Kids Deserve Better

I've been thinking for days about how to write about the current rash of suicides by young people who were GLBTQ or who were accused of being GLBTQ. Many people have talked publicly about how bullying contributed to these deaths. Many people. both straight and queer have said "It gets better. Just hang on." In fact, this seems to be the preferred answer to the problem. If queer kids can just get through those tough tween and teen years, then life will improve. They will find community and acceptance. They will grow into happy adults. After all, they have their whole lives ahead of them.

I find this answer unsatisfactory, distasteful, and wrong. How can we expect people who are told throughout their youth that they are less then everyone else to grow into adults who can suddenly find joy in themselves and their own sexuality? How is it fair that we ask queer kids to "just hang on"? Doesn't every child, and every adult for that matter, deserve to be accepted for who s/he is and deserve a life that is satisfying, even joyful, no matter his/her age, or race, or gender identity, or sexual orientation, or first language, or any other of a laundry list of differences perceived or inherent?

We, as a society, are responsible for their deaths just as much as the kids who bullied them. Is it fair of President Obama to say that gay marriage is an issue that is best left up to the states and that "don't ask, don't tell" ought to be repealed by Congress and that he intends to appeal the legal decision striking down a failed policy? What message is he sending to queer kids? Why aren't people across the country asking our president to stand up for our children?

Queer kids are being failed at school, at home, in their neighborhoods, and in the country at large. As a queer teenager, I knew that I could never go home to my parents and tell them the abuses I suffered. I knew that whatever happened at school or in the neighborhood, I was on my own. If parents, teachers, neighbors, all people who come in contact with queer kids treated them with respect, there would be places for kids to talk and to get advice and help. As it stands now, kids are left to figure things out and cope as best as they can until that magical moment when it "gets better".

What hope are we offering them that it really gets better beyond the pointless assurance that it will? Kids aren't stupid. They see the president saying that he won't help them. They hear their teachers framing issues in terms of straight relationships. They read the textbooks, the teen literature, the adult literature in which they just don't appear. They know the song proclaiming "I kissed a girl and I liked it" is controversial because the singer is female. They see people on the street and in the news holding up signs that read: "God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve" or "Fags: Get AIDS and Die!" They know that who they are is at odds with who society wants them to be and they know that no amount of time will make them any more acceptable to a society that sees queers as less than.

GLBTQ kids deserve better. All kids deserve better. They deserve a society that says "It will get better because we are committed to making it better." Sadly, they have a society that prefers platitudes to action and that would rather put the blame on other kids than on itself.