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An unsettling number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual teens are being bullied at school due to their sexual orientation—and they do not feel safe, says a new study released Thursday by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.

The national survey—of more than 3,400 students between the ages of 13 and 18—found that LGBT students are three times more likely as non-LGBT students to say that they do not feel safe at school. A stunning 90% say they have been harassed or assaulted during the past year.

According to a US Health and Human Services report:

"gay adolescents were two to three times more likely than peers to attempt suicide, accounting for as many as 30% of completed youth suicides each year....26% percent of gay youth are forced to leave home because of conflicts with their families over their sexual identities. Up to half engage in prostitution to support themselves, greatly increasing their risk for HIV infection."

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About 5% of youths are gay. If the 30% figure is accurate then their suicide rate is up to six times greater than the general youth population. Using this data, it appears that homophobia, largely maintained by conservative and mainline Christian churches, is responsible for deaths of young gays and lesbians in the United States at a rate greater than the church exterminated "witches" during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance.

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The National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYouthAC@aol.com) has referred to two reports on homeless youth:

• In 1988, the Los Angeles County Task Force on Runaway and Homeless Youth, issued a "Report and Recommendations of the Task Force" which estimated that 25 to 35% of street youth in that county are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
  
• Also in 1988, Seattle Commission on Children and Youth of Seattle, WA issued their "Report on Gay and Lesbian Youth in Seattle" which estimated that 40% of Seattle street youth are gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

The Iranian government is executing gay and bisexual men under the cover of rape and kidnapping charges, according to a major new investigation by Simon Forbes of the UK-based gay and lesbian human rights group OutRage!

...human beings can not choose to be either gay or straight. Sexual orientation emerges for most people in early adolescence without any prior sexual experience. Although we can choose whether to act on our feelings, psychologists do not consider sexual orientation to be a conscious choice that can be voluntarily changed.

Even though most homosexuals live successful, happy lives, some homosexual or bisexual people may seek to change their sexual orientation through therapy, sometimes pressured by the influence of family members or religious groups to try and do so. The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.

From the available data, four studies reported a "success" rate during conversion therapy of 0.4%, 0.0%, 0.5 and 0.04%. That is, conversion therapy has a failure rate in excess of 99.5% during each study. Considering the anecdotal data which indicates a large percentage of extremely depressed and suicidal clients emerging from conversion therapy, it would appear that this form of therapy is worthless.

In species in which this normally occurs in heterosexual couples, that shouldn't come as a great surprise, but it does come as a surprise in species where heterosexual pair-bonds don't normally form for long if at all. This is true of bottlenose dolphins, which are not known to form heterosexual pair bonds, but which do in fact form homosexual pair bonds, including sex, and often lasting for life.

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Homosexual behavior is not only common, but even more common in other species than in humans. While numbers are hard to come by, there are a few that present some interesting patterns. In ostriches, male homosexuality is much more common than bisexuality, but among mule deer, bisexuality is more common than homosexuality. Among our closest living relatives, the bonobo chimpanzees, few if any are either exclusively heterosexual or homosexual. Indeed, all that have been observed are exclusively permanently bisexual.

There are homosexual and bisexual animals, ranging from charismatic megafauna like mountain gorillas to cats, dogs and guinea pigs. There are transgendered animals, transvestite animals (who adopt the behavior of the other gender but don't have sex with their own), and animals who live in bisexual triads and quartets.

On the order of 1,400 legal rights are conferred upon married couples in the U.S. Typically these are composed of about 400 state benefits and over 1,000 federal benefits.

However, a civil union is not a marriage. A gay or lesbian couple will still be denied the 1,049 federal "rights, benefits and privileges" that are routinely given to married couples.

Like families headed by heterosexual parents, lesbian and gay parents and their children are a diverse group (Martin, 1993).

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Lesbian and heterosexual women have not been found to differ markedly either in their overall mental health or in their approaches to child rearing (Kweskin & Cook, 1982; Lyons, 1983; Miller, Jacobsen, & Bigner, 1981; Mucklow & Phelan, 1979; Pagelow, 1980; Rand, Graham, & Rawlings, 1982; Thompson, McCandless, & Strickland, 1971), nor have lesbians' romantic and sexual relationships with other women been found to detract from their ability to care for their children (Pagelow, 1980). Recent evidence suggests that lesbian couples who are parenting together tend to divide household and family labor relatively evenly (Hand, 1991; Patterson, 1995a) and to report satisfaction with their couple relationships (Koepke, Hare, & Moran, 1992; Patterson, 1995a). Research on gay fathers has similarly found no reason to believe them unfit as parents (Barret & Robinson, 1990; Bigner and Bozett, 1990; Bozett, 1980, 1989).