College athletics is gradually becoming more inclusive for gay students. But if athletes are ever able to participate openly without fear of discrimination, it will require coaches and administrators to foster a holistically welcoming environment, from initial meetings with recruits to the halftime pep talks in the locker room.

“If” is the operative word.

On Saturday, here at the annual meeting of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s College Sport Research Institute, a panel of gay athletes, administrators and researchers agreed that this progress is imminent. But they differed on how quickly it can happen.

Eric Anderson, a sociologist at Britain’s University of Winchester who studies gay athletes in sport, pointed to three recent experiences as reason to be optimistic. In the first, Anderson was spending time with a high school running team as part of his research. One of the students had come out as gay at practice a few days prior, and his teammates’ response was encouraging: “It was literally just ‘Oh, cool,’ and then back to the conversation,” Anderson said.

And in two recent pieces of research, Anderson found that 70 percent of athletes at three Southern institutions would support having a gay teammate, while in England, 97.5 percent of 271 incoming freshman athletes said they would have no problem with a gay teammate or coach.

“In 20 years, I don’t think this will be an issue in any capacity, even for football players,” Anderson said, noting that homophobia is worse in some sports than others. “But I’m not a prophet.” There will always be some holdouts, he acknowledged.

“I’m not so positive,” said Vikki Krane, a professor and director of women’s studies at Bowling Green State University. “I think we’ll be having similar discussions [in 20 years] — maybe not the exact same…. we have a lot of work to do to make it happen in sports.”

Krane pointed to women’s sports — which, panelists said — despite the common assumption that the hyper-macho realm of football is the worst place to be a gay athlete — are particularly problematic. For evidence, look no further than the rampant “negative recruiting,” in which coaches not-so-subtly hint to prospects that if they want a “family atmosphere” — read: no lesbians allowed — this is the team for them. This phenomenon fosters an obviously unwelcoming climate for lesbian athletes, but it also aids in a widespread cultural bias against female athletes that has caused many to fear being labeled gay.

“They look at the coaches, they look at the administrators, and the atmosphere in women’s sport is still negative,” Krane said. “We need a drastic change.”

The practice of negative recruiting doesn’t just harm students, either.

“It’s pitting coaches against each other, which is creating an awful climate for female coaches,” who are afraid to come out themselves for fear that parents won’t send athletes to their institution or administrators will be hostile toward them, Krane said. “If you can’t recruit, you can’t compete. You can’t compete, you can’t keep your job. So there’s this whole cloud over women’s basketball.”

Krane’s comments illustrate a key difference between men’s and women’s sports when it comes to accepting gay athletes. In the hypermasculine culture of many men’s sports, the athletes are all assumed to be straight. So when one comes out as gay, Anderson said, his teammates are more likely to accept it and move on.

“But female athletes — their teammates are gay by association,” Anderson said. “Clearly there’s a lot more lesbian athletes, but it really does seem that the focus of homophobia is in women’s sports more than men’s sports.”

Krane did credit the National Collegiate Athletic Association for its policy that ensures transgender athletes can compete on the team of their choosing, as long as they follow the rules regarding hormone treatment. The policy, solidified the year after the George Washington University student Kye Allums became the first openly transgender person to play Division I basketball, largely followed the recommendations of advocacy groups.

For Andrew Goldstein, a former Dartmouth College lacrosse player who became the first openly gay man in the United States to be drafted onto a professional sports team, all the negative experiences associated with not being able to be himself stopped after his sophomore season, when he came out to his teammates.

People always ask Goldstein why more professional athletes haven’t come out — “like it’s their fault,” he said.

“You can’t blame them for not coming out. You have to look at the environment around them,” Goldstein said. Rather than athletes having to worry about how others will accept them if they decide to come out, coaches and managers should take the initiative to tell everyone: “I run this team; if you’re gay, you’re O.K.”

Anderson noted that only 3 percent of males identify as gay, which comes out to about 30 professional athletes.

