Nearly half of all LGBTQ+ youth feel unsafe in school settings, and over half said they had been bullied due to their queer identities, a new report from the Human Rights Campaign(HRC) found.
But even though over half of queer respondents also showed signs of anxiety and depression, majorities of LGBTQ+ youth have also come out to their families and feel hopeful for the future nonetheless.
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RELATED STORIESAnti-LGBTQ+ legislation is making 66% of queer youth more anxious & suicidal
A recent survey suggested several ways to help LGBTQ+ youth, too.
The HRC’s 2023 LGBTQ+ Youth Report surveyed over 13,000 LGBTQ+ youth between the ages of 13 and 17, from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
Approximately 54% of transgender and gender-expansive youth and 46% of LGBQ+ youth surveyed said that they felt unsafe in at least one school setting. Nearly 60% of all LGBTQ+ youth said that they had been “teased, bullied, or treated badly” at school over their LGBTQ+ identities.
Only one in five LGBTQ+ youth reported school bullying to a school staff member. While 23.3% of these kids said the adult “didn’t help me at all,” 20.0% said the adult “helped me a lot.”
Additionally, 55.1% of survey respondents screened positive for depression, 63.5% screened positive for depression, and 64.7% rated their ability to manage stress as “fair” or “poor.” These rates were on average five points higher for transgender and gender-expansive youth. 48.9% of LGBTQ+ youth had received therapy in the prior year.
The HRC noted that these findings have likely been affected by the spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislation nationwide. During the most recent legislative session, 10 have passed transphobic “bathroom bills,” 23 states have passed transphobic “sports bans,” six have passed “forced outing” bills requiring schools to out trans and gender-expansive youth to their parents, and six have passed “Don’t Say LGBTQ+” bills banning queer content from classrooms.
Despite this, 90.3% of LGBTQ+ youth said they were proud to be part of the LGBTQ+ community, and nearly 83% of queer youth said that they had come out to at least one member of their immediate family.
Trans and gender-expansive youth who feel free to express their gender identity around their families and those whose family members use their correct pronouns and names also reported the lowest levels of depression and anxiety among trans and gender-expansive youth.
Additionally, 56.8% of LGBTQ+ youth said they somewhat or strongly agree that “the LGBTQ+ community is accepted more and more every day.”
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. The Trans Lifeline (1-877-565-8860) is staffed by trans people and will not contact law enforcement. The Trevor Project provides a safe, judgement-free place to talk for youth via chat, text (678-678), or phone (1-866-488-7386). Help is available at all three resources in English and Spanish.
Please forgive me, This is not how I wanted to start this post. Earlier I had a great plan and took pictures, and was so happy I was kind of humming to my self. Then as I sat down to do this post when on the other computer screen came a video I shouldn’t have watched, I should have shut down. It was a news station report on two young boys fostered (me adopted) and the physical abuse they suffered. They suffered no sexual abuse, but the descriptions of the physical abuse sent all my former great happy thoughts fleeing as I totally understood their thoughts they might die and their struggles with the pain inflicted on them, I started to cry and shake and then damn it the vortex came. It howled and tried to consume me, I floundered looking for something some handle, anything in my mind to grab so it wouldn’t take me and I could with stand it. Fight it off.
I put music on the other computer, wiping off the abuse video, I have no idea the songs I can not think on them. The screen says the best soft rock of the 70s,80s,90s. But I am calming down, remembering what I wanted to post, the great idea I have. I must stop sobbing, Ron must not come out and see me like this. Such a great day, great week, and yet …
By my dogs that love gravy I wonder how my heart, my body can take these sudden panics, the mental sounds of the vortex coming for me, my body’s desperate attempt to flee or just to curl up in a ball and let it happen. My heart rate is again down to 76. According to my Apple Watch that monitors it, my heart rate went to 158. Anyway. I am calm enough to do the post I wanted to do. But damn, I need to be more careful on the news I see coming across the many web feeds. But I did not select the video, I was watching a new channel on the fires in Hawaii.
