One of the negative reactions to a young Gay person’s coming out to his or her parents, is rejection. The worst form of rejection, a favorite in the Buckle of the Bible Belt, is to be thrown out of your home in the name of religion and “family values” because you are the ultimate abomination, and there is no room for Satan in a good Christian home.
Going to a friend’s or relative’s house for a temporary place to stay should be an option, but there is a strong possibility that your circle of friends and relatives shares a mindset with your parents, and won’t want to welcome Satan into their homes.
Your friends can even experience family strife for inviting you in.
Homelessness is often the only alternative to living at the home you were thrown out of or with friends whose doors are closed to you.
When I spent the occasional evening at The Strip, the Gay area in Oklahoma City where the bars and social and political gathering places are, it was common to see some students, some I would see in class the next day, hustling the streets at night not necessarily because they wanted sex, but for the shelter that they could get for the night if someone took them home for it.
That put them at the mercy of whomever it was who had the attractive pickup line and the place to take them for the night. While some of the Johns might have been closet cases who could only have an intimate moment if they could be hidden about it and would not want, or need, any publicity that could cost them their jobs, or may have been someone young enough not to present an age difference complication, there were also those who had a twisted idea of what sex with a young street kid was supposed to be and those who saw an opportunity do harm for perverse, and even “religious” reasons.
Sinners, after all, need to be punished.
There were the noted stories in the newpapers of young Gay men found dead after having been tortured by someone whose defense was “Gay panic”, a classic defense that was based on the claim that they had no idea the person they paid to come home with them was gay which caused them to defend themselves from a surprise sexual advance that called for an excusable over reaction.
It didn’t seem realistic to accept this defense when the victim was burned on a pile of tires, or had his eyes burned out with cigarettes, but it actually worked more often than it should have.
And this does not include the Gay bashing that gave some groups of kids bragging rights at school the next day. Sometimes, being able to say, “We beat up a fag”, made some kids accepted as true men by their like minded peers.
But there were those incidents that happened quietly. The ones I was told about by a county sheriff who had found or was aware of those found beaten or dead at the side of some dark, lonely county road far outside the city.
On cold winter nights, finding a place to stay was a necessity, and the homeless kids, Gay or Straight, were desperate and did not have the luxury of being choosey. They had to be practical regardless of the potential danger.
A friend, Jacqueline by name, came up with the idea of starting a group home for rejected kids where they could live in a good home environment with the requirements to attend school, have a job, and help with the upkeep of the house. There would be a regular volunteer staff who would help the kids with school work, find and keep jobs, care for health needs, and keep clothed and fed.
But her idea died quietly when, after finding a location and designing the program, county requirements had to be met and applications filed, and the Bible Belt politicians, and not a few churches, decided that the real reason for the home was to have a place where teens could have sex, and adults would know where to find them for it.
The perverted minds of the adults who should have cared denied the homeless Gay youth the home they could have used.
Without a home base, many of these kids had to drop out of school to find a way to survive, but, having no marketable skills, would inevitably descend the downward spiral that would leave them without hope and permanently homeless.
I know of some who, in order to stay fed, clothed and housed, took to crime whose worst punishment would give them three hots and a cot as the penal system became a home.
These programs http://djpaulkom.tv/video-da-mafia-6ix-hundid-thou-wow-ft-billy-wes-la-chat/ cialis no prescription overnight include specialized exercises for eliminating these problems from its inception. In fact, it has cheap viagra canada been found that untrustworthy payment methods cheat the customer. It is illegal to advertise prices for treatments prior to a consultation with a doctor. viagra discount Users using http://djpaulkom.tv/bird-breaks-out-crazy-dubstep-beat/ purchase cheap cialis might experience slight mild effects such as headache, fatigue or nasal congestion and they are considered as normal in nature. I have to admit, in all honesty, that if I knew the names of the kids I saw working the streets at night and then did not see them for a while, I would check the Department of Corrections prisoner population pages on the internet to see if they were there, why they were there, and how long they would be staying.
I still do that occasionally. Some will be getting out and placed on probation soon.
Sometimes permanent housing became possible provided they worked for a pimp and entered the world of sex trafficking.
They had no home and so could be moved to wherever they could make money for the trafficker, and when too old to be productive, could be thrown away to fend for themselves.
That is why it was such a wrongheaded move for Mitch McConnell to have held a bipartisan human trafficking bill hostage during the confirmation of Lorretta Lynch for Attorney General.
The trafficking bill could have passed when originally proposed months ago as it is unthinkable that the senate could possibly see a reason to avoid protecting vulnerable homeless youth, but when playing politics takes precedent over the needs of the citizens, Senate Republicans slowed its passage down by adding an amendment with anti-abortion language.
A proposed anti-discrimination amendment to the trafficking bill that was authored by Democratic Senator Pat Leahy and Republican Senator Susan Collins fell 4 votes short of the super-majority needed for passage. The Leahy/Collins clause would have prevented discrimination in the application of the bill based on the race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability of the trafficked kids.
Without the nondiscrimination clause, the bill was eventually passed 99-0.
With the nondiscrimination clause it was doomed for failure.
Marco Rubio, the lover of life was one of the votes against the nondiscrimination language.
His need to pander to the anti-gay crowd in his presidential bid took precedence over the safety of homeless minors who are Gay and make up a sizable number of homeless youth.
Before the vote, Leahy had said:
“A recent study found that 1 in 4 homeless youth have been victims of sex trafficking, or traded sex for survival needs, such as food or a place to sleep. The study also found that 50 percent of homeless youth had been solicited for sex by an adult within 48 hours of leaving home. Let me say that again: half of these homeless kids were solicited for sex by an adult within the first two days of leaving home. These kids – some as young as 12, 13, 14 years old – have nowhere to go, but we can work to make sure they have a safe place to go. That is what our amendment does”.
But it is what the amendment cannot do now that it is dead.
While other kids need protection while they are homeless, presidential hopeful, Marco Rubio, does not see Gay homeless youth as deserving of protection or safety.
Rubio’s campaign site states:
“All life is worthy of protection, and all life enjoys God’s love. I have a record of supporting pro-life policies, and will continue to do so in public and private life. I believe that as a nation we must always come down on the side of life. We must speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves”.
But there is an obvious exception to his pro-life stance.
Gay kids.