Place

There is a growing awareness of the large number of homeless LGBT youth. These are children of bigots who have either ejected their children from their homes or made life so miserable for them that their children has escaped to the streets. These are not the upper middle class LGBT youth who watch "It Gets Better" videos on their new iPads.

The reality on the ground is that it isn't getting that much better for LGBT youth in America. The demographic shift to larger Latino-American, Asian-American, African-American and immigrant families simply means that there are more LGBT youth of color, born into communities and subcultures with lower education levels and prejudice against LGBT people. These populations were the deciding factor in the Prop 8 struggle in California, for example. The "It Gets Better" campaign is largely cast in the ideologies and context of white, middle-class America.

One common side effect of being displaced psychologically as an LGBT person in adolescence is a lifelong yearning for a place where there is security and acceptance. But, as it has been said, you cannot go home again, especially if home was never there for you in the first place.

LGBT people grapple with this search for social context throughout their lives. Extended families develop. Ex-lovers become brothers and sisters. Conglomerates of intermingled relationships become fragile networks of support. Typically, the club life became the center of early LGBT family development. However, with the decline of the gay bar culture, LGBT youth face harder challenges in finding a place to be where they can safely interact with their peers. Web-sex does not promote community.

America is gradually warming to the idea of being a safe place for LGBT people. Very gradually, thanks to fundamentalist ideologues in politics and media. Meanwhile, the best thing we can do for each other as LGBT people is to open out hearts and doors to each other, especially to those LGBT youth who are struggling to find a safe place from which to get on with developing fulfilling lives. By growing beyond sexualizing every aspect of our lives together, we can construct family and community which supports and sustains. We did this during the AIDS epidemic's darkest days. We should be able to do it when times are less catastrophic for us.