I want to just add that I was one step from activating the emergency Scottie needs help signal. That is to Randy. For those that never followed my old blog I had a breakdown in 2014. I started self harming again and was trapped in my head by the vortex, reliving my childhood abuse. I won’t and sorry can not describe it, but Randy who was working long night shifts keep his phone on all the time, called me repeatedly if he did not hear from me, texted me, and took hours long phone calls from me desperately trying to stop the nightmares in my head from the memories. He went without sleep so many days just to be there for me. When I say Randy is the best brother ever, I mean it, and that is part of the reason why. It is not an exaggeration to say that after drawing a sharp knife or razor blade across my skin drawing blood instead of doing it again I would reach out to Randy instead. It got to where instead of the blades, I reached for him. Anyway those days are past now. For good I hope. Yet it still gets scary sometimes.
Ok Ron got up, kept asking me what was wrong, I denied anything was wrong and told him my allergies were acting up. He seemed like he was going to pursue it but then dropped it, and I am glad. I just don’t want to deal with all that now at this time. I am trying hard to let the past sink back in to the deep depths of the deepest part of the ocean in a chest wrapped in many layers of big chains, weighted down by as many happier thoughts as I can push against it.
Ok my head is clearing and I want to do the happy bread post I started to do. Hugs to all who want them. Scottie
WATCH: “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no?”🤔😳
Desantis/FLORIDA’s Ed Dept approved Prager U indoctrination videos to be taught (Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens as narrators) which teach kids slavery was better than the alternative: https://t.co/cJWcVLiiUWpic.twitter.com/Hng5fsg8r8
Florida’s latest curriculum—featuring cartoon Christopher Columbus explaining, “being taken as a slave is better than being killed!” and telling time-traveling kids that slavery was “no big deal.”
This is the kind of propaganda DeSantis and his friends at PragerU are teaching… pic.twitter.com/wPY8USFzhQ
Weird. Why are these white supremacist fascists upset about being identified as white supremacist fascists. No white fascist pride? Patriot Front members sue activist who infiltrated, identified them. Kudos to the activist who infiltrated them! https://t.co/fZq3PxFkpv
Peggy Jones sits on one of two tractors used to groom her property.Courtesy Peggy JonesCNN —
All Peggy and Wendell Jones wanted was to end their day of yard work in Texas’ triple-digit summer heat by getting cleaned up and going to the casino.
The couple – married 45 years next week – routinely splits up the three-hour job of mowing the lawn of an investment property in Silsbee, north of Beaumont, that’s been in the family since 1850, they told CNN.
The work is nothing out of the ordinary.
It’s what happened while they were at it last month – an encounter that left them at a hospital dressing blood-soaked wounds – that now has them pressing pause.
Peggy was riding a mower in the back of the property, far from the trees that line it, when “all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky, a snake fell … and landed on my arm,” the 64-year-old recalled.
There was no mistaking it: The reptile was dark-colored and 4 1/2 feet long, she estimated.
It had fallen from nowhere and clutched her right arm.
And it wouldn’t let go.
“I immediately began thrusting my arm, trying to knock the snake off,” she said. “And as I was thrusting my arm, the snake just wrapped around my arm – and he started striking at my face.”
The more the grandmother of four tried to rip the snake off her, the tighter it would wrap and squeeze around her arm, she said.
She screamed and cried for help as the tractor kept crawling along beneath her.
Still, the snake wouldn’t let go.
Wendell, 66, was mowing the front of their property. The sound of his own tractor and the traffic on the nearby highway filled the space between them, and that’s how Peggy said she knew:
She was effectively alone.
Then, just when she thought the snake might bite her – injecting her with fatal venom and ushering in the end of her life – a brown and white hawk swooped down and tried to clench it.
But the serpent would not let go of Peggy’s arm.
Its grip was so tight that when the hawk grabbed it, Peggy’s entire arm jerked up in the air with the attempt.
The hawk tried again and again, its wings flapping in her face with each try, distorting her view of what was happening right in front of her.
All the while, the tractor kept mowing, zig-zagging Peggy – and the tug-of-war of nature unfolding upon her body – across the field in an ordeal she called “utter chaos.”
Many times in her life, Peggy had watched this exact same scenario play out in nature: Hawk sets its sights on its prey, swoops in to attack, drops it on a barbed-wire fence, then goes back to claim its prize.
But she never imagined she’d play the role of fence.
Four times, the hawk dove and bobbed at its prize – and at Peggy – before it finally scooped up the reptile and flew off, she said.
Right away, Peggy felt some relief at having been freed.
Then, she looked down.
