These are the best of times for LGBTQ Americans.
A little more than half a century after a drag queen in the West Village, New York City hurled a high-heel shoe in protest at a police officer, instantly igniting the Stonewall Riot and this nation’s historic fight for equality:
Gay Americans serve openly and proudly in the highest ranks of elected government, public office, military, law, education and the private sector.
Same-sex marriage is now legal and recognized in every state. A pleasant consequence is that loving gay families with children are springing up everywhere.
The majority of the nation, at long last supports, if not applauds, LGBTQ equality and non-discrimination in housing and the workplace.
These are also the worst of times for gay Americans.
In 29 states, you still can be fired from your job just for being homosexual. Transgender individuals have no protections whatsoever in 32 states. Discrimination still exists everywhere, from metropolitan America to small town USA.
Ignorance, religion and hypocrisy have united in small but very vocal pockets of the nation and acts of hatred and violence against the LGBTQ community are at an unprecedented high.
Incidents of teen suicide, bullying in schools and youth homelessness are alarmingly common if not near epidemic levels.
Dalton Maldonado, 19, has already felt the pain of society’s arrows of hate and discrimination.
Dalton came out to a select few friends during this senior year at Betsy Layne High School in Beaver, Kentucky but remained largely closeted. For most of them, his sexuality was no big deal. But for the opposing team at a school basketball game in Lexington, in which Dalton played a starting position, the fact that he was gay was a big deal.
After the game last December, it is understood Dalton was called a “faggot” by an opposing team player who suspected or heard he was gay.
“Yeah, baby, can I have your number?” Dalton responded, trying to put on a brave face and diffuse the moment.
Words were exchanged and the situation escalated to the point where Dalton and his supportive teammates were essentially chased back to their hotel under the threat of violence by members of the opposing team. Police were called. The hotel was put on lockdown.
Reports appear to indicate that school officials minimized the story and pretty much came close to denying it even happened, despite evidence and eyewitness accounts to the contrary.
Recently, just a few months after that incident, the school yearbook was published. Individual photos of the basketball team were published – but not the one of their starter.
Photographs of Dalton appear elsewhere in the yearbook, but the most important one, proof in years to come of his youthful basketball prowess and athleticism, the one of which he would be most proud, was missing.
According to the young man, school officials were unapologetic about the incident until the media, led by the website Outsports.com, started calling the school board.
Only then, under the glare of the national news spotlight, did Floyd County School Board Superintendent Dr. Henry L. Webb acknowledge the omission and offer an apology. He insists that the one missing photo from the school basketball team lineup was the result of human error. [See sidebar for the full statement.]
“If no one ever steps up and says something about the way this stuff is happening, then nothing will ever change,” Dalton told the Florida Agenda this week in an exclusive interview.
“One in four LGBT teens self-harm,” he pointed out. “LGBT teens are four to six times more likely to commit suicide, and nine out of every 10 LGBT teens have reported being bullied in school. These numbers will never change if people don’t stand up and use their voice. That’s what I am doing.”
New support for LGBT homeless youth is coming now from an unlikely source. Singer Miley Cyrus, who raised eyebrows when she took a homeless runaway young man to the MTV Video Music Awards last year and had him accept her VMA for Video of the Year, has put her money where her mouth is by launching a foundation for LGBTQ homeless youth called the Happy Hippie Foundation. (www.HappyHippies.org). Founded late last year, the nonprofit organization is slowly gaining support.
That support is badly needed. Some 40% of America’s 1.6 million homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, and the suicide rate is reportedly as high as 50%. They are often turned away from homeless shelters because of their gender identity or sexuality. They have no where to go.
These homeless LGBTQ youth are the product of societal unacceptance and cruel bullying in their early years of life. They are the product of cruel parents who praise the Bible but deny love to their gay children. And they are the product of school boards like the one in Floyd County, Kentucky that fail to support, protect and embrace young, gay Americans.