“Those who organize and run the sport — that’s who gay athletes are afraid of,” he said. “The question is, are they comfortable coming out to the older generation, the sport managers there and the coaches, the NFL publicity people and all of that. Today, the real issue lies with them.”

Dealing with those people can be a rude awakening for athletes who are growing up in a society where these issues are far more visible than they once were, where young people — while still facing a tough journey, to be sure — are more likely to be happy with who they are.

“They don’t face the issues of being discriminated against,” said Ariel Germain, an assistant sports information director at North Carolina Central University and a former four-year member of its women’s volleyball team. “Once you get older and graduate and go into the world, that’s when the reality sets in that, who I am, I might have to hide it.”

Both Anderson and Goldstein agreed that male athletes, though, are less concerned about being labeled as gay, and are thus more comfortable being close with and embracing their teammates.

“There’s a real shift under way not only in sexuality, but in gender studies as well,” Anderson said. “This is absolutely phenomenal, and it’s happening at an incredibly rapid rate.”

The panelists put it on future athletic administrators (many sports management students attended the conference) to bring in a fresh attitude and phase out discriminatory practices.

“As they learn about these issues and they learn to think differently, they’re gonna go out there and make a difference,” Krane said. “I think we need to come at this from pretty much every possible direction.”

source: insidehighered.com

Iro Uikka clutches his throat as he describes the violent clash that led to spending his nights sleeping in New York City subway cars.

“When I told my mother I was gay, she grabbed me by the neck and threw me out,” he says. “Then she threw my coat on top of me and shut the door.”

That was five years ago when he was 18, still living at home in Florida.

Uikka is among tens of thousands of homeless youths across America who are LGBT — lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Most are on the streets because they have nowhere else to go — outcasts who leave home after being rejected by family members or flee shelters because residents bully or beat them.

LGBT young people represent a dramatically high proportion of an estimated 600,000 or more homeless youths across the country — between 20 percent and 40 percent, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute. But only about 5 percent of youths identify themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“We’ve won battles for gay marriage and gays in the military,” says Carl Siciliano, founder and executive director of the New York-based Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest organization for LGBT youth. “This is the next frontier, the next battle: helping these youths.”

The White House has taken notice. Members of the Obama Administration are hosting a national conference on housing and homelessness in America’s LGBT communities on Friday in Detroit. They’ll discuss these issues with advocates, community leaders and the public.

Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh, who is openly gay, is one of the participants.

“I take this discussion personally because I know too many people who have been kicked out of their homes because of their orientation,” he told The Associated Press. “To get this kind of attention from the White House is exactly what we need to raise conscientiousness and to help parents find a way to deal with their kids’ orientation.”

Detroit has the only nonprofit agency in the Midwest that focuses on LGBT youth — the Ruth Ellis Center, co-host of the Friday conference. But the largely voiceless, powerless youth are fighting to survive from coast to coast.

They live on streets, in subways and train stations, on river piers, in parks and abandoned houses. They’re robbed, raped and assaulted. Some are murdered.

And they’re invisible to most Americans.

Lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are about four times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight peers, according to the CDC. And one in three is thrown out by their parents, according to data collected from youth across the country by the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University.

Some youth use “survival sex” to land in a warm bed, or they move from home to home of friends and acquaintances.

In the past, Ryan Kennedy resorted to survival sex. He lists his education on Facebook as “Urban Survivalism at University of NYC Streets.” He adopted a rebellious middle name for his page, calling himself “Ryan TransEquality Kennedy.”

“I wouldn’t be alive today if I didn’t get some help,” says Kennedy, a transgender youth whose Connecticut family threw him out at 15. He says he was a girl who felt like a boy. He’s now transitioning to male.

After years living on the streets, Kennedy, now 22, has a bed thanks to The Door, a New York nonprofit that offers shelter, food, counseling and job training programs.

On any given day, there are almost 4,000 homeless youths in New York City, and at least 1,000 are LGBT, according to a 2008 census released by the City Council.

Meager government funds and private donations cover about 350 New York beds for homeless youth. Hundreds more are on waiting lists, providers say.