‘Beyond anything I had ever experienced’
Her right arm was covered in blood. Claw marks. Lacerations. Cuts. Punctures.
“If you’ve ever cut yourself, think about 10 times that pain,” Peggy said. “It’s a pain you can’t describe. … It was beyond anything I had ever experienced.”
Bruises had already formed – and turned black, presumably from the snake’s squeeze.
Peggy, still processing what she had just experienced, kept screaming and yelling.
This time, Wendell heard her.
He ran over.
“She was in hysterics and shock,” he recalled.
“I just rushed her to the truck and headed to the ER,” said Wendell, who was at this point still uncertain of how such a horror had befallen his wife.
“It was probably three minutes before I actually understood what happened to her.”
Doctors in the hospital cleaned and bandaged Peggy’s wounds.
On the lens of her chipped glasses, they found some liquid the Joneses think may have been snake venom, though it was never tested, they told CNN.
The doctors gave her antibiotics and instructions to continue them at home.
Before midnight on July 25, Wendell posted online a short rundown of all his wife had endured that day, ending it: “Thank you for the prayers.”
The couple stayed up that whole night to monitor for any swelling and discoloration from a snake bite – signs Peggy knows well after a venomous snake bit her a few years ago, she said.
Thankfully, none appeared.
Peggy Jones stands at the 6-acre property where she was attacked July 25 by a hawk and snake.Courtesy Peggy Jones
‘I consider myself to be pretty tough’
More than two weeks later, Peggy is left with the physical reminder of the chaos, her arm wrapped from elbow to wrist in bandages that have been refreshed from white to neon green to bright pink.
Meanwhile, the ordeal is still living rent-free in her mind as she contemplates how it could have had an entirely different – potentially fatal – ending.
“She’s not sleeping well at all,” Wendell said. “When she finally goes to sleep, I’m usually having to wake her up because she’s dreaming.”
The Joneses are taking extra precautions to ensure Peggy’s wounds stay clean: Any trace of infection could portend a life-threatening turn following a past double knee replacement.
“This is the toughest young lady I’ve ever met in my life,” Wendell said. “She doesn’t worry about pain. She thinks she can do everything, and she pretty much can do everything, so I have to try and keep her slowed down because she’s blow and go.”
“I consider myself to be pretty tough,” added Peggy, “and I’m a survivor.”
As for the casino trip, it will have to wait as the Joneses aren’t making any unnecessary outings until Peggy’s wounds fully heal.
A growing network of foreign organisations are pouring hundreds of millions of euros into “culture war” groups campaigning to roll back LGBTQ+ rights across Europe, European lawmakers have warned.
In a resolution published earlier this month, the European Parliament raised the alarm about foreign interference in all democratic processes in Europe,pointing out that most of the foreign funding originates from Russia and the US.
This foreign interference, coupled with disinformation and numerous attacks perpetrated by malicious foreign actors, is predicted to increase in the lead-up to the European Parliament elections in 2024, becoming more sophisticated in nature.
MEPs flagged that at least 50 organisations now fund anti-gender activities — opposing what they call gender ideology.
“Europe is seeing a growing number of anti-gender movements, specifically targeting sexual and reproductive health, women’s rights and LGBTIQ+ people,” the EU parliamentary report read.
“Such movements proliferate disinformation in order to reverse progress in women’s rights and gender equality. These movements have been reported to receive millions of euros in foreign funding, either public or private, including from Russia and the US.”
Funding and modus operandi
The strategies employed by these foreign actors have evolved over time, due to increasing funding and intensifying disinformation campaigns, human rights observers have warned.
Members of the US far-right and the Russian Orthodox Church, two major players of the anti-gender movement, have joined forces to ramp up funding to Europe-based ultra-traditionalist actors with a specific focus on targeting LGBTQ+ rights, according to sources who agreed to speak to Euronews on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Over the past decade, key Christian right organisations, usually funded by private individuals linked to far-right and libertarian causes in the US, and Russian oligarchs have established a network of agencies set up in human rights institutions across Europe to carry out anti-gender diplomacy and infiltrate positions of power in member states.
Other tactics include abusive lawsuits intended to suppress, intimidate and silence critics (SLAPPS), money and reputational laundering, physical harassment, sending paid fight squads to LGBTQ+ marches or drag stores, hacking journalists’ devices with the Pegasus software and using troll farms spreading disinformation against LGBTQ+ activists.
