Affirmation: Gay & Lesbian Mormons

Fifty Percent of Utah’s Homeless Youth Identify as GLBT
“A problem of cultural attitudes towards gay and transgender people”

Excerpted from “Throw-Away Kids” (QSaltLake, 12 August 2008)

Nationally, between 20 and 40 percent of all homeless youth identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender, according to a January 2007 report released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. In 2007 these numbers held true for Utah according to a survey the Homeless Youth Resource Center, conducted of its drop-in clients. But in January and February 2008 something strange happened: the numbers jumped to slightly over 50 percent.

“Over half of our youth coming in at that time identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning or other,” said Teresa Stocks, Homeless Youth Resource Center program manager. In past surveys, she said, the numbers of such self-identified youth ranged “between 29 and 35 percent.”

Regardless of the reasons, one thing is clear: Utah has long had a number of teenagers and young adults living on the streets and a significant portion of that number are queer youth, many of whom are kicked out of their homes when they come out or when parents discover the truth about their sexual orientation or gender identity. And their situation makes University of Utah psychology student and gay homeless youth advocate Shannon Candice Metzler mad.

“We have an estimated 3,000 homeless youths in this state. Roughly 900 to 1,200 are self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” Metzler, a transgender woman who has herself been homeless for the past 11 months, wrote in a Deseret News letter to the editor on Aug 7. “Many are forced to escape from a home plagued with abuse and hate. At some point parents must be held accountable for throwing their children's lives into chaos.”

“It’s ridiculous that we say we’re so pro-family values, yet we leave kids to sleep outside in the cold,” said Metzler, who has of late spoken to Utah news outlets including City Weekly and the Salt Lake Tribune about youth whom she says regularly “fall between the cracks” in society. As a queer person, a student of psychology, a parent to two boys (ages 6 and 10) and someone who has experienced homelessness, Metzler said that helping gay and transgender homeless youth is her calling.

“They will get into drugs and alcohol and not be able to further their lives,” she said. “When we take them away from the stability of a home, school, access to food, what kind of future are we giving these kids?”

For Metzler, Utah just isn’t doing enough. And the problem, she said, is largely one of cultural attitudes towards gay and transgender people. The relative ease by which a parent can throw away a gay child, she said, is little more than “a socially approved way of reinforcing the norms of sexual orientation and gender identity.”

And enforcing those norms has a very human cost, especially as with few laws on the books to help gay and transgender ‘throw away kids.’

“But what about now, when we have kids who will freeze this winter,” she asked. “I want to see something happen now so that when we go from these hot temperatures into cold, we don’t treat them the same as we have been doing.”