San Francisco State University's Family Acceptance Project, headed by Dr. Caitlin Ryan, released a study this week that found that gay adolescents who are rejected by their parents after coming out were more likely to attempt suicide, experience depression and use drugs than those whose parents were accepting.
This, now official, finding of the harm rejection causes has been well-known by the many people and agencies that have to pick up the pieces of broken lives that follow such rejection. “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never harm me,” is one of the most erroneous clichés of childhood wisdom. Words do harm and inflict damage much deeper and longer lasting than sticks and stones ever will. The hateful language that pours out of the mouths of antigay preachers and fellow travelers has been inflicting such damage for decades.
The results of this study turn their arguments on their heads. For instance, it is widely reported in the antigay periodicals and pulpits that gays and lesbians experience more drug abuse, peer violence, depression and suicide than their straight counterparts. This is of course, true. However, the blame is never placed on the rightful culprit, but on the mere fact of gayness. Their spin is that gayness causes all these unwanted results. What, after all, can be expected from abominations? After the release of this Family Acceptance Project report only the vilest homophobes will continue to spout these malicious claims.
I ask you, if you were told from your formative years on that you were an abomination in God’s sight, that your parents loathe you, that society wants you to disappear, and even your church or synagogue disbars you, maybe, just maybe you might consider drugs, or suicide, and become depressed?
Will any religious leader, including Rick Warren and James Dobson, reconsider the harm they are doing to gay youth and publically repent? It is no longer possible to hide behind the phony statistics created out of thin air by such homophobic “psychologists” as Paul Cameron and Joseph Nicolosi. The line they peddle has brought more harm to otherwise normal nonheterosexuals than their gayness ever could. Along with the Warrenses and the Dobsons of the world, they have caused good mothers and fathers to turn against their gay sons and daughters, make them think of themselves as abominations in the eyes of God, their families and the world, and drive them to and over the brink of suicide.
This false characterization of innocent people, even to the point of destroying families, to me, is one of the most heinous of sins. Unfortunately, too many of these “do gooders” see these self-same results as positive. In their minds, any tactic is useful that “saves” these perverts from their sin. What we have known all along, and now have an official public verdict, is that the corrupting influence is not within the gay person, but emanates directly from the mouths of their detractors. After all, didn’t Jesus warn us that, “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.”
For more information on the study, see: http://www.sfsu.edu/~news/2008/summer/15.html
