Drive Launched to Curb Suicides of Gay Youngsters

Blaming ultraconservatives for fostering an anti-gay climate that can contribute to suicide, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays launched a nationwide education program Friday to combat a newly acknowledged crisis of gay and lesbian youth suicide.

Some studies estimate that gay youngsters are three times as likely as non-gays to attempt suicide and that they account for about 30% of the 5,000 youth suicides each year, according to Paulette Goodman, president of the Washington-based group, now holding its annual convention at the Hyatt Regency Alicante in Garden Grove.

“People who express themselves like (anti-gay minister) Lou Sheldon don’t appreciate that children are killing themselves day after day,” she said.

Both Sheldon, president of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, and Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) prevailed upon Louis Sullivan, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to repudiate a January, 1990, government report that contained the gay suicide statistics.

Goodman estimated that one family in four is touched by homosexuality. But often, she said, parents learn of their child’s homosexual orientation only after a suicide attempt. Others may never reveal their sexual preference out of shame and fear.

The three-phase national project “Respect All Youth” will develop informational materials designed to increase awareness of issues that may lead young people to suicide; provide a systematic outreach to leaders of national youth organizations, including Boy and Girl Scouts and the 4-H, as well as religious groups and other professions, and provide training for the 200 chapters of PFLAG to help them reach youth and teachers in the local community.

Speaking in favor of the project were the Rt. Rev. Oliver B. Garver, retired suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles; Jackie Goldberg, president of the Los Angeles School Board, and Virginia Uribe, direct of Project 10, a support program in public high schools for gay and lesbian teens to prevent them from dropping out and turning to high-risk behavior such as suicide, substance abuse and HIV infection.

Financial assistance for Phase One was provided by the United Thank Offering Fund of the Episcopal Church.

In addition, a Walnut Creek mother of four, Mary Griffith, spoke movingly of her son, Bobby, who committed suicide seven years ago at age 20.

A devout member of a fundamentalist Presbyterian congregation, Griffith said the family sought Christian “reparative therapy” when Bobby disclosed his concern over homosexuality at 16. “I was under the illusion that God would heal Bobby,” she said. Bobby, too, believed he had to accept the church’s teachings, but after many years could not understand why God wasn’t healing him.

In 1983, Bobby jumped from an overpass into the path of a truck and was killed. In a diary found after his death, he had written: “I guess I’m no good to anyone, not even God.”

Wearing a button with Bobby’s portrait and another with the message “We Love Our Gay and Lesbian Children,” Griffith said: “I did not know then, as I do now, that Bobby did not have any more choice regarding his sexual orientation than did my other son and two daughters, all of whom are heterosexual.”

She broke down as she concluded: “I have learned in the most painful way possible that ignorance, hatred, bigotry and prejudice lead to violence and tragedy.”

Sheldon, president of the Traditional Values Coalition, denied that his statements have hurt gays. “The very opposite: we are helping the homosexual face their underlying condition and encouraging them to seek reparative therapy.

“By ignoring the true cause of the low self-esteem, suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and homosexual tendencies, PFLAG is doing a serious injustice and disservice to these troubled youths.”

Sheldon also opposed the education project on the ground that it teaches impressionable children that homosexuality is a viable life alternative.