GLBT youth - rushing to get out of the closet.

That was an epic but thoroughly heartening read.

"At nine pages it’s a bit lengthy, but with definite gems."

 Maybe their next article can be about the short attention spans of gay men. ;-)

It was totally worth the read.  The "woof" and "paw" bit was hilarious.  I am only 26, but even I am shocked at how brave and honest these kids are. 

I think with each generation we are going to see not only an acceptance by heterosexuals of folks different than them, but also see a greater acceptance among the general population of their own bisexuality.  I am a firm believer in the Kinsey scale of sexuality.  10% of the population is straight, 10% is gay, and the other 80% fall somewhere in between.  Pretty soon same-sex attraction will be just as common as opposite-sex attraction.

Kids these days are so different, and I could not be prouder.

That woof and paw bit was amusing, indeed. :-P

"Bisexual girls have it the easiest,” Austin told me in Oklahoma. “Most of the straight guys at school think that’s hot, so that can make the girl even more popular.”

^ boy, does it ever. but it only makes the girls popular in the sense that every boy wants you to kiss them and then kiss some girlfriend of theirs and then a girlfriend of a buddy and ugh....it's tiring stuff. even when i realized i wasn't bisexual, i still got those damn requests. boys. tsk, whatcha gonna do?

"It seems like I spent the entire year in the principal’s office trying to get them to protect my son. But they would say things like, ‘Well, what did he do to provoke them?’

^ man, this is why i am never going to be a parent. if someone asked me such an insulting question, i would have to be arrested to keep from physically assaulting them. i could never just sit there and try and have an adult converastion with total idiots. i don't know how parents contain themselves. i really don't.

“that’s so gay,” a popular adolescent phrase that means that something is dumb or lame.."

^ my brother says this allll the time. i've asked him to not use it, but apparently, i "need to get over myself and have a sense of humor." okay then.

 

That reminds me of the code words my friend and I came up with when I was 14 or 15. We used "Nifty", "Spiffy", and "Neato". Nifty was gay, Spiffy was straight, and Neato was bi. It was great because anytime we watched a movie or TV show where those words came up, we read way more into it! I remember some quote in some movie about a "nifty musical" that had us rolling on the floor laughing.

As for the rest of the article, I definitely find it very encouraging. I came out to myself in 7th grade and it seemed like everyone else in the world already knew, because they would tease and bully me, but I didn't actually come out to anyone else until I was 14. But I had a very very unusual teen experience. I went from 8th grade into college, skipping high school altogether. I was accepted into an early entrance program at a tiny all women's liberal arts school.

The school had a special program for "exceptionally gifted" young women and we even had our own dorm for our first year (or two, depending on age). I fell madly in love with my roommate and after she broke up with another girl in our dorm, she and I started dating. So, I was actually living with my lesbian girlfriend from the time I was 14. We were together nearly 8 years total, having started dating in our freshman year in November of '93 and breaking up several years after college in June of '01.

Anyway, gay or straight, most people don't have the opportunity that I did to be in a real, sexual, relationship at such a young age. But I'm not surprised to see more and more middle school-aged kids coming out as society becomes more accepting. I think the vast majority of us know where our attractions lie by then, but few people were in an environment that let them express those attractions so early until very recently.

 

"It's weird. It's just different. It's not men. It's just him. It's only him." - Ianto Jones

I am a gay sophomore in high school.  I came out to myself in 7th grade and now i'm only out to one friend of mine. I've decided to come out to my parents now as soon as I get an opportunity, which means getting my homophobic brother out of my way long enough for my parents to deal with this with me. It sucks being in the closet in high school but I can never imagine actually coming out in school and to my extended family any time soon. I feel like I've never fit in with anybody and I spend most of my life acting rather than being myself. I just keep so much to myself and can't talk about this stuff with anyone, other than rarely discussing this with the one person i'm out to, which is just awkward for both of us.  I don't know any other gay teenagers so the closest I get to being myself is reading this website. I guess the best thing that could solve all my problems would be to somehow find a boyfriend after coming out to my parents so I can finally be with someone like me.  I get so jealous in school when all the other boys are talking about girls and i'm sick of faking smiles all the time. My plan is to just be out on day 1 of college rather than in the middle of high school.  I have tremendous respect for anyone brave enough to come out this early.

sex at a much youngr age than most adults want to believe or accept.  We live in different times and kids are exposed a lot more than their parents were from generation to generation.  Even the Christian right can't deny kids ask questions about immaculate conception in their early bible classes, after all, Christmas has this tendency to come around every year.  

