| Television
shows like “Queer Eye For The Straight Guy”
and “Will and Grace” along with scenes from
movies such as “What’s Cooking” and “Best
Men” have encouraged young adults to declare their
sexuality to their parents. Unfortunately its not in all
cases that everything is happily ever after from there.
In New York many teens are forced out of their homes and
unto the streets after they tell their parents about their
lifestyles. Most national studies estimate that as many
as half of all homeless youth are lesbians and gays who
have been kicked out of their home by their heartless parents.
Carl Sicilano a man who runs New York City’s largest
shelter for gay young adults claims that in New York alone
there are thousands of gay and lesbian teens who are forced
onto the streets or in shelters.
The streets are as bad as it gets for homosexual teens.
There are only a few shelters available for these teens
so they are forced to sleep or get even deeper into the
street life by selling their bodies (both male and female)
for a place to stay for at least the night.
One guy a twenty-two year old says that he has been out
on the streets since he was 15. From day to day he searches
the web in 24 hour cyber-cafés looking for “paying
dates” or he takes it to the West Village where some
quick work may come from a passing car and may yield an
easy $30, if all else fails then there is always satisfying
customers in a booth in the back of a video store. For teens
that are in that situation survival is the key and that’s
all they have. Survival becomes even harder for these teens
because many are hit with AIDS, HIV, or worse and with no
money to pay for medicine they learn to live with it and
continue to work the strip only to transfer diseases and
passing it to other customers.
One person I interviewed said New York is one of the easiest
places in the world to be gay in. I hope for the sake of
these teens that that statement isn’t true.
Some of the information in this article was gathered from
an article written on by Andrew Jacobs titled “For
Young Gays On The Street, Survival Becomes Pride”,
other info came from the interviews that were done..
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