And the movement is gaining momentum with more organisations from other countries, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Vatican City, closing ranks in their anti-LGBTQ+ lobbying and funding.
Their usual targets include minorities in unstable countries where they can exploit polarisation to radicalise the political debate and fuel violence, sources said.
Undermining the case for EU membership
Georgia’s gay pride festival on 8 July is the latest LGBTQ+ event to have fallen victim to foreign interference.
A mob of up to 2,000 anti-LGBTQ+ protestersfrom the Russian-affiliated group Alt Info, stormed Tbilisi’s festival in an attack described by Pride’s director Mariam Kvaratskhelia as “pre-planned”.
“I definitely think this [disruption] was a pre-planned, coordinated action between the government and the radical groups … We think this operation was planned in order to sabotage the EU candidacy of Georgia,” she told Reuters.
Members of Alt-Info, an ultra-conservative TV broadcaster with close ties to the Georgian Orthodox Church, had already disrupted Tbilisi Pride in 2021. Since its foundation as a conservative media platform in 2019, the group has tried to expand its political influence by creating an alternative party to both the governing Georgian Dream and opposition United National Movement. Among its stated goals is pursuing closer relations with Russia.
The former Soviet republic’s path to EU candidacy has been slowed by deeply polarised politics and the excessive influence of vested interests in economic, political and public life, alongside its territorial dispute with Russia in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions.
And the cancellation of its Pride festival could deal yet another blow to its EU aspiration.
Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, condemned the “violent disruptions”, saying “anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric, disinformation and violence have no place in these debates”. The counter-protests represented a violation to the EU’s freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly, the EU Ambassador for Gender & Diversity tweeted.
Divide and conquer
The same tension has broken out across Western Balkan countries where leaders have struggled to walk a fine identity and political line between anti-LGBTQ+ religious nationalist movements and pro-LGBTQ+ Europeanising public opinion.
While these countries generally have high levels of political and public support for joining the EU, their progress towards membership has stagnated over the past decade.
Religious nationalism has posed a significant challenge, as leaders from the Serbian Orthodox church, the Catholic church, and Islamic authorities have rallied behind their targeting of LGBTQ+ rights and formed coalitions with conservative political parties.
In recent years, anti-LGBTQ+ actions have turned more violent, with physical assaults by ultranationalist protesters on attendees of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pride in March of this year, the Belgrade Pride in 2022 and the Zagreb Pride in 2021.
The controversy surrounding a veto that would have recognised same-sex unions in Serbia in 2021 is just another example of the growing conservative backlash against LGBTQ+ rights taking hold in Western Balkan countries.
‘The tip of the iceberg’
Yet, this trend is not unique to Western Balkan countries.
In 2021, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) unearthed more than $707.2 million (€600 million) worth of anti-gender funding from the United States, the Russian Federation, and Europe, specifically targeting LGBTQ+ rights across Europe between 2009 and 2018.
The wide-ranging report, which examined 117 anti-gender funding actors active in Europe, insisted the findings were only the “tip of the iceberg” as half of them — 63 — had no existing financial data.
“Of course there are enormous data gaps that cannot be filled at the moment, so $700 million is really the tip of the iceberg of how big this anti-gender movement is,” said EPF’s secretary Neil Datta.
According to Evelyne Paradis, executive director of ILGA-Europe, the anti-gender movement’s efforts to further polarise public discourse is dragging pro-democracy governments into fuelling prejudice and hatred towards LGBTQ+ people.
“The practice of scapegoating LGBTQ+ people is starting to be instrumentalised by both the pro-democracy and the anti-democracy sides. If you make it a marker of how good you are, then you’re creating this divide,” she told Euronews.
“This [growing polarisation] is not helping what should be a healthier, calmer conversation. What’s happening at the moment is the complete opposite.”
Instead, Paradis said pro-democracy governments need to move forward with their progressive agenda and steer clear of the perverse effects of foreign-funded polarisation.
“We’re all in reaction mode and it’s very hard to resist and be in a pro-active mode. Governments need to pass through the anti-gender movement’s negative agenda and keep on pushing our positive agenda. That’s where the strategy of the opposition is working – it’s really pushing everybody in the reactive mode.”
