For the same reason transgender adults who live on the streets also steer clear of the shelters.
Often shelters are run by churches where it is unclear how welcoming an LGBTQ young person might be especially if they are gender non-conforming. Many times they don’t feel safe in traditional homeless shelters where people are forced to go to either all male or all female spaces with little regard for gender identity and presentation. Up to 40% of these homeless youth are transgender, bisexual, lesbian, gay, queer, genderqueer. Right now in most cities in the US there are people living on the streets, including youth. What is a reason to respond to climate change? Well as a long time LGBTQ activist, I think of climate change as a very queer issue, one that directly affects LGBTQ people. Here are two short monologues that explore these topics (full transcripts below if you prefer to read them instead of listening to my velvety smooth voice.) I am the queen of intersections, so I look at LGBTQ homelessness as a queer family values issue, one that may well loom larger in the coming years. I wonder what have our values for family and community looked like in the past and how will they look in the future. But lately I have been wondering about queer family values–no not marriage equality and at the acquisition of children. It is easy to spend lots of time defending ourselves from the attacks. For many of us LGBTQ folks the words Family Values remind us that there are people working hard to maintain a legal and social straight supremacy over any type of family or person that falls outside of their sexual preferences and gender presentations. They defend heterosexual marriages while focusing their fundraising activities on maligning LGBTQ lives, dreams, and our families.
Of course these pro-family groups are coalitions for certain types of families. Churches have been misguided in their obsessive assault on the gays and the rest of us resulting in unnecessary suffering. Evangelists of old forgot to point out that there are actually homosexuals in the Bible. I of course read this and hear good news. The group Defend the Family, which has hunkered down to protect “the natural family, marriage, and family values,” on their website reminds donors of the Forgotten Last Days Warning about Homosexuality in the Bible. How many anti-queer organizations insert the words Family or Values or the potent combination of Family Values, into their names? I immediately think of the groups like A merican Family Association, Traditional Values Coalition, and of course the once massive and influential Focus on the Family. The words Family Values are coded language for anti-LGBTQ activism and the suppression of women’s rights.