Gay kids who face rejection from their families are three times more likely to use drugs or contract HIV. But more "startling and shocking," they are more than eight times more prone to committing suicide.
Armed with those sobering statistics, the Human Rights Campaign spent its second day in Salt Lake City Saturday on a nationwide bus tour to promote gay rights and awareness.
"Parents who reject their children are really socializing them to think they will live in a world that will never support them," Caitlin Ryan, with the Family Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University, told about 50 people during a panel discussion at the Main Library.
Ryan, who has pioneered research on behavioral dynamics between lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth and their parents, said families who try to force their standards of masculinity or femininity tend to push their gay child toward depression, drug abuse or worse.
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Complete article at SL Trib : http://bit.ly/o88V5i
