A 13-Year-Old Gay Boy Learns History, Wisdom From 78-Year-Old Gay Elr

Contents:

• GAY YOUTH COMG OUT IN MIDDLE SCHOOL
• IS MY 13-YEAR-OLD SON GAY?
• HOW N I MEET OTHER GAY TEENS LIKE MYSELF?
• APPLE APPROV 'ONLY GAY SOCIAL APP FOR AG 12 AND UP'
• IS YOUR CHILD GAY?
• GAY AND BISEXUAL ADOLCENT BOYS' PERSPECTIV ON PARENT-ADOLCENT RELATNSHIPS AND PARENTG PRACTIC RELATED TO TEEN SEX AND DATG

GAY YOUTH COMG OUT IN MIDDLE SCHOOL

The vio marks the 50th year sce the Uned Kgdom's crimalizatn of , the 13-year-old Louis talks wh the 78-year-old Percy about their vastly different experienc of g out and beg gay different remarked how is "amazg" that Louis is out and also supported by his fay and iends. When realy, if you talk to a gay man, you know, many of them lookg back will say, you know, I noticed my same sex attractn, you know, at 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 that ballpark.

I mean, one of the tertg thgs that we have to look at is this, is that much of the anti-gay bullyg and anti-gay harassment that's gog on middle schools and high school is more about genr non-nformy than really is about beg gay or lbian. Is that beg gay or lbian is still enough of a pariah inty that parents want to take off the table as long as they n, or is jt that parents really feel that all kids are sexualized too early the days, and they don't want their kids at this age thkg about, you know, hookg up? So was really - and a lot of parents, when they heard their kid, their 12-, 13-, 14-year-old say, you know, I'm gay, or I'm bisexual, or I'm lbian, they tomatilly went to oh my god, that means he's havg sex, when realy wasn't about that at all.

DENIZET-LEWIS: I thk that there's no doubt that sort of as you have more posive portrayals and, I would say, accurate portrayals of gay and lbian life the media, and kids n go onle and fd all kds of rourc, that there's no doubt that that's gog to have an effect on kids, and that they're gog to possibly e out earlier bee of that. Now, I don't thk that those posive portrayals of gay life is gog to sort of make a kid who's not attracted to the same sex sudnly say, you know, hey, this seems really ol.

IS MY 13-YEAR-OLD SON GAY?

What I thk that the more posive portrayals popular culture has done is 's ma a ltle b safer for kids who do feel that they're gay or lbian to be able to e to their parents or school unselor and talk about the issu, which I thk is a real step forward bee for many years, kids who had same-sex attractn or were nfed, they uldn't talk to anyone about . So, you know, nsequently I sort of went nial mo, which is what a lot of gay kids have done for many years, and then my early 20s and mid-20s and late 20s, as many gay men do who don't e out until late, we sort of try to relive our gay adolcence that we weren't allowed to live.

And so what's remarkable, now, is I thk we're gog to see, as more and more kids e out younger and are sort of able to have a normal adolcence the sense that, you know, I talked to kids who were havg arguments wh their parents about gog on dat when they're 15 or 16 or 17 or gog to the prom or sort of, you know, havg their normal adolcence, I thk 's gog to create an entirely different kd of gay and lbian adult the next 10, 20, 30 years.

HOW N I MEET OTHER GAY TEENS LIKE MYSELF?

Can you image what 's like for a kid as the natural procs, spirual and blogil and utterly beyond his ntrol, are takg him on a strange ri that he didn't really buy a ticket to but he's on anyway, as he's tryg to grow up and nform and figure out what he supposed to be dog, what 's like for him to realize that the way he's velopg, jt, by the way, is utterly eakg out the adults, so they're havg nferenc the kchen and they're lookg at him funny and not believg what he says, and now he's lyg about what he's lookg at bee he has no ia what's gog to happen to him if turns out, horror of horrors, that he might actually be gay, that 's a sry, weird problem that he has to hi om others, pecially those his own fay? Or prefer not to mentn or make a topic of natnal discsn or get a ltle tty when we assume that our latterly disvered enlightenment we will treat every gay guy as regnal spokman for, like, Gay Ameri, and we brg up the gayns of others as if we were the on who, naturally, bee we are so wise other areas such as the nduct of foreign policy and stewardship of the environment, will take upon ourselv to ci for them how they ought to act and what they are entled to and whether they n live together and get married and vis each other the hospal?

