The September/October issue of the evangelical social justice magazine Sojourners featured an ad raising awareness of the tragedy of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth homelessness, and the role that religious homophobia plays in creating it: religious parents are three times as likely as their nonreligious counterparts to throw LGBT children onto the streets. The ad was produced by the Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest organization serving homeless LGBT youth, and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). As part of an online series on youth homelessness, Sojourners followed up on the ad by publishing the following interview with Ali Forney Center Executive Director Carl Siciliano. Said Siciliano:
“It is critically important to address the ways in which religion drives thousands of families to reject their LGBT youth. This rejection has created an exodus of thousands of teens from their homes into homelessness, and their lives are then put into great peril. I am grateful that Sojourners has given me the opportunity to speak to an evangelical Christian audience about the terrible suffering caused by family rejection of LGBT youth. The disproportionate suffering of LGBT youth in our society will not end until open-minded Christians demand that their leaders stop promoting homophobia.”
The interview can be read at the following link:
blog.sojo.net/2011/09/06/for-lgbt-youth-a-shelter-from-the-streets-of-rejection/
The Ali Forney Center (AFC) was started in June of 2002 in response to the lack of safe shelter for LGBT youth in New York City. The Center is committed to providing these young people with safe, dignified, nurturing environments where their needs can be met, and where they can begin to put their lives back together. AFC is dedicated to promoting awareness of the plight of homeless LGBT youth in the United States with the goal of generating responses on local and national levels from government funders, foundations, and the LGBT community.