we can understand that there are likely more false identifications among the older generations. Likewise, the majority of those who identify LGBTQ+ call themselves bi-sexual which may account for some of your lack of awareness.
Americans' Self-Identification as LGBT, by Generation
| LGBT | Straight/Heterosexual | No opinion | |
|---|---|---|---|
| % | % | % | |
| Generation Z (born 1997-2002) | 15.9 | 78.9 | 5.2 |
| Millennials (born 1981-1996) | 9.1 | 82.7 | 8.1 |
| Generation X (born 1965-1980) | 3.8 | 88.6 | 7.6 |
| Baby boomers (born 1946-1964) | 2.0 | 91.1 | 6.9 |
| Traditionalists (born before 1946) | 1.3 | 89.9 | 8.9 |
| GALLUP, 2020 |
The nonsense about left wing groups pushing people to become gay is inexplicable. It's completely absurd.
But again why arn't those false identifications from older generations coming out now in the age of acceptance?
If 16% of people were really born LGBT with no influence from outside sources than we should see far greater numbers of older generations coming out now. At least 10% of Gen X should be out now if that was the case.
As I said, you are completely out of touch.
Kids care what everyone thinks about them. Being gay is still "different" and most kids don't want to be that different.
Trust me I was a kid once and I certainly didn't care what some politician across the country thought of me. And I was far less rebellious than the average teenager.
Some kids do in fact want to stand out and be different too. Some people like attention. You can't get attention by being the same as everyone else.
If all teens were scared of being different we wouldn't have had the goth kids, nerds, etc. . . it would have just been one big group of people who were all the same.
My god, it's like talking with Archie Bunker. Your such an ignorant bigot.
WTF? You think older people will willingly admit these things after decades of denying it?
You have absolutely no clue about human behavior. It's mind boggling.
Even taking your premise as solid (it’s not), there are a lot of reasons.
- More members of the older generation are dead and not able to come out.
- They may be content with the life they’ve led and at an older age don’t feel like rocking the boat.
- There can be a “finding out” period. The pendulum may have swung a bit and maybe a few extra kids think they’re LGBTQ+ but may ultimately find that they’re happier with a member of the opposite sex.
- If you look at the numbers posted by @RileyHawk the number of LGBTQ+ has increased with every generation and I think that’s pretty telling as it became slowly more and more acceptable to be out.
I don't trust you. You're far too much of a bigot for me to do so.
Just because you were out of touch when you were young doesn't mean everyone was - but it does help explain why you're so unaware now. The 60s/70s had youth responding to the words and actions of politicians and adults regularly. That has gone on consistently as social dilemmas present themselves. Kids most definitely do see and hear what is deemed "acceptable" by their parents, family, friends, teachers, TV, etc. - the most influential of which is still the parents.
There are kids who want to stand out and they do it in a variety of ways as they always have. None of which are about their sexuality.
This is simply not true. I can only speak to the school my kids went to and one other. There are a number of kids that suddenly decide they are bi or gay. We saw one from my no pic daughter's class recently walking with a girl and i asked if that was her partner and my daughter said "what, she isn't gay." I said "I thought she was, remember in high school?" She said "oh she never was, she just did that for attention. A bunch of them did, they thought it was fun." it was a large number. There are a lot of strange kids now that want to be very different.
And? As I said, the pendulum may have swung a bit, which is fine. Those girls never made any long-lasting decisions that impacted the rest of their lives. That GenZ shows higher self-identification rates isn’t surprising and it will be interesting to follow if that 16% is a pretty true number or a bit of an overshoot. Either way, I just can’t understand why it’s taking up this much of our political energy.
And nothing. Just clearing it up that it does happen. Hopefully the % is closer to 5% or less in actuality.
That only makes sense if for some reason the secretly LGBTQ people died at younger ages than the non secretly LGBTQ. Maybe a few did due to suicide but it shouldn't be that significant of a number. I'm not sure how many people meet their end via suicide but I doubt it since not a large percentage of total deaths are due to suicide.
That makes zero sense. If you are not even attracted to your spouse or feeling like you are living in the wrong body how could you ever be content??
So basically they are fake LGBTQ and did it because it was trendy.
Again I think what is telling is that older generations have not changed their identifications en masse despite the increased acceptance.
There were kids who went around lying about how much sex they had or drinking or any number of things like as well. Lying about liking girls for some brief attention is a far cry from identifying as LGBTQ+. And we don't hear about boys doing it because that stigma is even greater.
Most of this nonsense about "doing it for attention" is just more right wing propaganda in an effort to marginalize.
If you can believe that a kid will go gay because it's cool and to get attention than why can't you believe that a similar kid might now decide to change their gender for the exact same reasons???
Yes if it's acceptable to say it now and it's critical to their happiness. Absolutely.
And if you are to be believed being identified as the correct gender and being able to openly be with the type of person you are attracted to is critical to one's happiness and contentment. Yet you at the same time seem to indicate that a person in their 50's can be content to continue living the lie even though it's acceptable to by gay/trans now?
Which one is it. . . is it something critical to one's happiness and contentment or is not not?
Yet another reason why the public school system is considered trash education.
FFS - people, especially older ones, live out their lives as-is rather than making changes ALL THE TIME. Thinking that older people, who are generally more set in their ways, are going to change the life they chose because an alternative is now more acceptable to young people is idiotic. Old people hang with old people and old people have even more stigma about gays that others.
That you're trying so hard to minimize LGBTQ+ is disgusting.
Ok then, let's cut to the chase. If you and your friends were growing up today which ones would be drawn in by the glamor of being gay and suck you off? Which ones would you suck off?
Why? Does it matter what the % is? I’d guess it’s closer to 10 if you include all the categories.
I’ve been arguing this entire thread that I don’t believe kids are going gay because it’s cool. Might they experiment with the label for a bit? Maybe a few will, but kids are absolutely not going gay because it’s cool. That’s absurd.