That's all I am saying... 

INSIDEGUY

This is amazing. I remember being 16 and having told my parents and one girl who tried to kiss me that i was gay, and thinking the world would end if anyone else found out. Of course apparently people thought I was gay but only talked about it behind my back (what a surprise!). I didn't come out until the end of senior year, and I simply cannot imagine what coming out earlier would have been like. This story is just awesome, and I imagine that for some of our gay elders it's a bit heartbreaking, because I know it is for me, and I'm just a baby at 23 =P

I'm so glad things are changing! People always say when it comes to Middle/High School "I wish I could go back and do it over again" and I think this is deff. true for most gays and lesbians that attended school anytime before the year 2005 or so! Part of me felt jelous when I read about the gay dances and clubs these kids have today. I felt myself sounding like my father... "You kids today have no idea how easy you have it".  

I knew I was gay at a young age. People get freaked by that notion, a child knowing he or she is gay, but the feelings had nothing to do with sex. I wanted to be around the boys I liked. I wanted to talk to them and sit with them at lunch and have them be my friends.

Later, when I realized what I was I hid it and felt ashamed for too many years. I had the "wait until school is over" mentality. Since graduation in 1999 Ive found out at least half a dozen other kids in my class were going through the same thing. I wish I had been as lucky as some of the kids in this article. While everyones story is different, I think the younger you can come out the more confident you will be in school and beyond. A 14 year old gay boy or girl who is confident in their own skin will grow into a 17-18 year old gay boy or girl who is hopefully a good role model for other gay kids as well as the straight ones who look at him or her as just another classmate, not "the gay kid".

Great article!

There is the giant conforming to gender norms clause. . .

The "paws" and "woofs" conversation was hilarious. I definitely was never that aware of who was bi, gay, straight, or whatever but I always tended to miss all the social gossip. Loved when the conversation ended with "Jesus was cute." 

I told a couple of friends in middle school that I was bi but it was nowhere near common knowledge at school and I never met any girls to date and I cannot picture telling my parents at that age. (I just started university and am therefore only a handful of years older than these kids.)

I also think location is a massive variable (i.e. mid-west and bible belt vs. coast).

 

When I actually used the words, "I'm Gay," it was three months ago, on my birthday, in a text message to a co-worker that had a crush on me. I really don't like even saying the words, disheartening yes, however, in the town that I live in, I need to be careful. Everyone I'm sure is aware that I am "that," but I deny it when questioned. People with that much courage, I have the upmost respect for them. But I am so terrified to even tell a stranger from a different state let alone tell my brother. So much comes into my head when someone asks, "Are you?" "Do you even like girls?" I'm sure that there have been so many coming out stories that are very similar, yet not. I for one am still in the closet, terrified if anyone I know finds out. This article seems to good to be true, but unless my town even shows a bit of tolerance towards homosexuals, I find it impossible for a man who holds hands with another man to feel even a bit comfortable.

I admire the bravey of kids who come out and who face the prejudice, and I think they should be able to label themselves what they want to label themselves. But I am not fond of the "everything is great for gay youth" mode which Ritch Savin-Williams has talked about in other articles. Like this for Time which ends up spinning the story in a way that makes it seem like gay groups are so behind the curve since gay teens are so happy and normal, which even goes as far as to try to imply that gay teens are more likely to be drawn to ex-gay groups because they're more on their level. This has quotes by Michael Glatze, who a few years ago became a very vocal opponent of homosexuality.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1112856-1,00.html