Bullying: Homosexuality and Straight Education Network

People are who they are. Many grandparents and parents think it’s not okay to be gay or lesbian. So when a child goes to them for help, because they believe that they are, their parents shoot them down leaving them to feel trapped and isolated. Some parents that are religious don’t except people in the LGBT community because they believe being gay or lesbian is a sin. My grandparents are those kinds of people. They don’t like gay or lesbian people. So every time I see them, I have to hide who I am. Many kids have to hide who they are from their parents and grandparents. I told my mom I was gay in the 6th grade when I was 11 years old. She started to cry and said she was worried about me. I only had a mother to tell because my father walked out when I was 8. There was a short time before I told my mom that I was gay that I started cutting myself in the 5th grade. She told me I would get picked on and bullied so I was afraid. But soon it didn’t matter, everyone knew and everyone stopped being my friend. I started getting bullied every day and it just kept getting worse. I was told I was going to hell, that I needed to die, and that I shouldn’t be alive. But I think it got to the point where I let them win when I gave up on everything. I was so tired of getting called a “fag”, getting called a fat ass that it got to the point where I didn’t want to live any more. I didn’t want to be the thing my mom was ashamed of. In the 7th grade it was so bad, I attempted suicide. I did the same thing toward the end of the year in the 8th grade. It was because of the bullying and name calling that drove me to suicide. According to a 2009 survey by the gay, lesbian straight education network, almost 85% of LGBT teenagers are harassed in high school, 30% stay home because of bullying. In 2010, there were about 160,000 children that missed school because of the fear of being bullied. Also in 2010, there was a huge increase in cyber bullying. There are about 2.7 million students