In recent years, the New York state Legislature has cut funding to support homeless youth programs in general by about 70 percent.

Somehow, these vulnerable Americans survive, without beds.

Each night, some fill tables at a fast-food shop off Manhattan’s Union Square. One is a lively 19-year-old bisexual man from Virginia.

When he leaves in the late evening, Baresco Escobar goes to the far end of Brooklyn to sleep in an abandoned house with dozens of homeless kids, covering bare floors with blankets and cuddling for warmth.

“Home is where you’re supposed to have stability, unconditional love, support, a foundation,” he says. Instead, back in Virginia, “I was in a place of dysfunction, with expectations that didn’t apply to me — full of judgment, discrimination and hypocrisy.”

Escobar goes to the Ali Forney drop-in center on Manhattan’s West Side, which offers clothing, counseling, workshops in life skills, showers, laundry facilities and HIV testing. A nurse is available for quick checkups, sending clients for follow-ups with doctors.

Escobar does not live in Ali Forney’s emergency housing units, which have a total of only 47 beds in Brooklyn and Queens assigned for a few months at a time. The center also has limited transitional housing where residents get coached on how to prepare for job or school interviews.

The Ali Forney Center opened in 2002. Siciliano named it after a transgender youth who was kicked out of his home at 13. He was found shot to death on a Harlem sidewalk in 1997, at 22. By then, he had become a counselor to his homeless friends.

Siciliano knows of five other LGBT youths who were killed in New York over the years.

Despite the hardships, the city is a magnet for young people who grew up with conservative traditions, whether among immigrants from Caribbean and Asian countries or parts of the United States where residents are less accepting of sexual diversity.

Gizmo Lopez, 19, comes from a staunchly Catholic family with Puerto Rican roots. She now sleeps on the subway.

“I’m bisexual, and my stepfather didn’t approve; he said it’s wrong,” said the teenager, whose mother died two years ago.

Her stepfather moved to Puerto Rico with her two half-brothers, leaving her behind — alone in the family’s apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. One afternoon, when she came home from school, “I found a pink slip on the door.”

She was evicted.

“I took my stuff, cried and left,” she says. “We’re nomads.”

In the Midwest, the only nonprofit agency for LGBT youth is Detroit’s Ruth Ellis Center, which offers meals and other basic services and has 10 beds.

The support saved Demetrius Smith, an 18-year-old who left his great-grandmother’s Michigan farm years ago because “she whipped me, and she beat me with an umbrella because she thought I acted like a girl.”

He bought food and other necessities by working as an escort. That ended last August. An older friend is letting Smith stay with him and the teenager is finishing high school.

Siciliano believes there’s a new reason for the rising number of LGBT youths seeking shelter. As some states legalize gay marriage and the military welcomes openly gay soldiers, “Many kids think, ‘Oh, I’m ready to come out,’” he says.

As a result, the average age of young people declaring their sexuality — or at least sharing their doubts about it — has dropped dramatically in recent years to as young as the early teens, according to the Family Acceptance Project.

Some families are not ready for them, nor are segments of society, he says. Each rejection turns into a homeless youth looking for a bed. And there aren’t enough.

“These kids are the collateral damage of our cultural wars,” Siciliano says.

source: timesunion.com

Many Use to Cope with Discrimination and Prejudice

In the movement for gay and transgender equality, issues like marriage and workplace discrimination dominate media headlines as well as the time and attention of most advocates. The focus on these headline issues has been successful on some fronts in recent years, with the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a hate crimes law that is inclusive of gay and transgender people. Other issues that impact the overall equality and wellbeing of gay and transgender people, however, don’t always garner as much attention.

Gay and transgender health is one of these issues. This issue brief examines the disproportionately high rates of substance use by gay and transgender people, which is a significant impediment to the health of this group. Although data on the rates of substance abuse in gay and transgender populations are sparse, it is estimated that between 20 percent to 30 percent of gay and transgender people abuse substances, compared to about 9 percentof the general population.