For margalized groups, tthful reprentatn film is imperative, even lifavg, and today’s stormy polil climate there’s an urgency for straight cisgenr people to see LGBTQ characters portrayed accurately and unapologetilly — and by people who actually know what LGBTQ life is like bee they live we’re a long way om total clivy and gay movi sans stereotyp, the film dtry has ma recent stris centerg LGBTQ+ characters.

Courty Everett CollectnMoonlight (2016)Based on the play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alv McCraney, Moonlight buted to high cril praise for cematography, storytellg, and s portrayal of black gay male inty.

APPLE APPROV 'ONLY GAY SOCIAL APP FOR AG 12 AND UP'

For the ocsn, Val’s father Armand (Rob Williams) attempts to pass as a straight person spe his life as a gay Miami drag club owner and relatnship wh the club’s star attractns (Nathan Lane). If you’re terted learng more about gay-straight allianc or even startg one at your school, you n fd lots of helpful rmatn and guidance on The Gay-Straight Alliance Network webse.

(Michael Owen Baker / For The Tim) “Even historilly gay neighborhoods like Wt Hollywood or San Francis’s Castro district, Asian Amerins have long been ignored or fetishized, seen as feme and weak, ” Tim reporter Jeong Park wrote this week. Both lbians and gay men often have a history of cross-sex-typed behavrs: ltle boys beg fatuated wh their mother's makp k; ltle girls enamored of field hockey or profsnal wrtlg. So on the basis of some earlier, shakier rearch, along wh a good dose of mon sense, Bailey and Zucker hypothized that homosexuals would show an verted pattern of sex-typed childhood behavrs—ltle boys preferrg girls as playmat and beg fatuated wh their mother's makp k; ltle girls strangely enamored of field hockey or profsnal wrtlg—that sort of thg.

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

Although only 12 percent of the women grew up to be genr dysphoric (the unfortable sense that your blogil sex do not match your genr), the odds of the women reportg a bisexual or homosexual orientatn were up to 23 tim higher than would occur a general sample of young women.

Bailey and Zucker, who nducted a retrospective study which adults answered qutns about their past, revealed that 89 percent of randomly sampled gay men relled cross-sex-typed childhood behavrs exceedg the heterosexual median. There is also evince of a “dosage effect”: the more genr-nonnformg characteristics there are childhood, the more likely is that a homosexual or bisexual orientatn will be prent adulthood.

GAY AND BISEXUAL ADOLCENT BOYS' PERSPECTIV ON PARENT-ADOLCENT RELATNSHIPS AND PARENTG PRACTIC RELATED TO TEEN SEX AND DATG

Cross-cultural data show that prehomosexual boys are more attracted to solary sports such as swimmg, cyclg and tennis than they are to rougher ntact sports such as football and soccer; they are also ls likely to be childhood bulli. Bee the data often reveal very early emergg tras prehomosexuals, children who show pronounced sex-atypil behavrs may have more of a geic loadg to their homosexualy, whereas gay adults who were sex-typil as children might trace their homosexualy more directly to particular childhood experienc. Lang, Elton John and Rachel Maddow's close relativ, but I n only image that the straight k are far better off terms of their own reproductive opportuni than they would be whout a homosexual danglg so magnificently on their fay tre.

So cultivate your ltle prehomosexual's native talents, and your ultimate geic payoff uld, strangely enough, be even larger wh one very special gay child than would be if 10 medcre straight offsprg leaped om your los.

I n say as a once prehomosexual pipsqueak that some preparatn on the part of others would have ma easier on me, rather than nstantly fearg rejectn or worryg about some rels slipup leadg to my “exposure. And another thg: mt be pretty hard to look to your prehomosexual toddler's limpid ey, bsh away the okie cmbs om her cheek and toss her out on the streets for beg article was origally published wh the tle "Is Your Child Gay?