Straight Parent, Gay Kid
Pronouns Aren’t Just Good Grammar
It’s International Pronoun Day! If you have an LGBT child, you need to address them by the right pronouns. It not only demonstrates acceptance but acknowledges their identity. It is particularly troublesome for a transgender child or gender non-conforming child to hear the more common pronoun she/her/he/him that is applied to cis-gender kids (those who…
October 11 is National Coming Out Day
The purpose of National Coming Out Day is to support those in the LGBT Community. According to the February 17, 2022 Gallup poll, LGBT identification in the United States had ticked up from 5.6% in 2020 to 7.1%, driven by the younger generation. One in five Generation Z adults now identify as LGBT. In 2021,…
Bisexual Awareness Week: September 16-23
The Bisexual Awareness Week, culminates in Bisexual or Bivisibility Day on September 23. Why do we hold this annual event? Bisexuals make up the largest portion of the LGBTQ+ community (40% of America), according to data from the Pew Research Center. However, society tries to erase them. How? The Bisexual Resource Center (BRC), America’s oldest national…
Evaluating a Supposed LGBTQ+ Friendly College
In my co-authored book, When Your Child Is Gay (Sterling: 2016), I interviewed J.R., born Jennifer Rebecca in Staten Island, New York. Jennifer felt she was mismatched with her birth gender (transgender) and so at age eighteen, started hormone treatments. When he entered a college in New Jersey as a female and told his female…
Why LGBTQ Adults Keep In Touch With Rejecting Parents
I’ve read about Mothers who give hugs to LGBT children ( “free mom hugs”) who are rejected by their straight non-accepting parents. Sometimes these hugging mothers even substitute for the rejecting Mothers at same-sex weddings. Of course, we all know that LGBTQ+ rejected children who can’t go home again form their own families with like-minded…
GLAAD’s 2002 Annual Accelerating Accepting Study Has Disappointing Results!
June is Gay Pride Month in many U.S. cities. It demonstrates solidarity for the LGBTQIA+ population and its allies as well as advances in LGBT+acceptance since the Stonewall Rebellion of 1969, believed to be the start of the gay civil rights movement. However, according to GLAAD, the main organization that focuses on LGBT+ discrimination in…
Ellen DeGeneres Packs Her Bags, But We’re Still Unpacking Her Message
On May 23rd, The Ellen DeGeneres show, after its 2003 debut, ended. Who would believe today that Ellen had a tough time selling the show, but she did? She had come out on her own show “Ellen,” a sitcom that ran from 1994-1998 when ABC axed the show in which she was not allowed to…