October 15th, 1997 to October 21st, 1997

Suicide

A Community Epidemic, A Community Solution

Part One: Death and dropout of gay and lesbian teens blights America's school system

by Lori Weiner

In part one of a four-part series, Outlines investigates suicide in the gay and lesbian community. We begin with a sensitive and controversial subject by looking at our community's future-our youth.
Jacob Orosco, 17, was a bright, respected gay teenager attending East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Camille Lee, faculty advisor at East High, recalls him as "a happy kid. He always had a smile on his face. If someone was ever feeling down, they could be around Jacob and start to feel up. He was warm, friendly, and just made people feel comfortable ... what was unusual about Jacob was that he went outside of the Gay-Straight Alliance and had a lot of friends in regular student body. He was very out, and students did respect him for being who he was."

Orosco actively participated in school activities, served on student panels addressing issues of sexual orientation, donated his time to research and movie projects, ran for the track team, and was slated to be the president of East High's Gay-Straight Alliance this fall after a nationally publicized battle to form the club.

That changed when Orosco hung himself.

Orosco committed suicide on Sept. 3, in his mother's house. Reportedly, the youth's family life was troubled, and he was often forced to spend the night away from home to escape conditions there. He left no note, and there is no indication that Orosco's suicide was predicated by his sexual orientation. But Orosco's death dramatizes the tightrope many gay adolescents are forced to walk between their outer, visible worlds and their inner, emotional worlds-a tightrope walk many do not survive.

According to E.S. Hetrick and A.D. Martin's 1987 study, "Developmental Issues and Their Resolution For Gay and Lesbian Adolescents" (published in the Journal of Homosexuality), 80 percent of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth report severe isolation problems, including social isolation (having nobody to talk to), emotional isolation (feeling distanced from family and peers because of their sexual identity), and cognitive isolation (lack of access to good information about sexual orientation and homosexuality).

These problems combine to yield frightening statistics. According to P. Gibson, LCSW ("Gay Male and Lesbian Youth Suicide," Report of the Secretary's Task Force on Youth Suicide, Department of Health and Human Services, 1989), gay youth are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide than heterosexual young people. Gibson states that "it is estimated that up to 30% of the completed youth suicides are committed by gay and lesbian youth annually."

There is some debate as to the veracity of this data: in 1994, representatives from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the National Institute of Mental Health, the American Psychological Association, the American Association of Suicidology, and gay and lesbian advocacy and service groups met to further examine the findings of the 1989 study and determined that "there is no population based evidence that sexual orientation and suicide are linked in some direct or indirect manner."

The problem with the 1989 research, according to Peter Muehrer, chief of the Youth Mental Health program in the Prevention and Behavioral Medicine Research Branch of the National Institute of Mental Health, is that it is "limited in both quantity and quality." Muehrer told the St. Paul Pioneer Press of the inherent difficulty in conducting suicide research: there is no standard definition of what constitutes a "suicide attempt"; death certificates do not specify a victim's sexuality; and gays and lesbians do not always identify themselves to researchers conducting population studies. According to Muehrer, these factors make it "impossible to accurately compare suicide rates between gay and lesbian youth and non-gay youth, in the general population."

In related news, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported in its Aug. 28, 1997 edition that "a new analysis of a 1987 survey of seventh-graders through 12th graders in Minnesota public schools shows that young gay men and young women-regardless of sexual preference-are far more likely to attempt suicide than young heterosexual men." Of 310 heterosexual students, 175 gay or bisexual males, and 165 gay or bisexual females participating in the study, 28.1% of gay/bisexual males said they attempted suicide versus 4.2% of the heterosexual males. As for females, 20.5% of the gay/bisexual young women said they attempted suicide versus 14.5% of the heterosexual females. Researcher Dr. Gary Remafedi postulates that rather than sexual orientation itself, "gender non-conformity" or "appearing different from other people" could explain the apparently higher suicide risk for young gay/bisexual males.

Meanwhile, the 1995 Massachusetts Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted in the spring of 1995 in 59 randomly selected public high schools across the Commonwealth and totaling 4,159 students in grades 9 through 12, reported that gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth attempted suicide at a rate of 36.5%. This compares to an attempt rate of 8.9% among heterosexually identified youth.

There are many examples of gay and lesbian youth around the country believing suicide is there only way out.

In The Life, the groundbreaking gay and lesbian variety show which is picked up on most PBS stations, premieres its sixth season on Monday, Oct. 20 inChicago with a program entitled "The Back To School Episode-Lesbian and Gay Youth." The show, scheduled to air at 11 p.m., "explores the pressures kids experience both from home and at school to look and act 'straight.'" The program will feature interviews with the parents of 14-year-old Robbie Kirkland of Cleveland, who committed suicide after years of feeling like he did not "fit in." "The boy who told himself to put on a smile, shut up, and pretend you're happy ... It didn't work," read Kirkland's suicide note.