The stress that comes from daily battles with discrimination and stigma is a principle driver of these higher rates of substance use, as gay and transgender people turn to tobacco, alcohol, and other substances as a way to cope with these challenges. And a lack of culturally competent health care services also fuels high substance-use rates among gay and transgender people.

In order to lower these rates, our health care system needs to better meet the needs of gay and transgender people, and our government needs to advance public policies that promote equality for this population.

This issue brief explains why we see higher rates of substance use in the gay and transgender population, provides a brief overview of these rates, and makes recommendations that can help end antigay and antitransgender discrimination and reduce substance use rates.

Rates of substance use and abuse in the gay and transgender population

In this section we provide some topline numbers on substance abuse rates in the gay and transgender population. Note that there is little national data on gay and transgender people overall, so the statistics here are best estimates of these rates.

Tobacco

• Gay and transgender people smoke tobacco up to 200 percent more than their heterosexual and nontransgender peers.

Alcohol

• Twenty-five percent of gay and transgender people abuse alcohol, compared to 5 to 10 percent of the general population.

Drugs

• Men who have sex with men are 3.5 times more likely to use marijuana than men who do not have sex with men.
• These men also are 12.2 times more likely to use amphetamines than men who do not have sex with men.
• They are also 9.5 times more likely to use heroin than men who do not have sex with men.

Factors leading to these rates of substance use and abuse

Gay and transgender people report higher rates of substance use than others due to three main factors.

First, many gay and transgender people live with a high level of stress that comes from social prejudice and discriminatory laws in areas of daily life such as employment, relationship recognition, and health care.

Second, a lack of cultural competency in the health care system discourages gay and transgender people from seeking treatment for substance abuse, and—if they do seek help—often leads to inappropriate or irrelevant services.

Finally, targeted marketing efforts by alcohol and tobacco companies exploit the con- nection many gay and transgender people have to bars and clubs as safe spaces for socializing and increase easy access to tobacco products and alcohol. Below, we look at each of these factors in turn.

Minority stress

Minority stress—the negative effects associated with the adverse social conditions experienced by individuals of a marginalized social group—is something gay and transgender people have to deal with every day. This stress is triggered by general social prejudice against being gay or transgender, as well as discriminatory laws and policies.

Antigay and antitransgender social prejudice stems from the belief that being gay or transgender is somehow wrong or bad. It can be expressed in subtle ways (for example, a receptionist at a pediatrician’s office asking a lesbian couple which of the pair is their child’s “real” parent), or it can be expressed in verbal and physical violence (two men holding hands getting taunted with antigay epithets or a transgender person getting jumped by a group of strangers).

Karen and Marcye Nicholson-McFadden of New Jersey understand this prejudice all too well. They are the parents of two children and have a civil union because same-sex marriage is not legal in their state. Whenever they visit the doctor or go to their children’s school, they are treated differently because they have to deal with people who don’t know what a civil union is, and they have to explain their family to the staff. Karen and Marcye regularly cross out items on government, school, and doctors’ forms to reflect their family structure. For example, a family headed by two moms often has to cross out “name of father” on forms.

Or take the 2010 case of a 14-year-old student at Nassau BOCES Career Preparatory High School in Hicksville, New York, was assaulted by four of his classmates who perceived him to be gay. The student was stomped and kicked by his classmates as they spewed antigay epithets at him on his bus ride home from school. The very next day the student was once again the subject of abuse as two of his classmates from the day before made antigay remarks toward him and slapped him across the face and head. His classmates were later arrested and charged with assault and harassment for their actions.

This kind of prejudice can force some gay and transgender people to avoid social settings or neighborhoods that might put them in harm’s way. The end result is higher levels of anxiety and fear of being attacked when doing something as simple as walking down the street. And this can lead them to use substances to ease this anxiety.

Discriminatory laws and practices are another source of minority stress that negatively impacts the gay and transgender population and can lead to drug and alcohol use. In particular, discrimination in employment, housing, relationship recognition, and health care are major areas of concern.

