Why is there a need for CampOut?
While the circumstances of adult LGBT Americans continue to improve, LGBT teenagers still face extremely challenging personal circumstances. Many experience emotions and anxieties that compromise their happiness and quality of life. These range from feelings of fear, alienation, and secrecy to episodes of taunting, bullying, and humiliation. A typical student hears an anti-gay slur 25 times each day. The immediate consequences of this are tragic and profound:
• Bullying and assault: 86.2% of LGBT public school students reported being verbally harassed because of their sexual orientation, 44.1% physically harassed, and 22.1% physically assaulted.
• Academic harm and squashed aspirations: 32.7% of LGBT students missed a day of school because of feeling unsafe. This is over seven times the national average, depressing grades and opportunity. The percentage of LGBT students not planning a post-secondary education is almost twice that of a national sample of students.
• Tougher to develop guiding values for adulthood: LGBT students miss many opportunities for developing values and identity that society allows, indeed encourages, their straight peers to pass through. There are no road maps, and instead by the time they arrive in adulthood many LGBT people have received the message that they are outside generally accepted social values and norms. Many minority LGBT youth feel they need to choose between their LGBT identify and their racial identify.
• Depression, and risks of homelessness and suicide: LGBT youth exhibit significantly higher symptoms of depression. LGBT kids comprise up to 40% of all homeless teens in some parts of the United States. LGBT youth are four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual counterparts, and that adolescents rejected by their families because of their sexuality are more than eight times more likely to experience a suicide attempt.