Chaya, a 20-year-old lesbian profiled in Adam Mastoon's photographic journal of gay and lesbian youth, The Shared Heart (see review below), gives this account of her early school years: "Before fifth grade, I was surrounded by friends. I was a cheerful, generous child. Then, without warning, I was suddenly alone. My friends refused to talk to me, and regarded me as a horrible creature. My classmates didn't seem to know I was gay, but they knew that a change was taking place. Suddenly, the basis for popularity was no longer general kindness, but some mystery called 'fashion' and 'cool,' which meant being more feminine than I could ever be. For this they gave me no peace ... throughout junior high and high school, I never once walked down the halls without someone yelling some horrible taunt."

In the realm of "playground politics" where differences are shunned and offenders mercilessly branded, ostracized, and harassed, a child moving into adolescence-and beginning to recognize that they may not be heterosexual-is often subject to the worst forms of bullying and abuse. The pain, estrangement, and suicidal despair that can result from such peer abuse is magnified by the fact that in most schools across the country, teachers, counselors, and other support staff are not trained to recognize bullying based on the perceived sexual orientation of a student-or protect a student from the aggressive teasing and physical altercations that usually accompany sexual orientation or gender-based harassment in school.

According to Chaya's story, "The teachers would see (the teasing) going on, or even look me straight in the eye as people yelled at me, and they would walk on by, leaving me to the will of the boys hurling death wishes at me."

Other youths in the book also talk of suicide attempts, including 17-year-old Dominique: "My mother would deny me by not speaking to me for three months at a time, which made me want to give up living. I tried to commit suicide to end the pain. After, I got out of the hospital, I came to Massachusetts to live with my father. He claimed to understand the issues in my life. Five months later, however, I found myself in foster care, because instead of understanding, he tried to beat the homosexuality out of me. ... Now I have two lesbian mothers and a family who accepts me for me."

But in the wake of recent legal challenges, schools across the country (and even around the world) may begin to pay closer attention to harassment of gay and lesbian students. Jamie Nabozny, now 22, last year won a $900,000 settlement from his former school district in Ashland, Wis., for failing to stop a "four-year campaign of relentless physical and verbal assaults" against him. While he was in high school, Nabozny, who was out as a gay teen, was repeatedly trapped in hallways and bathrooms and assaulted. In one incident, ten students surrounded Nabozny while another repeatedly kicked him in the stomach, resulting in internal bleeding which required surgery. Nabozny, who attempted suicide several times, dropped out of school when he was 16 to escape the violence.

Meanwhile, gay teen Mark Iversen filed suit last month in Seattle against the Kent School District in federal court, claiming that the school district failed to enforce its anti-harassment policy on Iversen's behalf.

Among the incidents cited in Iversen's suit is a group beating occurring in October of 1996, where he was assaulted by eight students while an additional 30 youths watched. "After that, I had enough," said Iversen, who also considered suicide to escape the torment of his daily life. Iversen's attorneys are "quite confident" of a favorable outcome in the wake of the Nabozny decision.

Alex," a 29-year-old gay Chicagoan who was perceived as effeminate while in high school, remembers his school days well.

"God, it was awful," he recalls. "I remember pressing myself up against the walls while changing classes, just praying that none of the jocks who regularly pushed me around would see me. I changed the routes I took to get to each class just to avoid them. And forget taking the bus. I walked home. I even wound up being excused from gym because I got beat up so much."

And "Alex's" story is not uncommon. Throughout the Chicago area, gay men and lesbians, some well into their 20s and 30s, still wince with visible pain when recalling their school years. For "Laura," a 27-year-old Chicago lesbian, the problems began in junior high school: "I always looked like a dyke-my mom was giving me bowl haircuts when I was in the 4th grade, and I always liked sports and played with toys that were traditionally masculine. But then, in junior high, things got really bad. I was suddenly 'different,' different even from the other tomboys who played field hockey and basketball. I had a different energy about me-I wasn't just a female jock, or a girl with short hair. Those things would have made me different, yet I still would have been acceptable. But I was something else-I was a lesbian. It was like my classmates could smell it on me, and once they figured it out, they had to try to beat it out of me."

