This is What Really Matters

C.M. Grover/New York Times

I have posted before about here and here about how LGBT people needed to stop engaging in ridiculous and bitter intramural conflicts and instead focus on what really matters. What matter is the 17 year old gay kid in this picture. Not just him, but every LGBT kid who grows up thinking that there is something wrong with him or her because they are attracted to people of the same sex or because their gender identity doesn’t match their biology.

From the New York Times:

“I was doing this to survive,” he says. “This is what other guys were doing, getting girlfriends. I should get one, too.”

He feared his parents knew the truth about him. He knew that his father had typed in a Google search starting with “g,” and several other recent “g” searches had popped up, including “gay.”

“They asked me, ‘Do you know what being gay is?’ ” he recalls. “They tried to explain there’s nothing wrong with it. I put my hands over my ears. I yelled: ‘I don’t want to hear it! I’m not, I’m not gay!’ ”

What’s great about Zach’s story is that when he was ready to come out family his was amazingly supportive. As he and other kids like him grow up, join the workforce, form families etc, we must make sure that we are doing everything possible to make sure that they do not experience the hatred and bigotry some of us have been subject to.

For more information on how you can help to pass non-discrimination and hate crimes laws at the federal level, visit the Human Rights Campaign or the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

For more information on how you can help to make schools safer for LGBT youth, visit Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network.