Discrimination in employment

It is currently legal in 29 states for gay and transgender individuals to be denied employment, fired, or discriminated against just because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. A recent article by the Center for American Progress reported that 43 percent of gay and 90 percent of transgender people have experienced discrimination and harassment on the job.

Workplace discrimination poses a real and immediate threat to the economic security of gay and transgender workers by leading to job instability, which affects a person’s ability to earn a steady income and have access to employer-provided health insurance. These issues not only impact the person who has been discriminated against but also threaten the well-being of other people (a partner, spouse, or children) who are financially dependent on that person.

Discrimination in housing

Having access to safe and stable housing is key to well-being. Fifty-six percent of gay individuals and 70 percent of transgender individuals, however, report experiencing some form of discrimination in housing based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. Being denied stable and affordable housing makes it much more difficult to maintain employment, access health care, and maintain a safe and stable family structure.

Discrimination in relationship recognition

The debate over marriage for gay couples has been a nationwide news story for nearly two decades now, with frequent and prominent stories in the press that elevate and perpetuateantigay stereotypes and sentiments. Hearing these attacks on a regular basis increases antigay social prejudice and its negative impact on gay people.

Further, only eight states and the District of Columbia allow marriage for gay couples, which means that most families headed by same-sex couples are currently barred from accessing the many public policies and programs that are designed to bolster a family’s economic security (child care tax credits, Social Security survivor benefits, employer-sponsored health insurance in many cases, and the ability to sponsor a partner for citizenship).

Discrimination in health care

A lack of access to affordable and culturally competent health care also contributes to gay and transgender minority stress. Gay and lesbian adults are roughly twice as likely as the general population to be without health insurance coverage, and rates of uninsurance are even higher for transgender and bisexual individuals.

Because our nation lacks a public health insurance system and individual coverage is currently prohibitively expensive, most insured people access coverage through their employers or their spouse’s employer. Unfortunately, widespread workplace discrimination prevents many gay and transgender people from having consistent access to health insurance through their employers. Furthermore, many workplaces do not provide health insurance benefits to same-sex domestic partners. When they do, the cost is higher for these couples, since they have to pay taxes on the insurance benefit, a cost that different-sex married couples do not incur.

Moreover, most private and public plans including Medicare, many state Medicaid programs, and plans sold through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program specifically target transgender people with exclusions that deny coverage for transition-related care. Such exclusions are frequently expanded in practice to deny even basic health care services to transgender people.

Finally, as we discuss in more detail below, many health care providers are not trained to serve gay or transgender patients, which negatively impacts quality of care. These and other forms of discrimination work together to make life for gay and transgender people more expensive, complicated, and difficult. The end result is additional emotional stress and pressure for many people who are gay or transgender.

Cultural competency

Gay and transgender individuals may be hesitant to utilize health care services that can help them overcome substance abuse because they are aware of the likelihood of meeting health care professionals who are unaware of their specific needs or are outright hostile toward them. As a result, gay and transgender individuals may delay substance-abuse treatment or choose not to disclose their sexual or gender minority status, which not only hinders recovery but also undermines their overall health.

Many tobacco-cessation programs are not welcoming of gay and transgender people, for example. A number of these programs do not provide any outward indications that they are inclusive of gay and transgender people and their unique needs, thereby isolating some gay and transgender people who are already apprehensive because of previous experiences they have had accessing care. Given that many gay and transgender people smoke because of stress factors related to their sexual orientation or gender identity, they might not feel comfortable enrolling in these programs or, if they do enroll, the programs might not address the root causes of their addiction.

Socialization and marketing

Bars, clubs, and restaurants have traditionally been places where gay and transgender people can socialize and feel safe. In many of these venues, smoking and drinking remain popular. As a result, higher rates of smoking, drinking, and sometimes drug use occur in these environments.

Tobacco and alcohol companies have exploited gay and transgender social networks toaggressively market their products for decades. In the early 1990s tobacco companies surveyed gay men for branding choices, which resulted in a new program called Subculture Urban Marketing, or SCUM, which targeted minority gay men in San Francisco.

