Sarah Hathway reports on Australia’s largest ever study of young LGBTI people which finds that while progress has been made, more needs to be done.
LGBTIQ youth
The history of the 13-year campaign for marriage equality in Australia is an incredible underdog story, but you would not know that if you got your news from the mainstream media.
Throughout the period of the postal survey, the implication has been that marriage equality activists are powerful bullies stomping around the political playground and kicking over the sandcastles of defenseless No campaigners, such as the Australian Christian Lobby (the tax-exempt lobby group that receives millions of dollars each year in corporate funding).
When I first came out as a lesbian in high school, I was scared. Hanging over my envisioned future were a lot of question marks, a familiar feeling for a lot of LGBTI youth. Heightened rates of mental illness, suicide, homelessness and assault frame the vision of our adulthood with very real uncertainty. This uncertainty is mirrored by the media. The distinct lack of representation in media robs same-sex attracted youth of healthy role models.
I'm 16 years old. I identify as queer and am in year 11 in high school.
While I go to a tolerant and progressive school, there are many students like me who do not enjoy this privilege. For people like me, school can be the most dangerous place to be. For people like me, mental health issues are rife because of experiences at school. For people like me, things need to change in our schools.
The Growing Up Queer report, released this year by Twenty10 in conjunction with the University of Western Sydney, has revealed some staggering facts about life at school for queer kids.
Republicans are trumpeting their big gains in the November 2 midterm elections as a mandate to turn the country sharply to the right. Don’t buy it. Mainstream media commentary on the election was largely set before a single vote was cast. Voters would correct President Barack Obama’s supposed leftward course in his first two years in office by sending a cabal of right-wingers to Congress. The scale of the Republican victories — especially in House of Representative races, where the party now holds a comfortable majority — cemented the media’s impressions.
With great power comes great responsibility. But Apostle Boyd K. Packer of the Church of Latter Day Saints (LDS, also known as the Mormons) is using his power to hurt the vulnerable by publicly condemning homosexuality after several highly publicised suicides of LGBTI youth in the United States.
The media have revealed these suicides were triggered by bullying. This new round of bullying by a leader of the LDS church is one of the most severe kinds: institutionally approved, ideologically enforced, perpetrated by a person in power and aimed at the young.