The increased right-wing assault on the LGBTQ community

LGBTQ youth and families face an onslaught of hostility to their health and long-term wellbeing. Here are the headlines. Get more information in these books.
 

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Are Gay Men Smarter than Straight Men?

"I love gay people," said activist and playwright Larry Kramer in a 2004 speech in New York City. "I think we're smarter and more talented and more aware."

A new study in the American Sociological Review (Feb. 20) poses a provocative theory that gay men are markedly for inclined to excel academically than their straight male peers. 

Help gay youth get a healthy start in life. 

A new study in the American Sociological Review (Feb. 20) poses a provocative theory that gay men are markedly for inclined to excel academically than their straight male peers. 

In the paper, sociologist Joel Mittleman found that  on an array of academic measures, gay males outperform all other groups on average, across all major racial groups. Conversely, he concluded that lesbians perform more poorly in school overall and that Black gay women have a much lower college graduation rate than their white counterparts.

“This article is focusing a lens on what we do to all kids,” Lisa Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of Utah, said of the societal pressures that appear to impede lesbians in school even as these stressors possibly unnerve gay males into compensating for homophobia through academic striving. “And the most vulnerable kids are going to show it first.”

In recent years, academics, lawmakers and journalists alike have sounded an increasingly urgent alarm that on balance, American males are stuck in a scholastic funk. As the economic gap between those with and without a college degree has widened, women’s college graduation rate has risen in tandem, but men’s rate has remained largely stagnant for decades. Today, women comprise 59.2 percent of college students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse.

Mittleman’s research indicates that this characterization of the educational gender gap is critically lacking in specificity. It is, in fact, straight males who tend to be mired in a scholastic morass. And the considerable academic progress that young women have charted since the advent of second-wave feminism has been largely restricted to the heterosexuals among them.

Help gay youth get a healthy start in life. 

VP debate an insult to LGBT community

From the Advocate:

It’s still sinking in: Mike Pence’s discrimination against LGBT people as governor of Indiana wasn’t deemed important enough to discuss during the vice-presidential debate Tuesday.

How can that be? 

Pence is still the governor of Indiana. He signed the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act just last year. It was among the most famous of these laws, but similar ones have been proposed across the country. The effect of such legislation is that businesses can legally refuse service to LGBT people merely by citing their religious beliefs.

The Pence version of the RFRA was partly repealed in Indiana, but an even more draconian version of the law passed in Mississippi; it's now been blocked by a federal court. No one could blame the LGBT people of Mississippi if they’re feeling a little invisible today. 

Honestly, I feel a little insulted that as my community faces a wave of discrimination, we were ignored.

Sometimes it feels like the world read about the Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality and just checked a box; the gays are fine now. 

Has the media already forgotten that, just a few months ago, a man went into the Pulse nightclub and killed 49 people in an incredibly bloody act of hate against LGBT people? I haven’t forgotten. Orlando Pride is later this week. Trust me that no one there has forgotten.  

Mike Pence helps create an atmosphere in which we are targets, in which we are not safe. RFRAs like his send the message to crazies that LGBT people are less human. Pence ought to be confronted — or at least asked — about whether his policies and rhetoric bear any responsibility for breeding a culture of homophobia and transphobia.

Debate moderator Elaine Quijano, a respected CBS news correspondent, deserves credit for asking about implicit bias among our police force against African-Americans, for confronting Pence about how exactly his boss plans to deport millions of people. But to not ask Pence about his level of responsibility for a culture of hate against LGBT people is itself irresponsible. To instead ask Pence about how his faith plays a role in his governing only adds to the insult. 

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