LGBT Teens
Facts about LGBT Teens, Bullying and Suicide
Words have power. They can inspire people and they can tear them down just as easily.
To have a sitting HISD Trustee communicating a message that being LGBT somehow makes people inferior to their heterosexual counterpart isunacceptable. HISD District III has LGBT students and faculty who are being lead by a man who has publicly declared he believes they are less valuable than him. This is a dangerous game to be playing with the lives of our children and Manuel Rodriguez should have the strength of character to set a better example and resign.
LGB youth are four times more likely, and questioning youth are 3 times more likely to attempt suicide as their straight peers. (2011 CDC, “Sexual Identity, Sex of Sexual Contacts, and Health-Risk BehaviorsAmong Students in Grades 9-12”).
LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are up to 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide than LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection (2009 Family Acceptance Project™).
Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24 and accounts for 12.0% of the deaths every year in that age group (2009 CDC, “Suicide: Facts at a Glance”).
Nearly half of young transgender people have seriously thought about taking their lives and one quarter report having made a suicide attempt (2007 Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior,“Transgender youth and life threatening behaviors”).
About HISDbully.org
Just days before the November 8th election, sitting HISD Trustee Manuel Rodriguez highlighted his opponents support of LGBT rights and the fact that his opponent was openly gay as reasons for the voters of District III NOT to vote for him.
Additionally, Rodriguez conducted a television interview with a Spanish-language news channel where he posed the open-ended question of why a 50-something year old gay man would want access to our children.
The obvious gay-baiting and veiled homophobia fly in the face of a recently adopted nondiscrimination policy adopted by the Houston Independent School District which protects both students and facility from harassment on grounds which include sexual orientation and gender identity.