Gay Youth Comg Out In Middle School : NPR

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?

IS MY 13-YEAR-OLD SON GAY?

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.

HOW N I MEET OTHER GAY TEENS LIKE MYSELF?

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.

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 .

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

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.

IS YOUR CHILD GAY?

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. 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.

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

(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.