Well said / written. It lays bare the hypocrisy of those desperately trying to create some kind of equality and outrage between the very real attempt to overturn a valid election along with other crimes done by trump with a rarely ever charged crime of failure to fully pay taxes which was paid after and a firearms form that is never prosecuted. All to protect Mr. trump while trying to smear President Biden using his son. Hugs
Compare the actions of the pride attendees and the Nazi thugs. The pride people were having fun, smiling, laughing, dancing, singing. The Nazis were screaming threats while brandishing weapons, scaring the kids and others attending the event. Which one was presenting what was good for children to see, angry face covered armed shouting men or dancing happy singing pride people? Also these thugs claimed that masks kept them from breathing when it was necessary due to a public health threat now wear them to hide their identity so they don’t get fired for what they are doing. Notice in one of the tweets, one of the men loaded a round in the chamber to threaten reporters on a public street. These are the thugs that DeathSantis hires as staff and refuses to denounce. These are the people that trump claimed were very good people on both sides. Hugs.
An armed Neo-Nazi group protested a Pride in the Park event in Watertown, Wisconsin, on Saturday afternoon that featured a drag story time and drag shows.
Video journalist Oliya Scootercaster took to Twitter on Saturday to document the protest and wrote, “BLOOD TRIBE group marching in Watertown Wisconsin protesting Pride in the park.” In her videos, one Neo-Nazi group member can be seen carrying a weapon.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Blood Tribe is described as “a neo-Nazi group with semi-autonomous chapters in the United States and Canada. Blood Tribe promotes hardline white supremacist views and openly directs its vitriol at Jews, ‘non-whites’ and the LGBTQ+ community.”
We’re out here with @GAG_Wisconsin at the Watertown, WI “Pride in the Park” event. Lots of protesters showed up! The all ages drag show is about to start. We will not waver. We will let them know loud and clear that NONE OF THIS is for children!#GaysAgainstGroomerspic.twitter.com/pADfBMmMr7
— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) July 29, 2023
Gays Against Groomers organized a protest of a "Pride in the Park" event in Watertown, Wisconsin. Armed neo nazis with AR-15's showed up. pic.twitter.com/Zte7HOpEca
VIDEO THREAD: Today, avowed Neo-Nazi group "Blood Tribe" rallied with rifles and swastika flags outside an LGBT "Pride in the Park" event in Watertown, Wisconsin.
"Us or the pedophiles!" they chanted at the crowd, which included children. "There will be blood, blood blood!"… pic.twitter.com/DBtntCGerG
2. One participant in the pride event confronted the Nazis, explaining that "It just makes me so happy that I get to wake up every day and just love who I want without fear of judgement or fucking Nazis apparently."
3. "Us or the pedophiles!" the Blood Tribe chanted as they marched around the Pride in the Park event.
A woman confronted them, and a rifle-wielding Nazi told her "I would say, young lady, that you would look a lot lovelier if you were wearing a proper dress." pic.twitter.com/jzJ8NJ9T42
Myself and 2 other press @ScooterCasterNY and @KristanTHarris followed the Neo-Nazi Blood Tribe group as they marched to their exit point somewhere else in Watertown.
"You better go away, I'm telling you man," one said.
6. As Blood Tribe tried to leave, they paused, apparently irritated at press behind them. One approached with an AK rifle that he chambered a round in moments earlier and asked if we were "trying to dox us."
"If you keep following me man -" he said before smacking his rifle.
Fortunately, Harrisburg’s Pride had no visible Nazis on Saturday. Just the usual Truly Religious…not there to heckle or incite, of course, just concerned about our souls. They’re just so fucking thoughty, bless their hearts.
P.S. Sometimes I listen to those right wing talkers on the radio (talk about a soul killing experience). The outrageous and inflammatory venom directed at Transfolks (and those who support them) is going to egg on someone to do violence and they know it.
They know it, they make money off it. And they will make money off of the result of their stochastic terrorism as will their MSM peers. They will make even more money as they squeal about how unfairly they are being portrayed and they cycle continues. Stay safe, my dear.
A New Jersey theater manager called the police on a mom who took her non-verbal autistic son to the bathroom, accusing him of being trans, saying “this is not a transgender bathroom.” Her son isn’t trans, rather, he needs her assistance to use the bathroom. This is one of many stories that demonstrate how anti-LGBTQ hate is so widespread it’s harming non-LGBTQ people too.
Photo: Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 