According to the Merck Manual,about one third of males adolescents are homosexual,but on a temporary basis. [..]
I think we must first clarify what we understand as being “homosexual”. There is a certain confusion there, especially in assuming being “temporarily” homosexual: not everybody engaged in homosexual intercourse is a homosexual person (not even “temporarily”). There is a difference between feelings and deeds, in other words, one should not confuse behavior and identity. Those 30% of “contemporary” homosexuals are, more accurately, the percentage of juvenile males involved in bodily “homosexual” activities – like, let’s say, mutual/collective masturbation, often watching a (heterosexual) porn or a tit magazine. This kind of behavior has nothing to do with homosexuality as such, because this is often simply an expression of gaining a bodily “relief” in a lack of an adequate (heterosexal) partner. Recent european studies on juvenile sexual behavior have indicated a dramatical decrease of same-sex experiences in the young generation: these 30% you mention have turned to 2% - not in Sudan, not in Nigeria, but in Germany and Holland. What does this mean, now? The answer is pretty simple: straight youth in Western Europe is currently extremely liberated and uses every opportunity to start up very early – unlike their homosexual peers, who still have extreme difficulties to find a partner and therefore mostly remain unexperienced for a a couple of years longer.
A great many half-hearted studies of gay youths have been done over the last three decades, all of them tightly focused upon one or two issues at a time. Taken as a group, these studies suggest that over a third of the gay population in North America never makes it to adulthood. The figure may be as high as 40%.
There is no reason to assume that homosexual youth is less successful in actually accomplishing suicide than straight youth. We can assume that the distribution of deads between “our” and “their” youth (dear god, what dreadfull things we actually are talking of) is the same as in the overall attemps. The ratio of gay to straight victims is about 2.5 : 1, so one should be able to calculate the actual numbers over the years.
Suicide is more likely to have been committed by young heterosexuals and because of a conflict between their heterosexual orientation on one hand,and their transitory or peripheral homosexual tendencies on another hand.
Think it’s not like you are suggesting here. The reason, why somebody commits suicide is the lack of alternatives – the person simply sees no way out. Now, for a straight boy/girl with “peripheral homosexual tendencies” or experiences, the way out is very easy and indeed, the society and family readily forgives the minor misdemenour as youthfull digression and are offering any possible help to find the way back to a “useful member of society”. There is no deep inner conflict between desires, social expectations and impossibility to comply with them, which is so typical for suicidal homosexual youth.š
A culture, any culture, is well judged by the way in which it treats its youngest, oldest, weakest, and sickest individuals. On nearly every score the gay people does not fare well. [..] I find the idea that a third part of our people never reach their twenty-first birthdays intolerable. That the figure may not be so high is cold comfort.
As a people, we are at a primitive stage of developement. Not only do most gays refuse to recognize the common identity (many even look at their likes with disdain), but also there is a wide-spread assumption that gays as a species exist only in the age between 18 and 45, and as long as they are pretty and able to spend money for commercial amusement. The logical consequence is that gay youth is interestingly solely as an object for consumption, not as children they actually are.
Every single one of these kids, gay and straight, is one too much. In the particular case of homosexual children, gay and straight community have a joint responsibility: these culturally “our” youth are “their” biological children, and “their” ignorance is as fatal as our inability to integrate these kids early enough into our community. Had gay children have sufficient positive role models and a welcoming gay community with decent possibilities to engage socially at the age of 13, we had much less suicides even among these teenagers who grow up among vicious religious bigots. It is, however, very helpful when parents learn to understand what consequences their relentlessness actually can have – rarely do they wish to see their children rather dead than homosexual.
That this particular study was undertaken in Canada, where the gay rights movement has achieved nearly every one of their stated goals is especially illuminating. Indeed, in Canada gays seem to have achieved full legal equity with str8s, yet gay children continue to die. It is a phenomenal failure of the gay community; one which needs to be admitted and addressed at once.
The most striking examples of meaningless legislation are Brazil and South Africa: both countries have very preogressive legislation towards gay people in the meanwhile, but social realities outside of the major cities are looking very different. Recently there was a report on a lesbian woman being stoned to death right on the street of her village by an outraged mob of some 20 men instigated by an old woman. Ok, even in Germany it happens sometimes that a person is attacked by a gang of neo-Nazis, but a spontaneous lynching on a street somewhere in a village? Social oppression did not cease to exist neither in North America, nor in Europe, except perhapts the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The most common invectives on German schoolyards are still “schwul”, “Schwuchtel”, “Schwanzlutscher” etc. – alltogether less nice epitets for a homosexual person, and it is still very difficult for schoolboys and girls to come out. Nothing has really changed – the youth describe the same old probles of social isolation and the fear to enter consultation centers and gay bars/cafés, as ever before. There must be more age-adequate positive public presence, with ads depicting merry gay peers engaged in positive social/cultural activities etc. It will be certainly a difficult enterprize, but a local gay teenage volleyball team could make wonders. It is, of course, not possible to offer a complete spectrum of activities specially for gay kids in every small town, but it should be possible to establish at least local youth groups - there are already many good examples existing.