According to a fact sheet by the American Cancer Society, tobacco companies also appeal to the gay and transgender population through direct advertising in national gay and transgender magazines; indirect mainstream magazines with a high number of gay and transgender readers, at times with same-sex undertones; and sponsorships of events or organizations that support gay and transgender issues.

The fact sheet also states, “The [tobacco] industry focuses advertising and sponsorships on themes important to the [gay and transgender] community: liberation, individual- ism, social success, and acceptance.” Such targeted marketing campaigns exacerbate the higher rates of substance use in the gay and transgender population.

How to help

Below we discuss administrative and legislative recommendations whose implementation will help reduce the high rate of substance abuse within the gay and transgender population while helping advance overall gay and transgender equality.

Recommendations for the Department of Health and Human Services

As the Center for American Progress outlined last year, the Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, can take a number of steps to reduce the rate of substance abuse within the gay and transgender population:

• HHS’s agencywide priorities should include strong support for the efforts of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or SAMHSA, to specifically address gay and transgender substance-use disparities through SAMHSA’s strategic plan, block-grant programs, cultural-competency initiatives, and other activities.
• HHS should promote routine and ongoing cultural-competency training for medical and nursing students and other health professions students across the programs administered or supported by its operating divisions.
• HHS should explicitly include gay and transgender cultural competence in the National Standards on Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Services, or CLAS. The CLAS Standards, which are developed by the Office of Minority Health, offer health care organizations and individual providers guidance on making their services more culturally and linguistically accessible to patients from diverse backgrounds.
• HHS should require any hospital, rehabilitation center, nursing home, or other facility receiving federal dollars to implement a comprehensive and high-quality gay and transgender cultural-competency training program for providers and other staff.
• HHS should specifically recruit gay and transgender students and professionals for training initiatives focused on expanding and diversifying the health care workforce, including the National Health Service Corps, the U.S. Public Health Service, and pipeline programs administered by the Bureau of Health Professions.
• HHS should adopt a boilerplate nondiscrimination policy for its programs and grants that prohibits them from discriminating against participants or prospective participants on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Such a policy is part of the rule recently adopted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Legislative recommendations

The following four pieces of federal legislation, if enacted, would substantially help address and eliminate the prejudice and discrimination that drive substance use disparities among the gay and transgender population:

• Employment Non-Discrimination Act: The act would create federal protections against sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination at all federal, state, and local government agencies; employment agencies; unions; and private employers with 15 or more employees.
• Housing Opportunities Made Equal Act: The act amends the Fair Housing Act to prohibit discrimination on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation and gender identity in housing sales and rentals, residential real-estate-related transactions, and brokerage services.
• The Respect for Marriage Act: The act would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and allow the federal government to recognize legally married same-sex couples. This would allow same-sex couples to take advantage of more than 1,100 federal benefits and protections that are currently denied to them.
• The Health Equity and Accountability Act: The act addresses a wide range of health disparities that affect the gay and transgender population, including disparities in health status, access to health care, and protection from discrimination in the health system. It also calls for greater data collection on sexual orientation and gender identity through federally supported health surveys and programs.

Conclusion

Reducing rates of substance use in the gay and transgender population will require both a short- and long-term strategy. In the short term substance-abuse treatment programs and services need to become fully culturally competent and able to effectively and appropriately serve gay and transgender people. Over the long term laws that discriminate against gay and transgender people, as well as persistent antigay and antitransgender prejudice, need to be addressed head-on and dismantled.

Ending the problem of disproportionately high rates of substance use in the gay and transgender population will take considerable time and effort. But working to end this problem—and promoting overall health for gay and transgender people and their families—will make hard-fought legal victories for equality more meaningful and sustainable. Addressing this problem is not easy, but it is a necessary step in the movement toward full gay and transgender equality.

Jerome Hunt is a Research Associate for LGBT Progress at American Progress.

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source: americanprogress.org