School is not the only place where gay and lesbian youth face emotional and physical danger that can lead to despondency and suicidal feelings. For many kids, home is fraught with as much risk. Many gay and lesbian youth are rejected by their parents, with some joining the ranks of the homeless. New York City's Hetrick-Martin Institute has launched Project First Step as an outreach program for that city's homeless gay and lesbian youth population. According to Hetrick-Martin, experts indicate that up to half of the homeless youth in New York City are gay or lesbian, many of whom survive by exchanging sex for money. The Shared Heart profiles a 22-year-old youth named Raff, who states: "I was asked to leave home shortly after I came out, not only because of my sexual orientation, but because of other things that were going on at that time. I moved to Boston and let the street show me what it meant to be gay. ... I thank God that I had a boyfriend who took me in."

For kids who remain at home, the situation may be dire. In the case of gay teen activist Jacob Orosco, reports indicate that his suicide may have been predicated by issues in his home life and not directly by his sexual orientation. Kat Snow, a reporter for KUER Radio in Salt Lake City, interviewed Orosco's friends after his death and found that "the kids are angry over some gay and lesbian adults' politicizing of Jacob's death. It makes some of them feel sick that (Jacob's suicide) is being used as a rallying cry around gay youth. They feel that detracts from the pain that drove Jacob to kill himself." According to Snow, Orosco's friends indicated he was prone to bouts of depression and suicidal feelings, but they were able to "talk him out of it" most of the time.

After Orosco's suicide, the Tzabaco Safe Schools Initiative founded the Jacob Orosco Memorial Fund. The initial donation, made by Tzabaco, was $2,500. The fund, which is administered by Rae Carey of the National Youth Advocacy Commission in Washington, D.C., will support gay straight alliances in high schools throughout the country. The grants will reach the students through organizations such as Parents, Families and Friends Of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). According to Stuart Harrison, director of the Tzabaco Safe Schools Initiative, Jacob Orosco's legacy is to "the forgotten voices of dead gay and lesbian kids." Harrison believes that Orosco's suicide can serve as a focus point for older gay men and lesbians to "get involved and make a difference in the lives of gay youth by reclaiming their own heritage as gay youth. We need to bring gay adults and gay kids together."

Harrison pauses before adding, "We need each other."

Part 2: Chicago youth and youth organizations.

The Shared Heart
Portraits and Stories Celebrating Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Young People, Photos by Adam Mastoon, $25, William Morrow.

reviewed by Lori Weiner

The Shared Heart: Portraits and Stories Celebrating Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Young People is a moving monument to the unsung heroes of our community: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered youth. Originally funded as an exhibit of photographs to tour high schools, The Shared Heart book is a riveting document of the American experience, seen through the eyes of gay and lesbian youth.

Forty youths appear in the book; each has a full-page photograph and a personal statement. The youths come from a wide variety of backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultures. But as diverse as their experiences are, each youth shares a sense of pride and well-being in identifying as gay or lesbian.

Some talk about how accepting their friends and families have been, while others talk of despair, suicide attempts, and death threats. Their experiences show both hope for future generations, as well as illuminating the many problems still facing today's youth.

"During childhood I tried to change so that I could belong," says Chris, the youngest of five children born to Irish immigrants. "Incidents of cruelty, homophobia, and violence were constant. By junior high I had suffered through several breakdowns alone and had begun to pray for death."

The youths are frank and forthright, discussing fears and ignorance as well as joy and wisdom. Eric, 17, says, "Growing up gay is an extraordinary experience that many teenagers have to face. It can be a heavy burden, but it's still possible to overcome and live a happy and productive life. For me, it's been both positive and negative. ... I thought that gay people couldn't grow up and enjoy full lives."

Jennifer, 20, talks about her difficulty in coming out to her family :"I am out to all my friends, but I am not directly out to my family. They seem to know that I am a lesbian, but the words have not been said. We've never been communicative. I don't feel at home with them....I have wondered what their thoughts are about me, but in my family's home such things are not spoken about. Their home is not mine. I am not what they expected, not what they wanted."

Mycroft, a 20-year-old transgendered man, speaks with pride about his identity. "Everyone is special and different. It is good to be transgendered- the fact that some people think it's bad or wrong doesn't make it so. A lot of people, transgendered and not, are our allies ... by sixth grade I was a female who identified as a man, and that was pretty much okay with my friends." But Mycroft experienced problems as he entered junior high. "There was a lot of pressure to be straight and "normal"-to dress right, date, and gossip. My school friends were into that and tried to help me get with it. At school, I tried to be a feminine straight girl; my friends knew I disliked being that way and most of the guys harassed me .... I knew that outside of school I was the real me, the personI wanted to be as an adult."

As the issue of homophobia in our schools continues to swell in national importance, there can be no better voice for the needs of gay youth than the youth themselves. The Shared Heart is a beautiful testament to lesbigay youths' courage, dignity, and character.

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